thinking about getting a new PC

Oakshard · Post by **Oakshard** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:39 pm

Isn't XP SP 3 still a week away from public release?

Eliot · Post by **Eliot** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 9:51 pm

what does "Windows XP SP3, ghosted on a second partition" mean??

Post by **Ulwar** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 10:12 pm

Ghost is a utility from Symantec that let's you create/retrieve images of a hard drive or partition. By ghosting a copy of your machine onto the 2nd partition, if your first partition got hacked or messed up, you could overwrite it with the image from the 2nd partition.

Vitodens · Post by **Vitodens** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 11:15 pm

Ulwar wrote:Ghost is a utility from Symantec that let's you create/retrieve images of a hard drive or partition. By ghosting a copy of your machine onto the 2nd partition, if your first partition got hacked or messed up, you could overwrite it with the image from the 2nd partition.

...eyes glazing over...

Post by **Ulwar** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 12:15 am

Vitodens wrote:
Ulwar wrote:Ghost is a utility from Symantec that let's you create/retrieve images of a hard drive or partition. By ghosting a copy of your machine onto the 2nd partition, if your first partition got hacked or messed up, you could overwrite it with the image from the 2nd partition.
...eyes glazing over...

Hey ... he asked.

Oakshard · Post by **Oakshard** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:02 am

How about this, Vito: it's a backup.

Eliot · Post by **Eliot** » Thu May 01, 2008 3:25 pm

so when talking about a sound card, what does "hd audio codecs" mean??? is that a good thing or a bad thing?

aetha · Post by **aetha** » Thu May 01, 2008 7:12 pm

It would be seen as a good thing.

I would see it as a somewhat useless good thing, as I don't have some sort of THX setup to my computer, but... I dont think there are any downsides to it.

Post by **Ulwar** » Thu May 01, 2008 7:57 pm

Eliot wrote:so when talking about a sound card, what does "hd audio codecs" mean??? is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I believe this refers to the codecs involved in HD content such a Blu-Ray. But to be honest, the idea of high-fidelity sound from a PC is a total joke. Any audiophile knows that keeping components and high voltage electicity away from each other is critical. The inside of a PC has like 8 trillion miles of wire carrying electricity. Not the best environment to render high-quality sound.

When talking about sound cards, the advantage of a discrete sound cards vs on-board is that the discrete card is doing the work. Integrated solutions use your CPU. Some integrated solutions are better than others. For media playback etc, this isn't a big issue. But in gaming, chewing up CPU cycles for something other than the game is bad news. This is why virtually all hardware sites when they are testing disable the sound. (This is where Vitodens interjects with EGO.) I remember reading a review where they ran games through tests with the sound turned on and compared it with when it was off. Then the switched motherboards a few times, each with a different on-board sound chipset. The crappy ones could chew up 10% of the processor. Good ones were as low as 1%, so there was a distinct difference.

These days with dual and quad-core processors, it's less of an issue. But I still shy away with anything with the CMedia chipsets ... they are truly crappy.

Eliot · Post by **Eliot** » Wed May 28, 2008 7:19 pm

probably going to trade the new computer I got in for the below one... general specs below: what ya'll think!?

Will cost me $350+ my current rig...

its vista 32 bit
has 2 ATI Radeon 2600HD Pro video cards each with 512 ram so a 1GB video total
it has 2 gb's of ram
and a amd x2 4200+ 2.21 ghz x 2 dual core

aetha · Post by **aetha** » Wed May 28, 2008 7:30 pm

Eliot wrote:probably going to trade the new computer I got in for the below one... general specs below: what ya'll think!?

Will cost me $350+ my current rig...

its vista 32 bit
has 2 ATI Radeon 2600HD Pro video cards each with 512 ram so a 1GB video total
it has 2 gb's of ram
and a amd x2 4200+ 2.21 ghz x 2 dual core

whats wrong with the one you have right now? Do you play that many fps games that you need the 2 cards in SLI?

Looks like it does have more power, I question the need, but its your money to spend.

Eliot · Post by **Eliot** » Wed May 28, 2008 10:04 pm

basically I just want to have max fps at max settings in a raid...

currently I get 60+ when I'm soloing in low population areas...

I get like 20-25 in shatt

and even lower in a raid -- like 10-20

I want 50-60+ in a full raid with everything maxed out

I don't know what the problem is with my current rig that gives me such a dramatic drop, so I figure I'll just upgrade the whole thing lol

so yea, pretty much just insanity, but I have the money so its OK I think

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