The Computer Megathread

[Pepsidude]

I want to give my friend my old computer, which is a good deal better than his current one.

I want to do the following

Copy all the data from the old one to an External HardDrive
Format the HardDrive
Install Windows 7

I always had problems with copying over everything, since it only copies a very small amount of data. That and Windows 7, I don't have an extra copy of it.

[Ad Bot]

[Robin Ihoodl]

Of course.
Budget?

Trying to keep it cheap, But able to run games like APB Reloaded smoothly.

[TomTheGeek²]

Is it a good idea to wait for the 7000 series to come out so the 6000 series drops in price?

I was thinking about getting a Radeon HD 6970 for this new PC with an Intel i5-2500k. (HerpaDerpa, you rock. Got it for $195 at Microcenter.)

I was originally intending to get a Nvidia GeForce 560 and then getting the same card later on, but I screwed up on buying a mobo and got an ATi Crossfire-X only board. I currently have an ATi Radeon, and I love the card so far.

[Legosuperman64]

Would a laptop with 4 gig RAM, 3 core processor, AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 video card, and a 640 gig HDD be considered average, or good?

[Bisjac]

where is the ati equivalent of the "Mixed GPU Acceleration" setting?
i want to change settings for better multi-monitor usage.

right now games lag when using 2 screens, total crap

its like the 4the time i had to quote this over this week. i cant find any answers by google.
i figured since ethan is an amd/ati enthusiast that he would know well how to do this.

this can easily be done with nvidia control pbrown town. a simple setting flipped on or off.
this is what allows multi-displays work when using high end games. (game one screen / browsing, chatting other screen)
without the video card cutting its resource directly in half, pointlessly.

unless this is yet more proof that ati/amd sucks ;)

this is my friend's newegg prebuilt package from newegg im fiddling with. shes a gamer and a worker and wishes to do both effectively.

[TomTheGeek²]

-snip-

Is mixed GPU like crossfire or SLI?

[Nickelob Ultra]

unless this is yet more proof that ati/amd sucks ;)

(whistles innocently)

[Bisjac]

the nvidia setting called "Mixed GPU Acceleration"
just refers to rendering 3d things on multiple displays from a single video card.

it can still be a single gpu, but as we know its common for a card to have multiple monitor ports.

[Nickelob Ultra]

the nvidia setting called "Mixed GPU Acceleration"
just refers to rendering 3d things on multiple displays from a single video card.

it can still be a single gpu, but as we know its common for a card to have multiple monitor ports.

I've never done this with any serious rendering.  I've always kept games to one monitor.

[TomTheGeek²]

the nvidia setting called "Mixed GPU Acceleration"
just refers to rendering 3d things on multiple displays from a single video card.

it can still be a single gpu, but as we know its common for a card to have multiple monitor ports.

This setting is not relevant to SLI multi-GPU rendering.

Oops. I'll just back out until Ethan gets in here. I haven't done multiple displays on this GPU yet.

I've never done this with any serious rendering.  I've always kept games to one monitor.

yeah, same here.

[Bisjac]

thats what i mean. many mid level games you wouldnt notice a drop in quality anyways.
or if you have a super computer that half your vid card can run bf3/skyrim on its own with no problem.

but say she wants to run skyrim on one monitor, and keep firefox and messengers on the next monitor.
skyrim will not be running as fantastic as it could because its only using half the video card, regardless of whats not going on on the other screen.

the setting fixes this. but it appears only nvidia can do it.

[Nickelob Ultra]

thats what i mean. many mid level games you wouldnt notice a drop in quality anyways.
or if you have a super computer that half your vid card can run bf3/skyrim on its own with no problem.

but say she wants to run skyrim on one monitor, and keep firefox and messengers on the next monitor.
skyrim will not be running as fantastic as it could because its only using half the video card, regardless of whats not going on on the other screen.

the setting fixes this. but it appears only nvidia can do it.

Dear lord, I've never even heard of that happening.  I mean, I do that almost all the time with Skype, Steam, etc. on my second monitor.

Hope she gets that fixed, because that's just seriously awful.

[Bisjac]

most people (moreso with high end comps) would never notice it.

but shes got a budget mid-high end comp. and plays high end games. so we have actually noticed the stufftyness. of course we have tested the reverse usage of screens, and tried it out alone on each of them as well.

specs show this this is cause. (as would be expected anyways)

all desktop vid cards, single, dualcore, or dual-tri card setups. this is the case.
it will take all video power available and divide by monitors = resource per screen.
im use to fixing this on my nvidia setups. alloting all rendering power by hardware to be allotted to 1 monitor, while the other one renders small stuff by software.
ati i am yet to find the fix.

[Ethan]

Does it support an Asus motherboard?

Motherboard brand doesn't matter. So long as it has 2 PCI-E 6 pin power connectors from the PSU, and it has more than 500 good quality watts from the PSU.
You also need enough space in your case, and one free PCI-E 16x lane, with a lane below it free for the cooler.
What CPU do you have? Make sure it isn't too underpowered for the GPU you are getting. If it is, you will experience bottlenecks.

Would a AMD Athlon II X2 245 CPU bottleneck this GPU?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-200-XF&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1982

No, but that's pretty much it's limit TBH.

Is there any real difference between these two cards?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131391
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131394
or are people paying the extra 60 dollars for the call of duty name and slightly different design.
My current graphics card is a powercolor and it has not failed me so I think I'll go with them again, unless advised against it.
I was also looking at this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102957 because it is a bit shorter in length than the others and I'm not supremely confident about the amount of space I have.

The more expensive one is clocked higher.
Also, please do measure before you buy a card like these, as they are quite big.

Whats the BEST CPU I can get for 500$?

3930k.
However, spending $500 on just the CPU does seem overboard unless you are going for a real multitasking solution.

I'm restoring my computer right after I finish backing up 72gb of music and videos then i'm installing new cpu, psu, and gpu

Question: After restoration, what are the things i'm going to need to download before I install the parts (if any) such as drivers or stuff? Never did it before.

Then after that i'll swap out my parts

I never do.
I always build, then install Windows. It has default drivers for most things, that work well.

Hey, I've got a laptop question. I made a topic about it but people didn't seem to notice it.

If you are getting the same specs on both laptops, go for the Toshiba.
The Dell however does have more expensive spec options that could be better, however with the quality of Dells, I wouldn't go there personally.

thats why i am asking for what nvidia calls "Mixed GPU Acceleration" as it disables the 3d rendering on the second screen. but i cant find the similar setting for ati.

whytf do you think im asking?

It's called Eyefinity.

[Ethan]

I think some update messed up my wireless adapter or something because before I updated my system I got some fast download speeds, now I only get like 5 kb/s.

Oh my loving god, you have a lot of problems. At least try to use some common knowledge and restore the previous drivers.

Can someone tell me how bad a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M is?

Ew

Then how come I lag a lot on L4D?

You won't play L4D on high, sorry.
L4D requires at least a 9600 for high.

I run cod 4 damn well, but that's not hard to do. But I get 10-30 fps on Source multiplayer games with lowest graphical settings with around 20 players.

Sounds like a CPU limitation.
How high is your CPU clocked?

Hey Ethan, Would the 300$ one be good for a game like APB Reloaded, Really want to play this game but my laptop lags so much.

The $300 one really has a bad video card. You'd want to spend some more on a video card to play it. Not much more though, if I'm thinking about the same game.

I would like to give a review of Ethan's selection here. :)

About a month ago I bought the $800 model and recieved it as a Christmas present. Yesterday I had a friend of my mom's come and put it together for me, and holy crap. I'll begin with the case: It's beautiful. It has a very sleek design with a pretty window on the side so you can see all the inner parts. The motherboard has a pre-lubricated fan which is very convenient, and even comes with a neat little blue light that helps me sleep at night. NOT ONLY DOES IT PERFORM WELL, IT AIDS ME WITH MY INSOMNIA! The graphics card, holy BALLSACK. I'm a PC gamer so I definitely need the best graphics card I can get, this one is by no means a let down. I can run Battlefield 3 on max settings.

Ethan, you've done a splendid job. It took my 167 pages to commend you for this, but better late than never. Great work.

I'm glad it all worked out. :)

I want to give my friend my old computer, which is a good deal better than his current one.

I want to do the following

Copy all the data from the old one to an External HardDrive
Format the HardDrive
Install Windows 7

I always had problems with copying over everything, since it only copies a very small amount of data. That and Windows 7, I don't have an extra copy of it.

Were you trying to copy systems files that are write protected or something?

Trying to keep it cheap, But able to run games like APB Reloaded smoothly.

Well APB Reloaded is not very hard to run, so like I've said above, the $300 one with a GPU like this would be able to run it well.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102934
Any idea of the other games you want to play?