My New PC
interpolator
I just ordered this pc and realised I havent asked the trusty polycount, Im pretty sure these parts are good value for money and they need to be as I am on a tight budget. What do you think? good budget pc box?
Ive still got time to cancel my order if this is not great.
Ive still got time to cancel my order if this is not great.
Replies
It all looks good to me. What type of video card are you putting in? The 9800GTX or GTX 280 may want a more beefy power supply.
Put on an x64 OS and max out the board to 8GB ram. This helps greatly for importing high-poly mesh back into max from zbrush. Sometimes I wish I could handle 16GB ram. I've seen boards can now handle 32GB ram but that seems a bit overkill at the moment.
thats a question I would like to ask
Vista or XP64?
I really want windows 7 but thats a bit far off
so for me, this is like a killer deal.
if anything, your processor would be your bottleneck i think. well, at least for anything that DOESNT support multicore. most games for example, only use 1 core. and at 2.4 it seems kinda slow, but like everyone here said, you can definitely overlock it. i should look into that myself.
only people who have been having problems with it were folks who switched from xp to vista64, and thats cause they werent used to vista.
Ged, that's a fantastic price!! (even when converted in dollars hehe). Would that all fit inside a mini tower / shuttle? Sounds like an awesome deal. Almost like a dispensable PC to change every other year!
Yeah Pior its a good price from scan.co.uk , all fits in one mini tower...at least I hope it does, this antec nsk says it supports ATX as well as MicroATX so Im hoping its all good.
I havent upgraded my pc since 2005 so this is a good time, also I will get the PC in the first week of dominance war =D wooohoo
damn I knew Vista was bad but this is rediculous. How can microsoft release this pile of crap into the world. I seriously regret installing it on my new pc
"nvlddmkm stopped responding and has recovered"
it happens after about 20mins of play in far cry 2 and just generally randomly pops up to annoy me while using any app at all.
I am sooo pissed off right now Ive spent £650 on the parts, a week of building my pc and waiting for parts, then installing software for a weekend and now 2 late nights trying to get this to work with suggestions like this(http://www.nvlddmkm.com/) and Im still totally screwed!
this 8800GT ran fine in my other computer with winxp even played through crysis on medium but vista just keeps on managing to crash the card. WTF!!!!!!!!
crap its late and I have to go to bed...work in the morning
You can update by yourself..
I myself have update stable version SD1A
Check here
Use drivedetct to know your serial number Download Drive Detect
Then check it with [URL="javascript:openWin3('https://apps1.seagate.com/rms_af_srl_chk/');"]serial number check utility.[/URL]
Try using Latest driver for 8800GT..
Ive spent £100 on Vista64 oem what am I supposed to do with this software now? Im guessing I cant return it to the store can I? If I want xp64 it will cost me another £100.
As far as I can tell it is Vista that is at fault so in an ideal world it would be microsoft paying for a new operating system for me and compensating me for the many hours of my life which are gone forever due to their shoddy workmanship.
Im gonna give vista64 one more try, I will format my pc and re-install everything from scratch if it still doesnt work then I will know for sure that I need to eradicate vista from my life.
Maybe luck..[I am not paid my Microsoft] Till now vista runs good no problem till now..
But do take care hard disk about firmware.or else it brick...
If you're assembling the machine yourself, read the label of the drive and compare it to the serial numbers and firmware revisions listed on the seagate site.
http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=firmware_news&thread.id=1
it says small number of drives effected, but everyone I know that had a seagate drive produced from last may to january was effected... better to flash the drive empty if it needs it than find out after you have a ton of stuff on it.
and by the way, the drive detect utility won't work in vista as far as I know... my vista sees all sata drives as scsi drives and the utility for some reason ignores them. check the sticker.
Otherwise my 1TB drive has been great.
uninstalled all nvidia products and reinstalled them tonight but no luck.
tried far cry 2s benchmark tools and found that I can complete the benchmark on low settings but get the "nvlddkmd stopped responding" error if I turn up the settings even a little. Im gonna try underclocking my video card gpu and memory by about 100mhz with ntune and see if that helps keep things stable
later that day...
used nvidia monitor to see if gpu temps are getting hot but they are not idle is 44 degrees in game is up to 70 or so. So its definitely not the graphics card even though the error says it is. I guess its just display driver issues rather than hardware.
I got vista to run a little more stable by checking for and updating directx and windows updates as I found vista had not done all of it automatically. I also turned off all graphics/style/theme so it looks crap but seems to run a little better.
I might just get windows xp 64 but will that install on my system now that vista is on it? can I just pop in the disc and hit format and then install fresh?
I did some google and got this might help you.
An update is available that improves the compatibility and reliability of Windows Vista http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938194
According to Microsoft, KB938194 will resolve the following problems:
Uninstall old driver, then run a driver cleaning app like
Driver Sweeper
And install new driver
Are using Vista or vista SP1?
anyway at the moment it seems like far cry 2 is far more prone to this error than anything else on my pc now, alot of the other stuff seems more stable, like UT3 is running at 120fps in benchmarks on high
I havent tried those links you gave yet gaganjain, I will try them when I get home later
the software provider refuses to take it back or give me a refund, they say I should try putting my graphics card back in my old pc and seeing if it is really still in working condition. I might do that just to prove its fine.
Far cry 2 still crashes out to "display driver stopped responding" after 10 mins in dx10 and just freezes up in dx9 with no error message. UT3 sometimes cant even run at all and gets the "display driver stopped responding" message
I think Ive done everything I can now. All I can do is put my 3d card back in my old pc and run it to show the card is fully working but that probably wont help me. Im so tired of this now.
What ever i read on forum,i think mainly it was problem with 8 series cards...
Let see if i can find something out...
So far Ive run GRID with no issues at all and now Im downloading 3dmark06 just to do a thorough test that its not the 8800GT at fault.
I do have an old 6800GT here maybe I will try that with vista and see if it likes it more for some reason?
so
vista64 = no working video card drivers(driver stopped responding errors)
xp64 = no working network card drivers so no internet access
has anyone got a suggestion ?
this is a bit desperate but does anyone know of a pci wireless card I could buy that definitely works on xp64?
I would really like to use my new pc but Im running out of options here
http://www.planetamd64.com/index.php?showtopic=9605
Ive gone back to vista64 now as at least there I have network/internet and its just graphics card crashes which hopefully with some time and some tinkering may be fixed either by me or by the driver developers releasing some that actually work.
As far as the crashing, it might be because of your PSU not being able to put out enough power, but Im not sure... ?
But I did notice that your power supply seemed a little low wattage.
Btw just a note from me; even though I can´t tell you what the driver problem is, you shouldn´t take all your rage out on Vista. It´s most probably just an unlucky hard and software combination that could also be due to Nvidia. Just think about the many people that have no problems with Vista, like myself. Over the past year they even fixed the few annoyances I had with it.
Im going to try disabling parts of my pc to see if there is something causing a conflict eg turn off dvd drive, then audio etc until I find things are working...I doubt they will though at this stage.
Worst case, buy a cheap audigy or something, or just do a little research into which cards have 64 bit drivers. Same with the network card. Do you absolutely need wireless anyway? I cant stand using wireless, but that may just me.
realtek alc888 high definition audio - I think - Im at work so thats what I remember
I think i have the same audio, but on an asus board, so i'm sure there are drivers for it somewhere.
I've also had issues with drivers, but more along the lines of finicky dvi/hdmi output than anything else.
If you click on the "download drivers" on the gainward page it just takes you to the nvidia drivers site but there is this "expertool" thing I havent tried that yet.
http://www.gainward.net/main/support.php?lang=en
Thanks EQ, I will try that later. I still dont understand why windows would show all devices as being in working condition. if there is a conflict surely the little icon should come up on the device manager.
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=100555299&mpage=1&key=�
I like to blame ram a lot, since ram does some pretty silly things when it's bad, anything from apparent driver errors to random freezing/lockups to full blown bluescreening.
If your system is overclocked, maybe you should run it at vanilla speeds, if it already is, try searching for solutions regarding ram timings and underclocking your ram. If slowing down your ram works, then you know your ram is bad, also run memtest86 a few passes to see if you can't find an issue outright.
It still could be a software conflict issue with something completely unrelated.
couple more threads:
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=100551184&mpage=1&key=�
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=100549118&mpage=1&key=�
2. Use Vista x64. WinXP64 is pretty unstable and bad optimized(and xp gonna reach EoL soon)... plus Vista x64 has DX10 and a nice VRAM virtualization mechanism. And yep, W7 will be much better.
However, I would wait one year... then get a cheap Core i5 Lynnfield, ddr3 , a dx11 card and W7.... that computer you want to buy gonna be obsolete fast.... so don't waste much money! If you need urgently a new computer you could get a Phenom II X3/690 motherb ( or a E5200 and a P45 ) and the cheapest DDR2 you can find.
just my 2 cents.
Its just the cycle of things, its silly to think that you can somehow sneak up on it. As long as you're not buying top-end over priced hardware, and doing a good amount of research into what you're buying, you're likely getting a good value for your money.
Thanks EarthQuake I saw your sound device driver and thought - let me just go to device manager and disable my "Realtek high definition audio" altogether to see if that makes a difference and it did, everything runs perfectly now!
so it was the audio drivers that were supplied on my motherboards(MSI neo 43 f) drivers disk that were causing the conflict! Tomorrow I will get my old audigy 2 soundcard and plug that into a pci slot Ive already got some vista64 drivers for it downloaded and hopefully that will be fine.
Thanks for trying to help Jogshy and Sir Knight I am on Vista64 now.
I still think microsoft's is partly to blame for all this confusion, surely I should have recieved an error telling me that my audio drivers were in conflict instead of a generic video driver error that means almost nothing.
I just started up my pc today - nothings changed since last night- and all the errors are back!!!! WTF!
installed the old soundcard but the errors havent gone away
for example
UT3 benchmark still freezes up in DX9 mode and can be unfrozen for a few more seconds before it freezes again by alt-ctrl-delete and then cancelling at that menu.
but UT3 in DX10 mode seems to run fine now which is good but still a mystery.
Farcry 2 benchmark on the other hand seems fairly stable under DX9 but crashes nearly every time I try it with DX10
also Im using old nvidia 178 drivers, might try all sorts of archived nvidia drivers and see if there is one that actually works.
I am so tempted
Ive ordered windows xp pro for £22 but I will have to take out 4gb of ram
it arrived yesterday looks good, still in packaging and has booklet,windows cd and product sticker
So I formatted and installed and when I put in the product key it says:
"product key invalid" and this is before it installs the actual OS.
so...I don't know what to do, so Ive contacted the playtrade seller and got a refund. The pc Im currently using to type this is going to my parents tomorrow. So Ive had to install vista again on a cleanly formatted drive, hopefully this time it actually works as it should.
lessons learnt: Im never gonna build or set up a pc again - its not worth the pain, Im never going to use playtrade for something important and Im never going to trust windows vista or the nvidia drivers on it.
Try nvidia forums
http://nvlddmkmdisplaydriverfix.com/
One think it seem to be old problem many people had fix there issue by updating there driver..
I will say you contact Nvidia