Recent content by brett42

Hi, I just found a used i5-3[4]70 from a very new Amazon storefront for $55 shipped (2 more in stock right now if anyone else wants to roll the dice on a cheap 4-year old CPU) . Assuming it actually shows up in 'like new' condition, I need a new motherboard, RAM, and cooler. I'm currently...

An easy PSU test is disconnecting all the internal cables and jumpering the green pin to a black pin with a paper clip on the 20/24 pin connector. If the PSU fan doesnʻt start spinning, itʻs definitely dead. If you have access to a voltmeter, the purple pin is the 5 volt standby, if...

Thank you. I hadn't even looked at any AM3 processors. My M4A785-M does list it as supported, and it looks like the Phenom II can do what I want. My RAM is only ddr2-667, but it looks like ddr2-800 only has a 5-10% penalty vs ddr3 1333, so that should be OK.

Hi, I was considering an i3 2120 for $112 before I saw how low the Pentiums had gone. Can you explain why the i3 is worth the premium for gaming? Most game benchmarks I've seen show the performance (bench) as close to identical, but I haven't been able to look up Pentium benchmarks on the...

I want to play Deus Ex 3, Max Payne 3, and Borderlands 2, and my Athlon II x2 250 is pretty painful on DX3, so I'm looking to upgrade within the next month or so. I'm looking for a new CPU, motherboard, and RAM, ideally for less than $200. I will be keeping the rest of the parts including a...

Right-click on My Computer and hit Manage. BSODs show up in System Tools>Event Viewer>Windows Logs>System, I think as 'bugcheck' events. http://aumha.org/a/stop.php is a good first step to finding out what the problem is for a given stop number. Here's a short guide to reading a minidump file...

I've gone with AMD for my last 3 PCs, but I'm not seeing the appeal of a Llano at that price in this case. The IGP looks nice for light gaming, but I'd expect it to go into slideshow mode in Skyrim at 1080p with the settings turned up at all. Tom's Hardware puts it in the same tier as the 6450...

Hi, Have you ruled out overheating? Maybe check the temps and CPU fan under load.

Thanks for all the replies. I'm starting to think the $20 more for a 4770 might be worth it. That MSI 4770 from Newegg does come out a few bucks cheaper with faster shipping. That cooler looks good, and it looks like the ATI drivers let you manually set fan speeds, so I can just turn it down...

Hi, The Geforce 6150 is the motherboard, it's basically an nforce4 with an IGP. I have a discreet 8600gt installed now, but it's pretty slow at 19x10. I don't remember the model number, but the newest BIOS does have the Athlon II 255 on the supported list, so it should be OK with AM3 if I do...

Hi, My current setup is a 8600gt, Athlon X2 at 2.2ghz, 2GB DDR2 667, GeForce 6150. I have a PSU with dual 18A 12V rails if needed. Want to play: Borderlands, Bioshock, Fallout 3 at 1920x1080, lower settings, no AA/AF is fine as long as they are playable. I'm in Hawaii, where shipping...

A quick and dirty solution would be to just use the windows built-in performance monitor (control panel, admin tools, performance). It allows you to add a bandwidth counter for each computer, assuming you know an admin password for each computer, so you can see how much each desktop is using at...

Toms Hardware's hierarchy chart is pretty good for quick comparisons between cards. It looks like yoiur x850xt is 5 notches above the HD3200, so I'd install it.

Well, if anyone else is in the same situation, this guy wasn't able to run a 3850 in win2k, but was able to run a 9600gt.

Most games work on win2k with a little bit of tweaking. Most Valve stuff works out of the box, and recently I got Fallout 3 to work after copying over some dlls. win2kgaming.site90.com is a really good resource. I'd rather spend the 15 minutes copying over dlls than the $86 for a new...