Requests for more hardware guides?

Post by **deject** » April 17th, 2006, 17:45

I want to make another hardware guide, but I don't know what topic to make it on. Does anyone want to know the nitty-gritty about anything hardware?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » April 17th, 2006, 17:48

Update the CPU guide for a start

Post by **Dog Pants** » April 17th, 2006, 17:50

Yes. On everything

Recently I've been looking at upgrading from AGP to PCI-E, with a mind for a dual setup (under the assumption that it'll make it easier to upgrade by buying an extra card later). I've already got a setup in mind, which I'll be buying next week, but a guide on it would have been most useful and would have given Berk a break from my questioning.

Post by **deject** » April 17th, 2006, 18:15

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:Update the CPU guide for a start

EDIT: LOL I DID IT.

Pog Dants wrote:Recently I've been looking at upgrading from AGP to PCI-E, with a mind for a dual setup (under the assumption that it'll make it easier to upgrade by buying an extra card later). I've already got a setup in mind, which I'll be buying next week, but a guide on it would have been most useful and would have given Berk a break from my questioning.

Are you asking for a AGP -> PCI-Express transition guide? There really isn't much to it.

Step #1: Buy PCI-Express motherboard and Video Card.
Step #2: Install video card.

Post by **Dog Pants** » April 17th, 2006, 18:18

Bah. Well I'm getting a new CPU too. And what does Nforce4 do? And what about SLi vs Crossfire? And is SLi worth it? And what PSU would I need for dual graphics cards? Can I run a dual card mobo with just one card?

All these questions and more I harrassed the good Doctor with, and might be worth putting somewhere.

Post by **deject** » April 17th, 2006, 18:21

Dog Pants wrote:Bah. Well I'm getting a new CPU too. And what does Nforce4 do? And what about SLi vs Crossfire? And is SLi worth it? And what PSU would I need for dual graphics cards? Can I run a dual card mobo with just one card?

All these questions and more I harrassed the good Doctor with, and might be worth putting somewhere.

Maybe a more general system building guide for current-gen stuff?

White · Post by **White** » April 17th, 2006, 22:36

Dog Pants wrote:Bah. Well I'm getting a new CPU too. And what does Nforce4 do? And what about SLi vs Crossfire? And is SLi worth it? And what PSU would I need for dual graphics cards? Can I run a dual card mobo with just one card?

All these questions and more I harrassed the good Doctor with, and might be worth putting somewhere.

SLi is better than Crossfire. SLi is worth it. You would need 480W< for the best performance with dual cards. You can run a dual card mobo with one card.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » April 17th, 2006, 22:53

now all you need to do is explain why.

oh, and get your facts right, and write balanced and un-biased arguments, and state some sources.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » April 17th, 2006, 23:22

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:now all you need to do is explain why.

oh, and get your facts right, and write balanced and un-biased arguments, and state some sources.

And note Berk's avatar

The SLI/Crossfire thing has been discussed before, you might be able to find it with a search.

Post by **FatherJack** » April 18th, 2006, 2:01

Are motherboards which have both AGP and PCI-E worth it?

If one wanted to upgrade the motherboard to a PCI-E-ready state, perhaps the processor and maybe the memory, but didn't want to spend too much buying a new graphics card as well.

My next upgrade is likely to be an expensive one, as there's a new graphics card to buy, 2GB of nasty memory that won't run dual channel to replace, plus a terabyte of IDE disk that needs transferring to SATA or SCSI.

I appreciate that my current system is a dead end technologically, and that the 1GB of RAM and 500GB of disk I bought not so long ago was throwing money away, but anything to spread the cost of the upgrade would be useful.

Waiting even longer is made more appealing as new processors are only 25-50% faster than my existing one, and there currently being small benefit to gamers with multiple or dual-core processors.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » April 18th, 2006, 3:18

FatherJack wrote:Are motherboards which have both AGP and PCI-E worth it?

Yes, if you're refering to the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2, I have one, and IME, they're plenty fast enough for most people

The AGP is real and works very well, the PCI-E graphics works fine and both the PCI-E and the AGP slots can be used side by side.
Of course, you can't do SLI or crossfire. (i'd avoid using ATI and Nvidia in the same machine though)

Also, the motherboard does have the option of an (as yet unavailable) Add-in board that which supports socket AM2 and DDR2, so allows you to upgrade to AM2 without the cost of a whole new mobo.
Pictures and first look here, There's no word on performance as yet, but i'd expect it works as well as native.

Speed wise a board like this is never gonna compete with a high end gamers/overclockers motherboard, but it does provide a good honest system to get you across a couple of upgrades without having to spend a lot of money in one go.

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » April 18th, 2006, 8:54

deject wrote:
Dog Pants wrote:Bah. Well I'm getting a new CPU too. And what does Nforce4 do? And what about SLi vs Crossfire? And is SLi worth it? And what PSU would I need for dual graphics cards? Can I run a dual card mobo with just one card?

All these questions and more I harrassed the good Doctor with, and might be worth putting somewhere.
Maybe a more general system building guide for current-gen stuff?

THIS HARD!

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » April 18th, 2006, 9:03

Woo Elephant Yeah wrote:
deject wrote:
Dog Pants wrote:Bah. Well I'm getting a new CPU too. And what does Nforce4 do? And what about SLi vs Crossfire? And is SLi worth it? And what PSU would I need for dual graphics cards? Can I run a dual card mobo with just one card?

All these questions and more I harrassed the good Doctor with, and might be worth putting somewhere.
Maybe a more general system building guide for current-gen stuff?
THIS HARD!

THAT HARD

Maybe do a low, mid and high-end system system to meet different people's requirements?

Also you could have a relatively simple chart type thing with 2 or 3 hardware options for different budgets for all the main hardware types sort of like this:

Code: Select all

                           Cheap            mid-range                     Expensive

CPUs                  AMD                AMD                               AMD
                         Intel                Intel                               Intel

GFX                nvidia XXX         nvidia XXX                   nvidia XXX
                        ATI  XXX           ATI XXX                        ATI XXX

Mobo                yada yada yada   etc etc etc

Not the best example there, but it would provide an at-a-glance reference guide.

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » April 18th, 2006, 11:22

Good idea Lateralus

That would be of great use to a lot of people I think.

Post by **Dog Pants** » April 18th, 2006, 12:35

Funnily enough that's what I did when I was looking at my upgrade options. I went for the middle one.

Fred Woogle · Post by **Fred Woogle** » April 18th, 2006, 12:51

HDD guide, which is the best, is running in riad worth it, ect, ect, which raid mode for gaming, ect, ect

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » April 18th, 2006, 13:07

Ty aka Sir Die Aloty wrote:HDD guide, which is the best, is running in riad worth it, ect, ect, which raid mode for gaming, ect, ect

This is a good guide: http://dictionary.reference.com/

I'm very sorry but you asked for it.

Fred Woogle · Post by **Fred Woogle** » April 18th, 2006, 17:17

spoodie wrote:
Ty aka Sir Die Aloty wrote:HDD guide, which is the best, is running in riad worth it, ect, ect, which raid mode for gaming, ect, ect
This is a good guide: http://dictionary.reference.com/

I'm very sorry but you asked for it.

BUNGHOLE

Post by **Dog Pants** » April 18th, 2006, 17:33

Ty aka Sir Die Aloty wrote:
spoodie wrote:
Ty aka Sir Die Aloty wrote:HDD guide, which is the best, is running in riad worth it, ect, ect, which raid mode for gaming, ect, ect
This is a good guide: http://dictionary.reference.com/

I'm very sorry but you asked for it.
BUNGHOLE

Eloquently put Ty.

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » April 18th, 2006, 17:39

Dog Pants wrote:
Ty aka Sir Die Aloty wrote:
spoodie wrote:
Ty aka Sir Die Aloty wrote:HDD guide, which is the best, is running in riad worth it, ect, ect, which raid mode for gaming, ect, ect
This is a good guide: http://dictionary.reference.com/

I'm very sorry but you asked for it.
BUNGHOLE
Eloquently put Ty.

And spelt correctly too!