Pickin up a new PC in 7 hours.....need advise

[Swoop]

Bloody Nora, the subject should read Advice, not Advise.......anyway:


Here's the deal, I'm pickin up a new PC later today and I need to know if anyone knows of any issues (driver/whatever) with any of this kit:


AMD Thunderbird 900Mhz
Asus A7V M/B
256Mb (133) RAM
40Gb maxtor 7,200rpm HDD
Asus V7700 GeForce 2 GTS card
Soundblaster Live! value.

I saw a comment from someone on another board about the V7700 card......that it was completely crap and had major driver problems......can anyone confirm/deny?

Swoop


[This message has been edited by Swoop (edited 01-26-2001).]

[hitech]

Odds are it's your soundblaster live IRQ confilict with your gforce.

HiTech

[TheWobble]

swap vid card with voodoo5 so ya dont have to depend on some majic drivers from Nvidia to fix all the conflicts that card has with certin boards, games..etc, plus with 900mhz the little FR boost they GeFarce supposidly gives ya wont matter, plus teh V5 fsaa looks better.

I have an Athlon 800 with basically the same setup yer gettin and i bought BOTH a geforece 2 and a v5 5500 to see which I wanted, the ge-force gave 6fps more at 1024x768 2xfsaa but the diff was 55fps compared to 61, plus the V5's fsaa looks much nicer.  
Bottom line is that the Ge-force wont give you a noticable FR advantage given yer processor speed (you will be way above what you need no matter what) but it will give you a noticable difference in FSAA and thats not a good one.  im not biased to either, i have tired both and used both, im givin it to ya straight.

also unless you intend to run most stuff at 1600x1200 or higher it wont do ANY good.  especally if yer monitor wont go that high


Monitor specs??

[Swoop]

ta both of ya.

Surely the IRQ of the SB Live can be configured?  keep in mind I havtn even picked the thing up yet.....there are no problems to fix yet, I just need to know about any known issues.

The monitor is a LG Studioworks 775N (rebadged Goldstar) and goes to 1280X1024@60HZ.

Getting a V5 isnt an option, Wobble may not be biased against em but I am......dont ask me why, take faaaar too long to explain.

Besides, presently I'm running a V550 TNT2 which gives me 4(!) frames per sec when sat on the deck of a CV........

Swoop

[Swoop]

NB:  I already upgraded the video card choice cos I found out the Creative GeForce 2 MX card (lots cheaper) doesnt have a fan on the card.......call me daft but I didnt like that idea much.

 

Swoop

[TheWobble]

swoop, the geforce will not give you ANY not a bit of performance over the v5 at that res, however the v5 WILL give you an advantage because of its fsaa, trust me you get a geforce2 and then see a v5 5500's FSAA compared to it You will cry.  I cannot stress enough the difference, some people say you will notice unless you REALLY look hard, that is BS its apparent immediatly.  The V5 is for sure the best ESPECALLY given your resolution restriction.  

[prz]

I like the GTS, no problems with athlon, performance rocks (got Leadtek with a huge fan).

2 observations:

IRQ conflicts are deadly important, best disable in BIOS the automatic IRQ assignment, force unique IRQ per slot and space the cards properly (at least on the KT7RAID every two slots get same IRQ). Get video card lowest possible IRQ (some PC internals, lower interrupts get higher prio but that's nit-picking).

I threw out Soundblaster, too many issues, running MX400 Monster now, much better. Just don't try to use the gameport for a decent ACM setup. I ended up going KT7RAID and not Asus board since only Abit offers an ISA slot which I use for the gamecard and I like BIOS overclocking Abit has.

I found 1280x1024 is best for AH, 1600 fonts too small & performance drops. 1024 and you don't see flaks on the ground. I found FAA to be irrelevant in gameplay

[TheWobble]

"found FAA to be irrelevant in gameplay"

Exactly my point, Ge-Force fsaa is not very good.

[Midnight]

what is FAA?

------------------
"Wing up, Get kills, Be happy"

Midnight
13th TAS

"I see you have made your decision. Now let's see you enforce it." -Brandon Lee (The Crow)

[bloom25]

My system is a: Asus A7v Mb with 700 Mhz Tbird.  (Overclocked.)

The Asus board is top notch.  There ARE however, some issues with the SB Live Value card with this MB.  The procedure to get them to work on this MB is:  Put the sound card in PCI slot 3.  Go into the bios and reserve IRQ 5 for Legacy device.  If you don't do this, you will have major headaches.  (The procedure is detailed in Asus monthly technical post which you can find off their main page.)  There was also another issue related to Sb Live Value cards, but only the first revision.  Somehow Creative made the PCI connector just a tiny bit too short.  This caused some odd problems on many systems.

I've built 2 systems with the Asus v7700 card, and I know someone else who has used this card on an A7v.  It works perfectly fine.  

WARNING:  YOU CANNOT USE A V5 IN AN ASUS A7V WITHOUT MODIFYING THE IDE RIBBON CABLES IF YOU PLAN ON USING THE EXTRA IDE CONNECTORS PROVIDED FOR THE ONBOARD PROMISE CONTROLLER.  The only way to get around this is to use a razor blade and trim some of the plastic off the top of the end of the cable's plug.  The V5 is so long it almost completely covers both of the extra IDE connectors on the MB.

Hope I've helped you!  



------------------
bloom25
THUNDERBIRDS

[Swoop]

GRRRRRRRRRRRGUIWEHGUIE2RWUIPT YER2IPTG 2EIPYUG


I am shreckin furious.


I go to pick this thing up.......the shop is full and there's 3 sales staff serving 1 customer at a time.

45 minutes later (with a cab waiting outside) I finally get to the desk.......this dutch avacado faffs around for another 10 minutes and finally finds my new PC......I give him my VISA card and off he goes......another 10 minutes later he comes back and says the card reader wont read my card.   AAAAAAAAARGH.   So I say "ok, plan B, so do it manually" to which he replies, "no, is not possible".    Another 10 minute argument about manual card readers later....(for some unknown reason he started muttering about mastercard being cheaper at one point)....he suggests going to a bank......so I point out that a) it's saturday and b) it's now 5:15pm.  Plan C, go to a cashpoint.......for NLG3000? (bout $1000ish) yeah right.....especially when dutch cashpoints only give ya NLG750 a day.  Plan D, give up, go home, roll a joint, shoot down Fscott.


And the moral of this story is, if you wanna stay in a good mood, dont go near Mycom in Amsterdam.

Swoop

P.S.  anyone know a PC retailer in the Netherlands who take VISA for orders by phone?

P.P.S.  I'm slightly calmer now than when I started this post.  

[This message has been edited by Swoop (edited 01-27-2001).]

[whels1]

 

Originally posted by TheWobble:
swap vid card with voodoo5 so ya dont have to depend on some majic drivers from Nvidia to fix all the conflicts that card has with certin boards, games..etc, plus with 900mhz the little FR boost they GeFarce supposidly gives ya wont matter, plus teh V5 fsaa looks better.

I have an Athlon 800 with basically the same setup yer gettin and i bought BOTH a geforece 2 and a v5 5500 to see which I wanted, the ge-force gave 6fps more at 1024x768 2xfsaa but the diff was 55fps compared to 61, plus the V5's fsaa looks much nicer.  
Bottom line is that the Ge-force wont give you a noticable FR advantage given yer processor speed (you will be way above what you need no matter what) but it will give you a noticable difference in FSAA and thats not a good one.  im not biased to either, i have tired both and used both, im givin it to ya straight.

also unless you intend to run most stuff at 1600x1200 or higher it wont do ANY good.  especally if yer monitor wont go that high


Monitor specs??

mmmm 3dfx wont get driver support anymore, so ur better off with a ATI or Nvidia card.

whels

[TheWobble]

"mmmm 3dfx wont get driver support anymore, so ur better off with a ATI or Nvidia card.

whels"


The drivers are already perfect.

[whels1]

 

Originally posted by TheWobble:
"mmmm 3dfx wont get driver support anymore, so ur better off with a ATI or Nvidia card.

whels"


The drivers are already perfect.

lol without continued driver support the card will fall behind quickly. and there are
no drivers that are perfect, just good, and if not supported ur stuck with what ever
bugs, glitchs, and low preformance u have
and never will be improved.

whels

[TheWobble]

   
1024x768x32 2X FSAA  55fps on Athlon 800
dont get much better than this folks

[This message has been edited by TheWobble (edited 01-27-2001).]