Author Topic: Pre-New System questions..... (Read 1007 times)

LePaul · « **on:** August 20, 2001, 01:43:00 PM »

Few questions for the gurus...

I've been trudging along in my P3 550 for quite some time and the Voodoo 3 has worked well. Time for a new computer, new game controllers and all of that.

Already know that the P4's are awful. I have an Athlon at work and its fantastic, so we are already doing the AMD route. OS, I'm thinking of staying with Windows 98. 2000 sounds nice, especially for the RAM usage if I want to load a GB in. But, I think many of my games wont like 2000. Comments? (i.e. Falcon 4, eyc).

Big questions....controllers and video card. What's the kick bellybutton card to have? I don't really want to drop $300 for a card, but if its that sweet, well, maybe its worth the extra money. Controllers confuse me, I used to love my CH stuff, but I found them to be crap lately. I've been using a MS Sidewinder and its a very lazy way to use the rudder

Thrustmaster seems to have turned its line up into spacey-looking crap rather than the F-16/F-22 look-a-likes we all used to drool over. The Saitek is new to me and I havent seen many in person. Ideally Id like throttles (plural, Im a buff dweeeb) and stick.....pedals?

Let me have it, let the recommendations flow!

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #1 on:** August 20, 2001, 03:45:00 PM »

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Already know that the P4's are awful.

:ROLLEYES:

I haven't read that review. Maybe you could point me in the general direction?

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Big questions....controllers and video card. What's the kick bellybutton card to have? I don't really want to drop $300 for a card, but if its that sweet, well, maybe its worth the extra money.

I really like my Radeon 64 DDR ViVo. I was quite suprised by its performance. I hear the Radeon 2 is supposed to be out soon... but haven't heard much on it. I think both Tom's Hardware and AnandTech have done reviews on it though.

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Controllers confuse me

Its very simple. If you push the stick to the left, the plane rolls to the left. If you push to the right, the plane rolls to the right. Forward and back will control your yaw.

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used to love my CH stuff, but I found them to be crap lately. I've been using a MS Sidewinder and its a very lazy way to use the rudder Thrustmaster seems to have turned its line up into spacey-looking crap rather than the F-16/F-22 look-a-likes we all used to drool over. The Saitek is new to me and I havent seen many in person. Ideally Id like throttles (plural, Im a buff dweeeb) and stick.....pedals?

This is a tough one to answer. TM is coming out with a "Cougar" setup. Basically, it is an all-metal F-22 and TQS in a USB flavor. The downsides are that it is expensive (about $300 for the pair), not due out until December and is all-metal. Some may thing all-metal is cool, but there's a reason that most sticks in the military are high density plastic. Metal gets cold... and is much more prone to cause hand/wrist issues.

Anyways... that will be the premier setup. I'm not a big CH fan (too girly of a feel) and wouldn't go as far as to recomend MS products (using the PPro2 until cougar come sout)... so I'm not going to be much help here.

I do remember someone modifying a CH throttle into a dual throttle control. Don't remember who it was, but he posted the pics on the forum for everyone to see. It was pretty neat.

AKDejaVu

Swager · « **Reply #2 on:** August 20, 2001, 04:52:00 PM »

I just ordered a MSI GeForce2 PRO 64M for $140 at newegg. I ordered it through the reviews it got in various HW forums.

bloom25 · « **Reply #3 on:** August 20, 2001, 04:57:00 PM »

I'm not going to say the P4s are aweful, but the Athlon is a better deal for what you get. The P4 will also be undergoing a socket change from 423 to 478 pin, meaning that if you buy a p4 now you won't be able to use that chip and motherboard for future upgrading.

On the OS thing, win98 se or Win 2k sp2 would be my picks. Go to www.ntcompatible.com and look at their application compatibility lists and see if win2k currently supports the hardware and software you have.

On the video card, the Geforce 3 is still quite expensive, so I'd probably recommend the GeForce 2 Ultra. In 4 months you'll have the GF 3 Ultra and Radeon 8500 to choose from. (If ATI is able to write quality drivers the Radeon may be the way to go at that point. )

LePaul · « **Reply #4 on:** August 21, 2001, 10:31:00 AM »

Thanks for the replies guys.

As to the awful P4 things, it was Tom's hardware that was pointing out that the P4 isnt all its cracked up to be. While the P4 excels in some areas, in others it simply does not. I guess the point is that for the money, the AMD simply outdoes the Intel, hands down. So, at least I've got that much decided

OS wise, I'm still thinking of sticking to Windows 98 so I can play my old games. Falcon 4, the Novalogic stuff (Commanche 4 looks fantastic!) and such. I'm a huge NT/2k fan and as much as I'd love to up to it, there are more cons to as far as game compatibility.

Controllers....well...you guys summed it up. The nice ones that look nice and work well are very expensive. I'm not into the force feedback thing. Any input from Saitek owners? Some of those looked pretty slick but looks are just that...looks

Video cards, yikes. I sure loved the fact Voodooos worked well on everything, one driver for all. A friend has a Radeon but complains everything looks very dark on his system setup playing Aces with it. I like ATI and am leaning in that direction at the moment. I'm trying to avoid buying the current card (Radeon) if a new model is just over the horizon.

Lephturn · « **Reply #5 on:** August 21, 2001, 02:26:00 PM »

Don't do it. Don't put 98 on another machine. A quick look showed me that most of what you mention runs on Win2k. Unless there is something specific that you KNOW won't work in Win2k, I'd heartily recommend Win2K. Heck, NTCompatible even had Falcon 4 listed as running fine on NT4.0... let alone 2k! Worst case scenario... set up a dual boot of Win98 for the old game that won't run... yet. MS still releases compatibility updates for Win2k that makes big lists of games work fine.

Post SP2 and the "compatibility updates", most games work great in Win2k. There is even facilities in WIn2kSP2 to allow you to fool the game into thinking it is running Win95/98/NT4/Dos... whatever. It's pretty damn flexible at getting games to run.

Trust me... you do not want to inflict Win98 on one of these new machines with big hard drives. Win2k works so damn sweet it's not even funny. In some games I even get slightly better frame rates out of Win2k than I do 98.. they are very close in that regard. I've "fixed" problematic Win98 machines recently by formatting them and putting Win2k on them. My wife's laptop, my Father-In-Law's POS HP box, and my cousin's hacked up old clone. All three were having crashing, freezing, and other problems. All three have worked perfectly since I put Win2k on them. Heck, I don't waste my time troubleshooting Win9x OS installs for relatives... either they agree to let me slap Win2k on it or I won't help. (Of course they all purchase leage copies of the OS... you can get upgrades cheap.) It's the only way I can be sure they won't be calling me back again in 2 weeks.

Can you tell I've just fought this battle with a relative recently? Trust me, 2k will save you a lot of hassles, so don't rule it out until you absolutely have to.

[ 08-21-2001: Message edited by: Lephturn ]

Eagler · « **Reply #6 on:** August 21, 2001, 02:49:00 PM »

"Controllers....well...you guys summed it up. The nice ones that look nice and work well are very expensive. I'm not into the force feedback thing. Any input from Saitek owners? Some of those looked pretty slick but looks are just that...looks"

Saitek X36 comb with CH Pro Peds for less than $150 if you pick up the refurbished X36 (ask Rip, he just got one) - can't beat it for the performance or the price.

I had a voodoo 5500 and switched to a geforce2 ultra leadtek 64mb monster - more frame rates with geforce, better picture in AH (esp at nite) and rest of desktop apps with voodoo 5500.

my choice would be a AMD 1.3 with 256 ram on a 266mhz board with a voodoo 5500 (dirt cheap now) pushin it. You can always get a geforce3 when the prices drop to a reasonable level.

gl

bloom25 · « **Reply #7 on:** August 21, 2001, 05:43:00 PM »

Although I did like the V5s, I can't recommend using them now, since there are no future drivers upgrades. Since AH is moving to either DX7 or 8 in the next version it is hard to say whether or not the current drivers will work properly.

At this time I'd probably go with either a GF 2 Ultra or PRO, or get a DDR Radeon.

As for the OS, in your case a dual boot would be a good idea. Just make 2 FAT 32 partitions on your harddrive. If you install win98 first and then pop in the win2k disk and pick to do a clean install and you can install win2k on the other partition. (I think you'll find that you hardly ever need to use win98.) The only good thing about winblows ME is that the price on win98se full version disks is under $40 US at regular computer stores.

(BTW Lepturn, SP 3 went into beta testing Friday.

)

Lephturn · « **Reply #8 on:** August 22, 2001, 11:52:00 AM »

If you handed me a GeForce 3 for free right now, I would put it in my server box, and leave my Voodoo 5 5500 in my machine right now. The drivers support DX8 just fine, and work flawlessly and look superb on everything I use. The framerate number may not be as high as the GeForce cards, but I still haven't seen better image quality. And for FSAA you still can't beat the V5. I'm hoping the next generation after the GeForce 3 will include some 3DFX tech. and finally offer a quality AA scheme. If you have a 17" or smaller monitor... get the V5 for now. Until the next version of Direct X comes out, you have no worries. Just don't pay much for it.

Good recommendations there Bloom25 about the dual boot.

And yeah, I see that SP3 is in beta. Have you seen the list of fixes? Eeeeek.

I didn't think SP2 had that many issues! Actually the titles often sound worse than the actual problem if you look up the articles. In my experience 2K Sp2 has been the most solid OS I've every seen. (That you can do anything with that is....)

LePaul · « **Reply #9 on:** August 22, 2001, 01:42:00 PM »

Hey Lephturn, Bloom...I was hoping you guys would stick your heads in here

You've put my heart at ease about Windows 2k, now I just need to find a good price on it and run with it. With ram what it is right now, there's no excuse not to buy a gig of ram and fill the dimm banks. And, Nt/2k will surely use that RAM much more efficiently than 98 could.

Video is still a toss up, I can't find the 5500's (dual cpu?) cards anywhere. I like 3DFX stuff...quite simply, it works well with anything!

I'll check that Saitek site out. Refurb set for $100ish? Wholly....but are they good?

What's the preferred motherboard?

LePaul · « **Reply #10 on:** August 22, 2001, 01:51:00 PM »

Ugh

Well God Love eBay. Found numerous 3dfx 5500s and grabbed an OEM one for $115. Couldve paid less, or more, but the seller has like 20 of them, so $115 seems like the all around average price.

So, part # 1 has been purchased (and may wind up in the P3 550 til the rest of the toys show up!)

Say, is this card real stable for like server use? For the money, I might grab a 2nd for our nearly-complete webserver so we arent using cheapy Trident AGP cards

Looking forward to seeing FSAA, can you elaborate on the FPS this will give me under my current config (p3 550, 256mb etc)

Thanks!

[ 08-22-2001: Message edited by: LePaul ]

Eagler · « **Reply #11 on:** August 22, 2001, 02:14:00 PM »

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Originally posted by LePaul:
Hey Lephturn, Bloom...I was hoping you guys would stick your heads in here

You've put my heart at ease about Windows 2k, now I just need to find a good price on it and run with it. With ram what it is right now, there's no excuse not to buy a gig of ram and fill the dimm banks. And, Nt/2k will surely use that RAM much more efficiently than 98 could.

Video is still a toss up, I can't find the 5500's (dual cpu?) cards anywhere. I like 3DFX stuff...quite simply, it works well with anything!

I'll check that Saitek site out. Refurb set for $100ish? Wholly....but are they good?

What's the preferred motherboard?

reconditoned X36 combo is $40 here: http://store.yahoo.com/saitekusa/recprod.html
Ripsnort just got one and it was brand new!

the ch pro peds are about $100. www.buy.com for those

pricewatch.com has the voodoo 5500 listed for just over $100, so it sounds like you did well there

wait til September on the processors (and mb), AMD just cut prices and intel to follow in next couple of days..
gl

-lynx- · « **Reply #12 on:** August 23, 2001, 08:37:00 AM »

Can someone point me into a direction of SP3 beta download? Thank you kindly

bloom25 · « **Reply #13 on:** August 23, 2001, 06:07:00 PM »

Only the registered beta testers can get it lynx. Try looking at www.ntcompatible.com on the news archives to see how to sign up.

The fix list is long, but all the fixes are for very minor issues that are pretty much related to specific hardware and don't mean much to most of us.