Info and forum posts by 'MikeElliot'

RE: Best AGP Graphics Card For Under 80 Quid?

As usual, my replies to the questions "Best ..." is that I don`t know what is best because it is mostly subjective but the Radeon x1600 Pro impressed me a great deal as it was the only sub £80 AGP card I came acroos that plays Call of Duty 2 at an acceptable rate. It supports T&L too and supports Shader Model 3. Your 4x AGP slot shouldn`t reduce performance too much.

RE: Panda Virus Scan - Should I keep it

It definitely is NOT advisable to use two different background virus scanners because deadlock can occur if both are trying to access the same resources. That is NOT to say that you can`t have more than one virus scanner installed but if there is more than one anti virus package installed then only one background scanner should be switched on but by all means perform a complete hard disc scan using each anti virus program installed.

You could have installed Panda without having to uninstall AVG by disabling AVG`s background service. Once installed then either enable Panda`s background scanner or AVG`s but not both.

A similar tenet applies to firewalls and antispyware programs.

RE: Graphics Card For attaching to LCD TV...

OK, as I explained a lot of LCD TVs will upscale an incoming signal to the DVI. So if you sent a 1024 x 768 picture then it will probably display on a resolution of something like 1180 x 800 for example because it is enlarging the picture (thinking it is a 720p input). This means the edges of your Windows desktop goes off screen. This phenomenen known as upscaling can cause lines across text. As you mentioned that the manual for your TV recommends connection to a PC, it looks like the TV has some intelligent way of detecting a PC input, like with LG ones as mentioned earlier. As this seems to be the case then a graphics card with one DVI and one D Sub output will be the best suited for your requirements.

Thanks for the links to the channels. I will probably try them out myself!

RE: Graphics Card For attaching to LCD TV...

Basically an LCD TV with 768 vertical pixels have to display a 720p HD picture at full screen (720p means 720 vertical pixels). In order to do this it has to upscale the picture to fit it full screen. This feature is activated upon a connection to the HDCP DVI or HDCP HDMI socket. Therefore a PC connection to this socket will cause upscaling too resulting in a broken up picture from the PC because the LCD TV thinks it`s an HD signal. I have seen LG monitors accept a PC input and display the picture correctly (although I must admit I don`t know how) and some high end monitors have an option for 1:1 scaling which means it will display the signal it receives without upscaling.

You can buy graphics card with dual d-sub outputs but if both your displays accept DVI then believe me, you will get a much more enhanced picture using a graphics card with dual DVI like the one I mentioned for about £80 (and it is AGP), although I have seen PCI e DVI ones for around £40 (if you are willing to change your motherboard for a small price). If one of your displays supports DVI but the other is D-sub only then there are plenty of cards around that has one DVI and one D-sub output.

Since at least one of your displays accept DVI then there really is no point in getting dual D-sub graphics cards (since their costs are similar to those with dual DVI or those with 1 DVI and 1 D-sub). But if you really must go for dual D-sub it is likely you will need to buy second hand as manufacturers do not make dual VGA cards these days - OR - you could buy 2 cheap VGA cards (one AGP and one PCI) but using an extra PCI slot will take up PCI bandwidth on your PC if you have other PCI cards though.

Just out of curiosity, which HD channels do you receive from your satellite dish and do you need to point your dish in any particular direction?

This item was edited on Thursday, 28th September 2006, 22:50

RE: Graphics Card For attaching to LCD TV...

Ah, it`s unencrypted HD content you are receiving.

I am very impressed that your 37 inch LCD TV (assuming it is a HD Ready one) allows PC connection without upscaling as most HD Ready TVs I have seen do not display a PC`s picture properly, with the exception of certain LG models or the more advanced models that have a 1:1 pixel mapping mode.

You will certainly achieve much better picture by using DVI and if you are connecting both then a graphics card like XFX 6800XT at £80 supports dual DVI. There are also AGP options from Matrox with dual DVI but 3D performance will be poor (although for 2D, you need to ensure the Matrox ones support DX9 and preferably VMR as most media playing software will need DX9 at least).

RE: Virgin Sale starts 28th September - £ 5 boxsets.

Quote:
Makes me laugh when people que outside all night to get bargains like a few boxsets, surely they would be better going to a temp agency and doing a night shift on time and a half, because hardly any people ever end up with any of the "real" bargains.

This is probably the most intelligent comment I have ever seen on these forums!

This item was edited on Thursday, 28th September 2006, 20:09

RE: Graphics Card

All the ATI x1000 and nVidia 7000 range of graphics card supports DirectX9 and VMR overlays so video conferencing is not a problem.

Fitting an internal DVD writer isn`t as troublesome as you may think. It should connect to the IDE channel on your motherboard that is NOT being used by the hard disc and you may not even need to set anything in the BIOS but if you do it is a case of choosing Auto detection for the IDE channel that you have connected the DVD writer to.

You won`t have problems with read/write access on a slower PC. Data transfer uses protocols to ensure that the data is correctly sent and received. It`s bad discs that can cause the problems.

RE: Graphics Card For attaching to LCD TV...

I know there is a DVI connection but you specified LCD TV whereas I now suspect this is a monitor with TV tuner. Is that right? If that is the case then you most certainly can connect DVI and that will give you higher picture quality.

Can you please tell me how you are viewing HD on your DVB-S card and what model of DVB-S card it is? Almost certainly, you will not be able to receive HDCP encoded content - your graphics card doesn`t support it for a start and I very much doubt your DVB-S card supports it too. If you are receiving Sky HD content through your DVB-S card then the reason it is working now is that the signal is not currently HDCP encrypted. The same applies to your DVB-T card too but HD Freeview may not be HDCP encoded anyway.

This item was edited on Thursday, 28th September 2006, 17:40

RE: Graphics Card For attaching to LCD TV...

Most LCD TVs will not handle a DVI connection as the software will upscale the picture (thinking that the incoming signal is a 720p signal). As the TV is likely to have 768 vertical pixels it is likely to upscale a DVI signal and you will receive a messy picture from a PC`s DVI connection. D Sub will be your best bet and has enough bandwidth to carry an HD signal.

Speaking of HD, if your graphics card does not have HDCP then I`m afraid you won`t be able to display a HD picture from your DVB-S card onto your TV. For HD TV to work, all components in the chain must support HDCP. There are some graphics cards available now that do support HDCP but you may still need HDCP decoding in the operating system too (although I`m not totally sure about this).

By the way, are you sure your TV cards support HD. Some say that they are HD compatible but it does not mean they support HD TV. By HD compatible it means that they support a resolution high enough for HD pictures but won`t support HD TV signals.

RE: New PC build - Core 2 Duo

The E6400 runs at a higher clock speed than E6300 - 2.13 Ghz as opposed to 1.86 on the E6300. Both share 2MB L2 shared cache memory. The E6600 provides 4 MB shared cache memory at a higher clock speed and is pound for pound the best value Core 2 Duo processor. The extra cache makes a big difference - it is the component that has the biggest bearing on the processing power. By the way, don`t be deceived by the term "shared" cache memory. It is an innovative feature which gives greater processing power despite the naming which seems to suggest it borrows memory from somewhere else - this is different and means in single core mode, all the cache is used whereas on previous dual cores and current AMD x2 processors, in single core code, the processor can only use half the onboard cache.

The motherboard you are considering purchasing is a 945P chipset based. This does NOT have true DDR2 800 RAM support so if you are buying RAM then it does not make sense in buying DDR2 800 RAM. Furthermore, for overclockers, the 945P does not support core speed adjustments.

A cheap but yet quiet cooler is the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro. This heatsink and fan never ceases to amaze me with its ability to shift air at low speeds and is comparable with a Zalman Cu7700 at twice the price. At full speed it is noisy though but as the Core 2 Duo uses less power than any its predecessors or any current AMD processor you can safely lower the speed to 50% or even less which will be so quiet that you have to put your ear to the case to hear the fan. If you want totally silent then the Scythe Ninja fanless heatsink is an option but at a price. I don`t recommend this for anything but the Core 2 Duo, due to the lack of a fan. The Core 2 Duo is different as it runs a lot cooler due to its efficient power usage.

Antec P150 is a fabulous case. With its inbuilt acoustic insulation, you will easily get away with many "quiet" heatsink/fan but as mentioned above, the Freezer 7 Pro complements this case so effortlessly that it`s as though the 2 were designed for one another.

As for graphics, all the 7000 series nVidia and x1000 series from ATi are DX9 and VMR7/VMR9 capable for video encoding and photo editing. For occassional gaming, the minimum that I have tested which can run Doom3 or Call of Duty 2 at an acceptable speed would be nVidia 7600GS based or Radeon X1600 Pro based graphics. The X1600 Pro probably has the slight edge but the 7600GS is available with a passive heatsink.

PCI Express uses the same transfer protocols as PCI but each PCI e slot has its own direct access to the bus rather than having multiple components sharing the bus as in PCI. This gives PCI e full bandwidth whereas in the old PCI layout, the full bus bandwidth could be taken up by a couple of PCI cards (especially those using Gigabit LAN cards). The PCI e slots are physically different to those of PCI so unfortunately you cannot plug PCI devices into PCI e slots. Most boards that you buy should have standard PCI slots as well as PCI e though so you should not have problems using your mAudio Delta 410.

RE: DVI information needed..

Yes DVI eschews the requirement of a RAMDAC to convert the PC`s digital pictures to an analogue format via D-sub into an analogue monitor. This is further exacerbated by the use of a D Sub input on an LCD monitor as this needs to reconvert the incoming analogue signal back to digital!

Using DVI to DVI means there will be no conversion and hence no signal loss and yes it makes a difference to your viewing. Also with an analogue input to an LCD monitor, the the incoming signal does not map directly to the TFT screen and may appear slightly off screen, requiring manual adjustment (although some screens have automatic adjustment). Using digital signal (via DVI) avoids this problem because the pixels have a 1 to 1 map directly onto the screen display.

RE: Anyone know how to make a screensaver ?

I believe that all you need to do is to compile your own code and rename the .exe to .scr. You may need to allow your code to accept parameters in which case the entry point of the language you are using will have parameters stored in the parameter variables of the function headers, for example in C and C++, the main function has argc and argv parameters which relate to the argument count and the arguments as characters, respectively.

RE: Backing up Hard Drive on my Laptop

Well I don`t know about "best" because that can be subjective but my personal favourite at the moment is Acronis TrueImage 9 which boasts a user friendly interface and supports incremental and differential backups. Norton Ghost 10 is similar but its restore CD is slower and costs more.

Others are:

- Paragon Exact Image which is cheap at £21 but there is no incremental backup support.
- Terabyte Unlimited at about £16 but it is a false economy as extra payment is required for more downloads for backups to work!

Windows 2000 and XP have a simple backup program built in too. It`s not an imaging backup and consequently does not support incremental or differential backups.

I don`t know about any other freeware backup programs because myself nor the company I work for trust them (not that they aren`t any good).

RE: ATI® Radeon® Xpress 200M IGP

It won`t run games like Call of Duty and it manages a whopping 3 frames per second in Doom 3 with anti-aliasing off. That will give you an idea of what you will get with the x300 based graphics, I`m afraid.

RE: Quick Question need Help

It looks like the DVD burner is installed on the same cable as the hard disc. In the BIOS, set the hard disc as the first boot device, set the jumper of the hard disc as master and then set the jumper on the DVD burner as slave.

It could also be possible that upon fitting the DVD device that the hard disc cable has loosened so you can push them in firmly into the sockets.

RE: Spinning and clunking

For such errors switch on S.M.A.R.T. in the BIOS and use HD Tune to diagnose it.

RE: ATI® Radeon® Xpress 200M IGP

The Radeon Xpress 200M is NOT a graphics processor. It is a chipset based on the Xpress 200 but designed for laptops. The graphics processing built into the Northbridge of the chipset is based on an ATI x300 which will not play the latest games and unfortunately provides software T&L under DirectX 9.0c.

Hardware T&L obviously runs faster because the transformations are performed within a dedicated GPU rather than the PC`s CPU. Performing tasks in hardware frees up the CPU to perform other tasks.

In general, if you want graphics performance, then a coarse measurement would be to multiply the number of pipelines by the clock speed to get an idea of speed. A high speed GPU does not mean a fast graphics card if the number of pipelines is low so a 500MHz GPU with 8 pipelines is slower than a graphics card with a 375MHz GPU but 16 pipelines. The higher the pipelines (pixel and vertex) the more operations are performed per clock cycle. Like CPUs bigger isn`t always better.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 30th August 2006, 17:43

RE: Problem with FM Radio in Windows XP MCE

That is to be expected. Freeview uses a different tuner. FM uses the same tuner as analogue TV but at VHF as opposed to UHF of TV channels. There is no fault with the card nor MCE.

If you want Freeview, analogue TV and FM as part of the same channel line up, try Media Portal (www.team-mediaportal.com). There are still issues with this software but the development is very promising and it allows all your tuners to be part of the same channel line up.

RE: Intel to release Quad core BEFORE Xmas !!!!!!!!!

Yes I heard about this a couple of weeks ago. I am sure Intel had this ready a while ago. Seems coincidental that this is announced after AMD attempt to find a way to match Intel with announcement of quad core processors? It does look like an uphill struggle for AMD unless they have something up their sleeves.

RE: Dead CD ReWriter ?

I mean that Nero has been configured to write to an image file rather than directly to a CD. There are options to select the CD drive as the drive to burn to rather than an image file. I can`t remember the option but it is there.

RE: Dead CD ReWriter ?

As I mentioned, you are using the File Recorder. You need to select the CD writer as the burning device.

RE: Dead CD ReWriter ?

Well are you burning to the File Recorder?

To verify drag and drop files to a blank CDRW and select the option to "Write these files to CD". This will allow you to verify whether the CD writer is working properly or not.

RE: Advice on Advent 7105 and AMD Sempron 3000+ !

Advent laptops are built by Quanta (who actually manufacture most of the World`s laptops). In general, the quality isn`t good. Try the keyboard and you may find it flexes a little and also check for sturdiness of the chassis around the hinges of the screen.

As for the price - it is very expensive, especially for a student!

RE: MSN MESSENGER (QUICK BIT OF HELP PLEASE)

If you block them they won`t know that you have done so.

RE: Laptop won`t start. Says press F2 or F12

Well the laptop is not booting because the hard disc is corrupt or there is a bootable floppy disc or CD/DVD inserted. If you have no bootable discs (other than hard disc) then a Repair Install should fix it.

RE: Building a new pc -------Again---------

Cheers, had to go away for a bit. Back now.

RE: Problem with nero backup.

Try copying the last disc onto another disc. You will need to keep trying but it may eventually get there. Of course, use DVD RWs though.

RE: help installing ram

Correct, Chug a Bug. Even memory from the same manufacturer may not be compatible! A customer of mine bought extra memory from Crucial to add to her 512 MB that was 2 years old. Despite the same latency speeds, the system timing and wait states may be slightly different and can cause the PC to lock up.

RE: Building a new pc -------Again---------

You won`t regret going for Intel E6600. I have just had a go at 2 other models. Its multi instruction processing per clock cycle is truly phenomenal and at a lower clock speed too. There are still some die hard AMD fans out there who refuse to believe how good these Core 2 Duos are but I have bench marked 3 models including an Extreme Edition version.

RE: Silent cpu/cooling solutions ?? ---- MILO :) ----

Chris, if you want 6 or more SATA connectors then you need a motherboard with 2 SATA controllers. An example is an nForce4 motherboard which has 4 in SAT controllers controlled by the nForce 4 chipset but it could have a second controller provided by Marvell Yukon, for example, giving another 4 SATA controllers (the Marvell Yukon option actually gives better performance).

As the Core 2 Duo processors are so new at the moment I have no experience of any boards that takes this processor and supports dual SATA controllers. All I would be doing would be searching MicroDirect, Dabs, etc which is probably what you will be doing too so I cannot really give advice as to why one board might be more beneficial than another. If you do find a board I can take a look at it and only give an opinion from the information given though. It will be at least a couple of months before I will get to try different boards for the Core 2 Duo.

By the way, I am still seething at buying the D940 a couple of months ago!