Search results

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    Buying an i7 920... should I select a specific chip?

    Try go for the D0 stepping, these are the code (should be on the label on the side of the box) SLBCH - Old C0 stepping SLBEJ - New DO stepping (better overclocker) But keep in mind usually the D0 are a tad more expensive than the other one (in the order of $20-ish I believe here in Canada -...
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    do you need to reformat when you change video drivers?

    I'm just saying that cause the OP seems to be the type that wants everything to be "perfect". And yea I've used those driver cleaner and I have seen that there are bits and pieces of system files and/or config settings (be it some odd ini file or some registry key setting) that are still left at...
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    do you need to reformat when you change video drivers?

    As far as I can tell from experience, you don't have to reformat when changing video card even from ATI to nVidia or vice versa. However I think if you really want a "clean" running system then reformat would most likely be the best option. I've tried those driver cleaner softwares in the past...
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    Not sure if this means my memory is going bad or something else.

    Was thinking of doing that (I heard the CPU can handle 3GHz easy, though haven't actually tried yet) but the stock speed has been good enough for me. In fact as mentioned in my post, the memory is actually running at underclocked speed (DDR3-1066 as opposed to its factory rated DDR3-1600, all...
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    Not sure if this means my memory is going bad or something else.

    I just completed a new system build about 2 months ago, the system is an AMD Athlon II X620 on Gigabyte MA785GMT-UD2H. Now for the build I used a pair of OCZ Platinum DDR3-1600 4GB kit. At first everything was running stable with the memory running at DDR3-1066 on 1.6v, however about two weeks...
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    What RAM should i get?????

    I'd say get something that will do DDR3-1600 which work off low voltage (1.5V or lower) ... that I believe should last you for a while. The reason for looking for a low voltage is that in case (in case really) you want to move to Intel's camp sometime in the future then you can take the RAM along.
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    Kingston DataTraveller 100 and Windows 7 (incompatible??)

    I just finished a new build and just wanted to try out Windows 7, and well I encountered this strange problem with the said memory stick. The stick works fine if I just read files out of it, however writing into it is just not working. It's extremely slow on writing and it will almost always...
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    Any ideas as to what might cause this?

    Negative on that Dave, in fact that was the first thing I checked after replacing the PSU and the system still not working. I double checked all capacitors on motherboard all are perfectly ok, not even any slight bulge on any one of them. I've also checked every part of the system, every...
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    Any ideas as to what might cause this?

    Anyway I posted yesterday about the problem I had with my system which at first I thought was the PSU dying. Anyway after some replacing the PSU and some more test I figured out that apparently my video card was toasted. Now thing is I have honestly no clue as to what happened. The system was...
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    Need PSU suggestion for an old dual Opteron system

    Well I picked up a new PSU earlier today. The OCZ GameSxtream 700, and well turns out it was my video card that bite the dust. I didn't know what happened exactly, but I found out after retesting the parts with this new PSU. And yea the old PSU was still in good condition apparently, I tested...
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    Need PSU suggestion for an old dual Opteron system

    Well this morning my 7 year old Enermax PSU bite the dust. Not really sure what actually happened but I smell burnt stuff from it. I haven't had the chance to test any other parts of the system, but I'm hoping for the best that nothing else get damaged. Anyway I now am in the market for a new...
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    Problem with Windows Live Messenger

    I've just reinstalled a computer for a friend, it was using Windows 2000 before and we upgraded the system to Windows XP SP2. Now everything is fine and dandy, we updated pretty much everything (all the windows update and stuff). And then installed Windows Live Messenger (WLM), then the problem...
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    I'm selling a used hard drive to someone. What can I do to make sure no data is recovered?

    He's trying to re-sell the drive ... :) By the way doesn't writing all zeros help as well ? Or maybe that's like the old day of erasing drives.
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    Sensibility in upgrading old laptop

    Personally I don't think selling it will give me much ... I looked around at eBay and as of this time there is only one "functional" unit on active auction, and at $180 noone is even care bidding ... so I think I'll just keep it for some other stuff. Oh by the way I actually live in Canada, so...
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    Sensibility in upgrading old laptop

    Ok here's the question ... I have an old laptop, a Dell Inspiron 4100 (1.1 GHz P3, 384 MB RAM, 30 GB HD, ATI Radeon Mobile 16 MB video) ... so basically I'm pondering whether or not to add memory on this old guy. Currently the OS is Windows 2000, however I realized that as days go by there...
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    Need Help in purchasing home router

    Yea I have considered openWRT in the past, but back then the QoS implementation was in such a state that is just a bit too unreliable. I'm not really prepared to fuss around with the router (which seems to be the case if I go with openWRT), not to mention the mess trying to get hold of a router...
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    Need Help in purchasing home router

    Sounds like an interesting solution, but to that end it seems to me that for software based solution, i'd say NetLimiter might be a better solution. However I would like to go with a router based solution, I just want a solution that can't be bypassed by any other mean other than physically...
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    Need Help in purchasing home router

    Hi, wanted to ask if anyone can give me recommendation on home routers that can do bandwidth limiting. I don't need a wireless router, just a regular wired one will do fine. If there isn't any, can anyone recommend any router for that matter that can do this at reasonable cost? I've been...
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    Will faster DDR2 memory work in a board rated to 533mhz

    As far as I know (and from experience) ... it should work just fine. Although you will end up underclocking that RAM to DDR2-533 spec. However on the flip side, if you can try fiddle on the memory setting, you might be able to reduce your timing since you're underclocking that stick ... so a...
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    Best AGP System upgrade for my X1950XT

    For the time being if you want to keep your AGP card ... that ASrock board that is suggested by"KeithTalent" would probably be your best upgrade path in the AGP world, since it will allow you some transitional period before moving completely to the new PCI-e platform. That being said looking...
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    How much power do I need?

    Hard drives don't use much when everything is running and idle, however when you first boot up a single hard drive can suck up to 30+ Watt. http://www.storagereview.com/WD7500AAKS.sr?page=0%2C5 Check that link, which basically compares power consumption for newer high capacity drives...
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    Matx - AMD or Intel?

    Thought this might be of interest, Toms just published an article comparing the budget offerings from AMD and Intel http://www.tomshardware.com/20...mart_strike/index.html I haven't read the entire article but the summary pretty much says that if you just want cheap and low power (both...
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    New SATA Drive has become in inaccessible and corrupt for no apparent reason

    Another option to try ... this one is free ... it's a software called "Diskpatch" I believe their website is : http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/~tkuurstra/support.htm
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    New SATA Drive has become in inaccessible and corrupt for no apparent reason

    First of all don't ever ever ever do CHKDSK !!!!! DON'T !!!!! Edit: Ok Now I hope you read that first part ... I must stress that since chkdsk can actually corrupt your drive further. First stop, go to BIOS see if your computer detect the drive properly, like the capacity and all does it...
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    P35 supports PCI-Express 2.0

    Well that's why the article says, and I quote, "Today, another hidden gem was uncovered, ...". Which sums it all up that this feature was previously unknown to most people and was never publicly announced. Nothing so far. PCIe 2.0 is improvement for it, which basically increase the power...
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    Any reasons I should go with a P35 based board instead of a P965?

    Well the simplest answer would be that P35 boards offer supports for later (unreleased) generation of the Core2 processors. This includes the upcoming processors with 1333 MHz bus, which the P35 "officially" support (some 965 boards do support this bus speed but it is not "official" support...
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    sata to pci card

    It's a bit strange that the board didn't support SATA to PCI card. By the way just one thing if you want to try as suggested by 'KGBMAN', go to the BIOS then under the "Advanced BIOS Setup" menu, change the 1st boot device to CDROM, 2nd boot device to SCSI, and 3rd boot device to HDD-0. See if...
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    new HD2600 XT benchmarks

    Well after seeing how bad the 2900 series were ... I honestly wasn't expecting much for the 2600 series ... it does seem like AMD/ATI really messed up real bad this time around ... first those cards were delayed months, without any clear reason ... then when they come up it was really crapola...
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    Semi-complicated series of multimonitor questions.

    As far as I know when you render video for production it's your CPU that's doing 100% the work. So using that MX card shouldn't slow your system at all when rendering. With regard to the dual DVI honestly I am clueless on this, but from what I can tell you might not need any special cable, I...
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    Uh, DX10 on XP is not a hoax.

    Sorry I mean "any" DX10 games ... Edit: well actually SupCom supposedly has a DX10 patch coming soon ... dunno how soon is that though and also what difference will it makes.
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    Uh, DX10 on XP is not a hoax.

    Personally I'm not looking to upgrade to Vista at least until they have SP1 out and all the drivers are out. Reading about the horror stories of people trying to get their nVidia cards working properly is just a bit over the line for me. Honestly I was thinking of keeping my Win 2k for long...
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    System is really slow; tried Ad-aware, Avast, Counterspy...

    Yea I just saw that part about not having to format ... was editing my post removing that sentence before realizing you have replied Another option ... defrag ... sometimes old computers the files are so messed up and fragmented that it slows everything down to a crawl Edit: What programs...
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    System is really slow; tried Ad-aware, Avast, Counterspy...

    First thing that raised alarm is that "noname" thingy (right after Acrotray) Also if you're not scanning stuff often I think you can turn off "IndexSearch" and "pptd40nt" which I believe are part of Scansoft software tools.
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    UPS Question

    Wanted to know how do you keep those UPS in tip top shape? I have 3 units (2 APC and 1 Belkin), and so far only one still works properly. They are about 5 years old now. The one APC seems to need a battery replacement, which from what I heard is kinda expected since most people say those...
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    Mac Pro case switch?

    If I would haphazardly guess. The motherboard is most likely an E-ATX type, the kind they have for server boards (since the Mac Pro is indeed based on Xeon processors). However if you can look first at a Mac Pro unit before deciding to buy one then trying to move it to another case. For one...
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    Dealing with Security Dongle on LPT1

    Just a warning ... most new computers can't run Win98, it's driver problem since the later Intel Chipsets are not made to run in Win98 at all. You can try but I'm just giving a heads up here. Also in most cases virtualization just won't help since it also virtualize your parallel port, so it...
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    Ink drying out and choosing printers

    If you can afford the Business Inkjet and don't need the large paper format, why not consider the Colour Laser printers? They're pretty cheap nowadays, and you don't have to worry about the consumables (they do expire, but much much longer), and at the end of the day they are more economical...
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    When are we expecting X38 (high-end Bearlake)?

    X38 is not certified for DDR2 ... but it does support DDR2 However so far the only board supporting DDR2 is only the MSI X38 Diamond, again DDR2 support is not officially supported. X38 also have PCI-e 2.0 standard (which allows 300 watt instead of 75 watt) and I think doubles the bandwidth...
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    PCI Express x1 Fan Card

    Most of those cards only use the PCI connector to balance itself, even that picture you gave of that Vantec Spectrum. If you look at the photo provided by Vantec, there are no electrical traces on the PCI connector, it is only there to secure the fan, so that it doesn't fall down when you move...
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    Motherboards with the most slots - Intel Core 2 CPU

    Just a quick question ... why do u need 4 controllers ? I mean nowadays there are SAS controllers with up to 24 ports on board. If you use 1TB drives ... that's like 24TB raw (well less with RAID 5 or 6), that's like a datacentre type of storage space there. A few possibilities: 1. MSI X38...