Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Greebo on July 20, 2010, 06:14:08 AM
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I'm thinking of upgrading my PC. Currently it is running Win XP, has a E6600 CPU O/C'd to 3ghz, a Asus P5W64-WS M/B, 2GB RAM, a GTX 260 video card and a RAID 0 HDD setup. This runs AH at 60FPS but can occasionally freeze up for a few secs, probably due to resource issues. Also it can be sluggish when working with some really big graphics files, particularly some of the files associated with the AH terrain editor.
So mainly I would like more memory, while faster HDD performance would be nice too. My thoughts are to get 4GB more RAM and an SSD drive of roughly 150GB. Also Windows 7, which is really required to make SSDs and that amount of memory work.
I was wondering if there was any brands of SSDs that you guys would recommend/avoid? I know to get something that supports the trim command in Win 7.
Also are there any problems about setting up the SSD as a partition in Win XP, installing Win 7 there and running a dual boot set up, at least to start with? It would be nice to have the security of having my old set up there in case anything went wrong with the installation. I would be prepared to format everything and start from scratch if that was better though.
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I would not put money into anything SSD. Your money is better spent on other things like a faster processor or faster memory. I would just move to an E8600 CPU and turn up the RAM to two DIMMs of 2 GB memory. I think if you move up to 6 GB from where you are at you will run into stability issues (and be forced to run your RAM at 667 instead of 800 as one example). Could use some more details on your current hardware actually (memory specifics).
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Win7 64bit...increase RAM to 4GB or 8GB (6 may cause issues with dual channel on your mobo)...your motherboard won't handle a quad core cpu so you're stuck with dual cores, take Chalenge's advice on the CPU upgrade...you probably could buy another video card and run SLI to get some graphics benefit on the graphics performance.
Your raid configuration may be causing your minor blips, especially if you're not running 2 exact same drives, what stripe size are you running? Have you checked to see if Raid 5 would offer a bit better performance on that motherboard? Just asking because Raid0 doesn't offer enough failure recovery for my tastes.
Running SSD will improve speed on some tasks, but unless you're making a living with that computer or transferring 1GB+ files across drives, you won't see the difference. A couple of extra seconds on boot time is not worth the extra cost, at least not in my book.
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I wouldnt run SLI on this board.
The reason I suggested 4 GB of memory is you can get 2x 2 GB and run 800 Mhz on two slots. Pushing four slots is going to run less stable and cause you to drop the timings to 667 Mhz. If you choose to run a 64 bit OS then maybe you want to run at 667 but I dont think (from what you have said) that a 64 bit OS is going to do anything for you.
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Chalenge, that board will run 800Mhz native, not sure about loss of stability but you're probably right about the speed dropping. I've seen a couple of people claiming to run 8GB at 800Mhz with a Q9550 cpu. Don't know how true that is since the mobo specs only show Core 2 Duo compatibility.
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The auto configuration of the memory will default to 667 with four DIMMs populated. You can force it to 800 but the system will crash without any common cause (except it really is common). The power side on those boards and the bios together are not designed to support 8 GB at 800. Nor will the system support Q9550 (although I read where it did work for some people). This MB ran into severe problems for some customers and I am sure cost ASUS a lot of fans.
UPDATE... after further review of details concerning this MB I would not suggest getting an E8600. You are better off getting a newer MB.
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I run 4x1Gb Kingston HyperX at 800 on my eVGA 780i without issue. It did default to 800 @ 5-5-5-15 @ 1.85V but I just manually changed it to 800 @ 4-4-4-12 @ 2V (mfg spec) and it booted right up.
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Right and with that board it works fine. The Asus board Greebo has is not going to be useful above an E8400 and 2 DIMMs of 2 GB (800 Mhz) and even SLI will not give much benefit if any.
Concerning SLI just ask yourself if a single 240 at x16 is as good as two of them working at x8 (which is the same as one at x8 + 10%). I think not.
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Thanks for all the feedback guys. My main concern was to increase the memory as Paint Shop Pro gets an out of memory error when working with the very large files used with the TE now. 4GB would still be be a useful improvement I guess. The only thing that's put me off doing it is having to reinstall everything after changing to Win 7, I'd rather be using my PC than upgrading it. So I figured if I'm going to have to do that I might as well get a new HDD. These WD 250Gb drives are working OK, but they are three years old and its best not to use them for too long. An SSD seemed like a useful way of getting more speed, as the HDD is the slowest memory in the system. I'm pretty happy with the CPU and video performance, although if the extra memory or Win 7 video driver didn't cure the AH freezes I was going to try a new card later.
I wasn't aware this MB had so many problems with memory though, perhaps that's what causing my AH freezes. I did consider upgrading the whole PC but I don't really run any software that takes advantage of more than two cores at the moment. Skuzzy reckons AH prefers extra Ghz to extra cores and the copy of Paint Shop Pro I use is about 10 years old so won't benefit either. OTOH I have toyed with the idea of getting some 3D modelling software to play with, so that might benefit. Assuming I was to change the MB, CPU and get 6 GB or more of RAM, what do you think would be a good choice of parts? Perhaps not leading edge, but a useful upgrade in terms of performance over what I have now and also a good "bang for the buck".
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Without knowing specific details about your system its hard to say where the freezes are coming from but its commonly a problem between Sound Blaster cards and Nvidia chipsets made worse (usually) by an SLI system (actually it gets much worse with random reboots and/or crashes). I would like to see your DXdiag report of course.
For an upgrade all you need is an i5 system unless you really need a Quad Core for 3D modelling. I dont really think it will be of much use to you though unless you are using very large models (in the 1-2 GB range) which should not be the case. An i5 3.33 Ghz CPU (LGA 1156) currently runs in the $200-230 range (US). I would stick to EVGA brand because of their warranty (and their boards are fantastic) and a really sweet board is the P55 SLI for less than $200. If you are thinking about moving over to an Ati graphics card you might consider getting another board because this one is not any good for Crossfire. It does support DDR3 2600 memory however you expressed an interest in 6 GB of memory and LGA 1156 is a dual channel rather than a tri channel system. This memory is super fast but its also super expensive to the point that 4 GB is going to cost over $300 (even though the board does support up to 16 GB of memory I doubt you would ever buy 4 GB DIMMs for it).
I dont think the RAID is actually helping you out much. Probably newer WD drives or more reliable network storage types would make you happier (and last longer).
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I was gonna tell Chalenge that's not much "bang for the buck" but, the alternative would have only saved you ~$100 after researching it fully, and the warranty would be the same on the mobo.
You can get an i-5 3.2Ghz for $180, EVGA 123-CD-E635-KR mobo for $160, and 4GB of Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 for $136...total $476.00
Triple channel memory isn't necessary for what you're doing.
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Actually it can get a lot worse. For real world modelling apps that reach into the 24 GB memory range and models that exceed 10 GB in size the gaming video cards are useless. My CADD system has two $5000 video cards in it just for starters but almost as bad the MB/CPU/RAM totaled more than $3000 new. The savings comes from productivity which immediately goes up due to not having to fight the system crashes out of memory errors and screen freezes that make AH hesitations look like a high speed film in comparison. ROI has already hit 100:1 so the wife is happy.
I dont figure Greebo needs all that.
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I was gonna tell Chalenge that's not much "bang for the buck" but, the alternative would have only saved you ~$100 after researching it fully, and the warranty would be the same on the mobo.
You can get an i-5 3.2Ghz for $180, EVGA 123-CD-E635-KR mobo for $160, and 4GB of Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 for $136...total $476.00
Triple channel memory isn't necessary for what you're doing.
You realize he's paying a bit more than us, as he's in England.
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more RAM and Win 7 should sort your problems with larger graphics files. dont see why 6GB total should be a problem - the matched pairs are on different channels right? (dont have service guide for that mobo.) I wouldnt bother with SSD unless you really want one.
As for AH freezes, you can probably stop those without upgrading anything.
* First suspect is always software/services. run FSAutostart and kill eveything you dont need before running AH. XP should get down to 20 processes at most.
* next make sure power and cooling isnt a problem. get something to monitor voltages, temps and fan speeds. I use Everest and Riva Tuner combo to get nice graphs of everything. then run a soak test - ATiTool is good for working the GPU, I run the Everest CPU System Stability test at the same time for an hour and make sure nothing glitches. look for CPU/GPU overheating and Voltage drops.
* next check your disks - seconds AH freeze sounds like disk access to me. check SMART status is all ok, do a disk cleanup, do a chkdsk, defrag it/them.
* Onboard RAID is where I'd look next. personally I only ever run RAID with a (battery backed) hardware controller, your RAID (afaik) doesnt have its own APU so its using your CPU to manage the RAID array. not sure how well thats implemented in windows but Ive seen it glitch under Linux so I can only guess ...
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more RAM and Win 7 should sort your problems with larger graphics files. dont see why 6GB total should be a problem - the matched pairs are on different channels right? (dont have service guide for that mobo.) I wouldnt bother with SSD unless you really want one.
As for AH freezes, you can probably stop those without upgrading anything.
* First suspect is always software/services. run FSAutostart and kill eveything you dont need before running AH. XP should get down to 20 processes at most.
* next make sure power and cooling isnt a problem. get something to monitor voltages, temps and fan speeds. I use Everest and Riva Tuner combo to get nice graphs of everything. then run a soak test - ATiTool is good for working the GPU, I run the Everest CPU System Stability test at the same time for an hour and make sure nothing glitches. look for CPU/GPU overheating and Voltage drops.
* next check your disks - seconds AH freeze sounds like disk access to me. check SMART status is all ok, do a disk cleanup, do a chkdsk, defrag it/them.
* Onboard RAID is where I'd look next. personally I only ever run RAID with a (battery backed) hardware controller, your RAID (afaik) doesnt have its own APU so its using your CPU to manage the RAID array. not sure how well thats implemented in windows but Ive seen it glitch under Linux so I can only guess ...
Greebo, the E6600 is an excellent chip. Just add 2GB more RAM and go to 64 bit OS.
Excellent post RT.
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Thanks for the suggestions, I have already tried some of those while mucking about trying to find the cause of the lockups. The PSU has IIRC 700W and there is plenty of cooling, temps are fine. I'll check up on voltages and HDD though. I run FS Autostart to disable services already.
The lockups are rare enough (about once every couple of weeks) that's it not a major issue, particularly as they almost always happen right after I log in to an arena. After the lockup the game's textures are swapped about randomly but alt tabbing out and in restores the textures. Skuzzy suggested disabling shadows which I think may have helped but not has completely eliminated the problem. If anyone can suggest a fix though, I'd be grateful. Here's a link to my dxdiag output: dxdiag (http://www.gfg06.dial.pipex.com/files/DxDiag.txt)
The main reason for upgrading is not the lockups but to get some extra memory, although a CPU boost would be nice as well. I've very roughly totted up the two upgrade options. It works out about £300-£350 more to go the I5/motherboard/4MB RAM route than the E6600/4MB RAM option. There's not a big price difference between the dearest quad and dual core I5s, but the duals are clocked higher. Apparently both can be O/C'd well above 3 ghz with better than stock cooling though.
I'm leaning towards the I5 option simply because upgrading the current setup seems a bit of a dead end and I'd probably have to do it again in a year or two. 4GB RAM is its practical limit due to the motherboard's RAM issues and I'd guess new CPU upgrades for it are not likely to appear. The I5 option would let me go to 8 GB RAM later on if needed and would be more likely to have better CPUs released later on.
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I am surprised you are not seeing freeze ups or hesitations more frequently with the X-Fi. In fact Im surprised you arent mentioning random reboots or complete system lock ups (now your calling them lockups it doesnt force you to reboot does it?). Otherwise you caught on to precisely why I suggested the items that I did. Should you end up going that route I think you will find the system works much better for your image work.
I might also suggest the latest version of Paintshop Photo Pro X3. They keep sending me upgrade suggestions but I just bought the program back in March for FSX skins (version X2). Right now they have it set at 30% off which means $70 (US). The upgrade is $10 less but I dont think your current version is included as upgradeable. I run it along side an old copy (version 4.12) that does not cause any problems with my system but that loads 1000% faster and that comes in very handy for changing file types. Im pretty sure you will have everything you need for AH skins.
You might be able to continue using what you have now by eliminating the SB card and getting the HT Omega Striker (doesnt have the latency build up issue of the SB) and upgrading Paintshop. Of course that also increases your upgrade cost should you decide to go with the i5 also.
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Poor choice of words on my part, it's not a lockup but a freeze in the program for about 5 secs or so. Other than this the system behaves itself no problem. I've just had a quick search on the web but there doesn't seem to be a UK stockist for the Striker. Some places are selling the Asus Xonar, otherwise it seems to be nothing but Creative. IIRC there's an old SB Audigy 2 lying in a box somewhere around here, would that be any better than the X-Fi?
I've looked at newer versions of PSP and did a month's trial a year or two back but it would have taken a while to get confident with the new version's layout. They seem to have developed it mainly for editing digital photos and as I couldn't see anything there which would help me create skins I decided not to bother. I may have another look though.
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You might write to sales@htomega.com and see if there is a local distributor.
When I bought the Paintshop program the sales department made available three webinars which got me up to speed quickly. A few of the newer tools like background erase and layers I cant live without now that I have them. I think you can see how layers would come in handy for changing paint colors without affecting panel lines and rivets and so on. I never had that before. Now I have Photoshop also and for professional work it comes in very handy too but its too much money unless you must have it.
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I've done a bit of web research and the freezing/texture swap issue seems to a problem with the video card. Came across several threads in Nvidia and O/Cing forums with GTX 260 owners having similar problems. Apparently the only cure is to gradually reduce the card's GPU and memory clock speeds until the problem goes away. Changing drivers does not seem to help (already tried that anyway). Also its not directly related to heat, the card's not getting anywhere near hot enough for that to be an issue. I'll see if I can get a stable clock setting that lets me run AH at 60fps. Next time I'll go ATI I think. BTW I just had the same freeze/texture swap thing happen in Civ 4, so its definitely not an AH related issue.
I really don't like the latest PSP, seems bloated and slow and has some sort of spyware copy protection too. Trouble is PSP 7 apparently has issues with Windows 7. It works for some people and not for others, or at least not properly. I'm wondering if getting Win 7 Professional and using its XP emulator might help here.
I emailed HT Omega, they don't sell the Striker over here but I can order it through them and get it shipped to the UK. I'll see if I can cure the issue with the video card settings first though.
I'm going to do some more research before making a decision on upgrading, but thanks again for everyone's help in this thread.
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I am surprised you are not seeing freeze ups or hesitations more frequently with the X-Fi. In fact Im surprised you arent mentioning random reboots or complete system lock ups (now your calling them lockups it doesnt force you to reboot does it?).
While I understand from your numerous threads that you don't like Creative sound cards I and many many other people have X-fi's that don't create any problems whatsoever. There was a well documented driver issue with the release of Vista but even that only seemed to affect systems sporadicallly.
As to the bloatware, I agree they include a lot of useless stuff but you do have the option to selectively instal only what you want (i.e. drivers only).
I've never had freeze ups or hesitations, random reboots or complete system lock ups as you seem to imply all X-fi users will experience. <edited>
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While I understand from your numerous threads that you don't like Creative sound cards I and many many other people have X-fi's that don't create any problems whatsoever. There was a well documented driver issue with the release of Vista but even that only seemed to affect systems sporadicallly.
As to the bloatware, I agree they include a lot of useless stuff but you do have the option to selectively instal only what you want (i.e. drivers only).
I've never had freeze ups or hesitations, random reboots or complete system lock ups as you seem to imply all X-fi users will experience. <edited>
Creative was caught pushing 16 bit sound cards there were actually 16 bit cards and thats what started things rolling for me (I had one of them). Its also true that Sound Blaster cards are full of latency. Whether you like it or not doesnt really matter because there are so many systems on the market and you almost never encounter the same mix of devices and programs. For instance the Sound Blaster Live! cards which are very popular because they are affordable also come with up to 46ms of latency which is on the very edge of acceptability. When Audigy was released it promised 0 latency which turned out to be more like 4-7ms of latency. Then video cards started to carry audio capabilities and system chipsets started to 'try' to force their GPU chips as the 'goto' cards on their motherboards. Sound Blaster was caught in the mix as Nvidia chipsets on SLI systems were (and are) preventing Crossfire from working and inadvertently causing increased latency buildup from XFi chips. Unless you shutdown your system every night you will eventually experience a complete system lockup IF you have a XFi along with an Nvidia chipset and GPUs in SLI. You dont really need to have SLI either but the lockups occur more frequently if you do.
The fact remains that even though Sound Blaster cards are as popular as they are you can do much better for the same price.
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I dont think I mean 16 bit were 16 bit. Creative was calling 16 bit cards 24 bit cards. Thats what I meant.
When I started to play with VOX tweaking and special Vox F/X I learned right away that most of the 44.1 or 48Khz cards are not up to processing F/X. I even asked one of our audio gurus about it and he suggested what I was experiencing was impedance problems but it turned out it was sampling rate conversions (SRC) that were going on behind the scenes. Both Live! and Audigy (also Audigy2) are guilty of SRC both pre and post processing which is what makes the latency issues worse than they should be (this information comes from Martin Walker at www.soundonsound.com). For gaming we dont really need very good sound cards but they have to be great at what they are (supposedly) designed to do (gaming) and for the purposes of vox they MUST be low latency.
This is the way audio processing works on a card designed to offload processing to the cpu as it was explained to me (and sound gurus forgive me if I get this off a bit): If you are flying and chatting with a few friends and you are all in the same plane then the actual sounds loaded in the background are fairly easy to work out and your cpu is having an easy time of it. Then you come into a fight and suddenly there are a lot more friendlies and enemies too and the audio files for all the various planes are loaded and processed through the cpu BUT the cpu was only using a small portion of its capability for audio before and now the requirements are three times higher. So what happens is every thing hits the mud and slows down and you see it as if the computer hit a brick wall. Your screne freezes and audio pauses and then even when it comes back its slow and jerky and then finally it smooths out when the cpu has enough room made available for the audio. Nasty!
So you want a card that can handle all of its own processing without requiring anything out of the CPU. I think there are only two SBs even capable of that and even they use too much CPU. If you are doing any type of vox F/X you want to be able to get to at least 24 bit and 96 Khz. If you dont care about vox F/X you can get away with 24 bit and 44.1 Khz. 16 bit introduces far too much noise and increases the likelihood of other problems (noise will destroy your speakers for one thing). The human voice is like a musical instrument in a lot of ways and so you should allow as much sampling as possible and from what I have learned in playing with F/X you wan to use as much as your card and your system can handle. So even though I point to the Striker as a great card (it is) I intend to use the Claro Halo XT for F/X. The reason is that it can reach 192 Khz which with the new Miles system should allow great vox F/X (lets see).
The problems I have with Creative still hold though. They advertised falsely on at least three of their cards. Their cards are noisy and introduce too much latency (latency is never a good thing but terrible in combat gaming) and they use far too much CPU.
Now having said that you should also know that probably the reason you dont have problems with Sound Blaster is that you dont have SLI or an Nvidia chipset and you probably have a fast enough system that when the smaller problems pop up they are not as obvious. Well I should also tell you that you must have a faster system in order to make use of higher sampling rates or you will run into the same problems.
Now Skuzzy can correct anything I got wrong but dont waste money on this junk anyway... times are tough and the price of one card could feed you for a month.
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Nope. I've got an eVGA (NVidia) 780i motherboard and I did run in SLI for a week or two with no problems. I've also, in addition to your first laudry list, never experienced audio latency. In-game vox causes no issues.
I also forgot to mention that while I do usually shut down each night there have been times I've let my computer run for several weeks at a time. Still no problems. Shouldn't it have exploded and burnt the house down or something?
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Now your being ridiculous. Which X-Fi are you using? I have used the X-Fi XtremeGamer 5.1 which was and is so latency laden it doesnt really deserve to be called a sound card (its that bad) and the X-Fi Xtreme Audio 7.1 which was just a little better. While not as 'Xtreme'-ly burdened with latency the X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 (the newest version) is still burdened with latency buildup and more noise than a house full of rugrats.
Just do a search for "X-Fi (your choice of XtremeNames) problems" or ".... noise" or "... static" sometime.
Dont look too deep or you might find noise at the bottom of that rabbit hole. :aok
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Bottom line which sound card is great while reasonably priced?.
Semp
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Bottom line which sound card is great while reasonably priced?.
Semp
+1
I'd like to know too.
I'm a little frustrated at how difficult it's been trying to get everything installed correctly (drivers) for the X-FI that came bundled with my mobo. The next problem I have with it, it gets binned.
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I went through three different SBs before I came upon one that seemed to work. Each time I spent more money and each time I was dissappointed. Finally I had spent the $100 on a SB X-Fi XtremeGamer 7.1 and things were looking really good until it started sounding static-burdened and then mysteriously stopped working. After a reboot it was working again but static was always present and AH would occasionally lockup.
I read reviews all over the net and tossed the SBs and bought a bGears bEnspirer that worked fine for a year and then expired six days before the warranty. So I had newegg replace it with a Striker (HT Omega) which means I lost about $35 on the deal but its still less than the X-Fi I last had and the bGears card worked for a year also.
The only thing you should take into consideration is that the Striker is limited to 44.1Khz or 48Khz. Thats just fine for AH (perfect actually) but it will not be adequate for F/X like vocoder mixing with instrument inputs or things like that (not sure what you use audio for besides games). The Striker runs for $85 ($75 right now with free shipping) and I have never known it to have a problem with any system (I build about a dozen systems a year which isnt a whole lot really).
If you want even more audio its going to get more expensive ($200-1000).
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I've heard nothing but good things about ASUS Sound Cards and some are less than $100.
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UPDATE: Striker is limited to 44.1Khz and 48Khz in Vista or Windows 7 but 96Khz under XP.
ASUS Xonar can do 192Khz except the DS 7.1 is also a noisy card (107db SNR) versus the Xonar D2 (118db SNR) but unfortunately there isnt a good Win 7 driver yet (some people report it wont work at all with Win 7). Not sure about the D1 although at one point I was considering buying one.
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IIRC Asus uses the same chipset as the X-Fi's. BTW, mine is the Xtreme Gamer Fatality Pro version. I think it was about $140 when I got it.
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Its possible there is one that is I guess but all that I have seen are using CMedia or Cirrus Logic.
EDIT: BaldEagl you have one of the better X-Fi chips that is far beyond the sub $100 cards. Your 3D positional capabilities are near the top of SBs capabilities and beyond even the Striker that I use. The one persistent problem with the X-Fi series (that you have not experienced yet) is the sudden appearance of failures. I mean like the card stops working and you have to reboot which works for a while and then there is total failure. I hope it never happens to you.
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UPDATE: Striker is limited to 44.1Khz and 48Khz in Vista or Windows 7 but 96Khz under XP.
ASUS Xonar can do 192Khz except the DS 7.1 is also a noisy card (107db SNR) versus the Xonar D2 (118db SNR) but unfortunately there isnt a good Win 7 driver yet (some people report it wont work at all with Win 7). Not sure about the D1 although at one point I was considering buying one.
Heheh anything over 100db SNR is excellent since the best of amplifiers barely reach that. If you manage to hear any noise at 100db SNR your input levels are grossly misadjusted.
Signal-to-noise ratio
>85 dB, wideband, unweighted, at maximum gain, referred to 2 V RMS
http://www.krellonline.com/s300i.html
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Krell, Lexicon and Bryston.........yummy. :rock
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Heheh anything over 100db SNR is excellent since the best of amplifiers barely reach that. If you manage to hear any noise at 100db SNR your input levels are grossly misadjusted.
Except that these cards nevertheless make a lot of noise. Scratching interfering irritating noise that can and will destroy good speakers. In this case I believe they must have fudged the SNR numbers.
No thanks.
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I'm thinking of upgrading my PC. Currently it is running Win XP, has a E6600 CPU O/C'd to 3ghz, a Asus P5W64-WS M/B, 2GB RAM, a GTX 260 video card and a RAID 0 HDD setup. This runs AH at 60FPS but can occasionally freeze up for a few secs, probably due to resource issues. Also it can be sluggish when working with some really big graphics files, particularly some of the files associated with the AH terrain editor.
So mainly I would like more memory, while faster HDD performance would be nice too. My thoughts are to get 4GB more RAM and an SSD drive of roughly 150GB. Also Windows 7, which is really required to make SSDs and that amount of memory work.
I was wondering if there was any brands of SSDs that you guys would recommend/avoid? I know to get something that supports the trim command in Win 7.
Also are there any problems about setting up the SSD as a partition in Win XP, installing Win 7 there and running a dual boot set up, at least to start with? It would be nice to have the security of having my old set up there in case anything went wrong with the installation. I would be prepared to format everything and start from scratch if that was better though.
I'm running something similar..
E6850(not over clocked)
Abit IP35 Pro Off Limits motherboard
EVGA GTX 260 (core 216)
2 gigs of Crucial Ballistix PC2 8500
I have a 120 mhz 22in LCD and it will play the game at 120 fps constantly..
All graphic options are at max except I only have shadows set at 1024 (smoothing and shadows on other players is also turned on).. Anything above that kills the framerate..
Game resolution is set at 1680x1050..
You should be getting something similar.. E6600 not all that different from an E6850, and you're overclocked as well(so you're actually faster)..
Should be getting about the same as I'm getting, no??
Either way, The E8400 or even E8600 and some more RAM should put you where you want to be.. Good luck!
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Not an expert but 2 more gigs of ram might help too.
Semp
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Either way, The E8400 or even E8600 and some more RAM should put you where you want to be.. Good luck!
Unless they released a new BIOS in the last few days the E8600 wont work (this from the ASUS forums).
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Unless they released a new BIOS in the last few days the E8600 wont work (this from the ASUS forums).
Copy that.. I have the same issue with my Ip35 Pro..
But the E6850 is doing a great job.. If I need more, I'll over clock both processor and
videocard.. When that doesn't work, time for i7 or whatever is the latest and greatest..
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My monitor only does 60 fps and the game runs at that even maxed out at 1920 by 1200. Since I turned down the clock rates on the video card I haven't had any more freezes, but I won't know for sure if its fixed for a few weeks.
The reason for the upgrade wasn't AH fps but getting some more memory for handling big graphics files. I could just stick 4 GB in to this PC but Win XP can only handle 3 GB max and that seems a bit of a waste. Going for Win 7 means reinstalling everything and if I'm going to go through all that hassle I figure I might as well upgrade the PC at the same time.
The other problem is the program I use for graphics work like skinning is Paint Shop Pro v7. This is not fully compatible with Win 7 and I don't like the newer versions. It may work better with the Win XP emulation mode in Win 7 Professional but as of yet I've not found anyone who has tried so I have no guarantee of that.
So right now I'm in two minds, I either get 4 GB RAM for this PC and live with XP wasting 1 GB of it or I go the i5/Win 7 route and hope PSP works OK. I've pretty much ruled out getting a new CPU, more memory and Win 7 for this MB though, seems like a bit of a dead end as this MB is not reliable with more than 4 GB RAM anyway.
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I have Paint Shop Pro 7 too and I used to run into that memory error occasionally. There was a work-around for that but for the life of me I can't remember what it was. Have you tried Googling it? I've got it installed on all three of my machines and even my ancient laptop (PIII 650 w/256 Mb RAM) doesn't encounter that problem. I really don't think it's a hardware issue.
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Greebo,
consider a dual boot system,add the extra ram,and a 64bit OS on top of your xp.
Then the noncompatible programs can be run on xp and the ram will only be used as per XP but then run AH on the 64bit OS and have all the ram available to be used.
:salute
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Thanks for the suggestions guys.
At the time I didn't find any ideas on the web about the memory error other than increasing the swap file size, which didn't help in my case. I suspect the program is timing out trying to load this file, which IIRC is 16384 by 16384 pixels in size. With more than a couple of layers in the file it just crashes. On a small terrain it can be got round by cropping the file, working on the centre portion, saving as a single layer and then adding the cropped area back on. This won't work on a large terrain though.
Running a dual boot doesn't really help as XP still won't see more than 3 GB and I don't need the extra RAM for anything other than PSP. I'm guessing the same thing applies to Windows XP emulation mode under Win 7 as well. If 64 bit Win 7 is emulating 32 bit XP it will be emulating its memory issues too, so Win 7 will only help if I can get PSP to work under it natively. Some people have managed to make this work OK, others had issues, some can't get it to work at all. Most of the latter have been running the 64 bit version.
AH and everything else I use runs fine on this current system. Slowing down the video card has (so far) stopped the freezes. If they are still gone in a couple of weeks I will probably just get 4MB of RAM for this system and keep XP since there is no guarantee I'd be able to get PSP to work in Win 7.