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    good,cheap PCI card for 2nd monitor

    Anyone have any recommendations? I know some cards don't like to work as secondary video cards, so I would like to avoid those. Right now I'm considering a GF2 MX PCI because I know those work as secondaries (I have one running in another machine), but they sell for around $35, and I'd like to...
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    antec truepower question

    I need a PS and was thinking of getting an antec truepower. However I see that the fans are variable speed fans that adjust based on the temperature. I do not want my PS fan changing speeds, my friend has a fan like that and I find the audible fluctuations in pitch to be annoying. Is there a way...
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    DPI of monitor versus printer

    I have a 15" monitor which is 12 x 9 inches, resolution 1024x768. That means the DPI is 1024/12 = 85 DPI. However, I've read that you must print at 300DPI or higher or you will get a "grainy" picture. Not sure exactly what is meant by grainy, but why does the DPI have to be so much higher for...
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    Question about the 17" LCDs

    I know these screens have a native resolution of 1280 x 1024, which they can display perfectly. My question is can they also display 1280 x 960 perfectly, which would mean the screen has black bars on the left an right rather than stretching the image. I play a lot of starcraft, which has to...
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    hard drive space discrepancy

    Are hard drives generally advertised as a little bigger than they actually are? I ask because I have two - an IBM 75GXP (labeled as 46GB) and a Quantum Fireball EX (advertised as 6.4GB). But while there is no unpartitioned space on either, I can only store 42.9GB on the IBM and 5.99GB on the...
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    Question about partitioning

    I plan on using fdisk to repartition my hard drive soon. Right now I have a bunch of stuff on it and it's about 35% fragmented. If I make my new partitions with fdisk, will they be fragmented as well, or will they be fine since fdisk destroys all data anyway? I would imagine that with a...
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    filter hurting airflow

    I posted a thread here about a week ago inquiring about what to use as a filter. Since then I have tried 3 different materials, and all of them hurt my airflow too much to be useful. I have experimented with dryer sheets, panty hose, and air conditioning filters. The first two are pretty thin so...
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    incomplete iso images

    Is there a way to tell if an iso is complete or not? I went to download a slackware iso from FTP today and it was only 100MB. I downloaded it anyway and winimage extracts 600 something megabytes of files from it. So to do a test I re-downloaded the iso but canceled it at 3%. Now I only had a 3mb...
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    curious about antecs

    Ive been looking at some of their models and I really like the SX830 and SX1030, but I do have a few questions. First of all, are the metal pieces that cover the expansion slots (that you have to remove to install a card) screw in, or are they the kind that just pop out? I prefer the screw kind...
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    replacing cmos battery

    The cmos battery on my moms old computer (a 486 SX 25) recently died. I have a dead Abit BH6 lying around with a functional cmos battery, from what I can see. Can I use it in my old computer, and will anything be damaged if it turns out to be incompatible? Thanks.
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    alternatives to mandrake

    Ive been toying with Mandrake 8.0 for the last couple of days(my first linux experience), but it is way to slow for my liking. Konquerer and explorer(or whatever the graphical file manager is) take 7 or 8 seconds to load, and the whole thing just strikes me as too bloated. I'm running a celeron...
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    disgusting 3dmark score

    Here's my system: Abit BF6 Celeron 500@550 192MB RAM IBM 75GXP 45GB HDD (DMA enabled) Jaton GF2MX Diamond Monster Sound MX300 Sohoware NIC Cable modem I ran 3dmark 2001 under windows 98 first edition, with direct X 8.0a installed. I ended up with a measley 848 3dmarks! This is 640x480x32 with...
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    celeron 633?

    Why did anand choose the celeron 633 as an "our pick" CPU? Do most of these make it to 950 or what? I would think the 600 would be a better pick since these cpus are worthless unless you can get them to 100mhz FSB, and the 600 stands a better chance at that since it will only need to...
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    Is this normal?

    Ive noticed lately that when I load web pages my CPU load gets very high. It will usually hit about 70% for a second before it returns back to 1 or 2%. But sometimes it will hit 100% and cause mp3's to skip, which is very annoying. I get my CPU information from the windows 2000 task manager. I...
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    Win2k disk cache

    Is the "system cache" in win2k the equivalent of the disk cache in win98? If so, is it advised to use vcache settings to limit the amount of ram alloted to the system cache? Right now the system cache is 130MB large. I dont want it to consume so much ram as to slow down other...
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    fans

    I want to add some fans to my system to keep it cool. My case is an inwin midtower, with a spot for a casefan in the front. Id also like to add an exhaust fan, but there is no clear cut place for one. Ive reversed the PS fan but I dont think thats enough. When I go to order a fan, I see all...
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    is special ide cable needed for ata100?

    I just set up an athlon system for a friend and his motherboard(iwill kk266) only came with one ide cable. We reused an ide cable from his old system to set up the second channel. I dont know what transfer speeds his hard drives and cdrom drives are capable of but I would like to make sure the...