Any computer gaming geeks in here?

[Daggerdave]

The video card will indeed help you, but not nearly as much as a new CPU and motherboard.

Go to PCclub.com and grab one of thier upgrade kits. Id suggest the AMD Athlon 64 with MSI board for $200.  Get two of thier Kingston Valueram 512 mg DDR 3200 RAM sticks for $60 each.

The $320 bucks and the new vid card you bought will give you a system that will run anything as smooth as a movie.

That is basically the system I am running for online games such as Everquest and World of Warcraft.  Its capable of fantastic frame rates even with 100 other players in the area and the graphics maxed.

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

I also just remembered, make sure you have an adequate power supply to run your system with that new video card added! I had to upgrade my power supply when I added the 9800 PRO card because combined with my basic system it required as a minimum what my then power supply was capable of as a maximum. I upgraded to a '450 Watt Antec Silent Purepower' power supply so I had not only enough power to run the basic system and video card but also both the DVD player and CD burner as well as anything else I may choose to add. If I remember correctly the tech suggested a bare minimum of 350 watts to run my system, but he wanted me to use at least 400 watts. I would definately check the video card box and see what it suggests as bare minimums and preffered wattages. :)

[OmniGLH]

Well, I hooked up the video card and WOW what a difference.  I'm pretty shocked.  I ran the 3Dmark03 software and it performed about 8x faster.  The graphics stuff is WAY faster... now it's the CPU holding it back.

I could really just about live with it the way it is.  I've still gotta have a bunch of detail turned down, but it's much better.  The new card has HDTV outputs on it.  That means I could play my games on my HDTV downstairs.  But the PC won't be happy running it at 720p resolutions.  I think I might upgrade anyways... from here it's only another $300 at Fry's....

[spyderchick]

3 Words: Front side bus

Get something decent...have fun!

[Gixxerblade]

Tell you what man, it'll be worht it when you upgrade to a smarter MB and CPU and power supply. Don't forget to get the memory for it. There half a race weekend.  :)

[OmniGLH]

Tell you what man, it'll be worht it when you upgrade to a smarter MB and CPU and power supply. Don't forget to get the memory for it. There half a race weekend.  :)

Yeah.  Sometimes, seriously, I wish I was more like those armchair quarterback losers whose sole hobby is to spend a weekend parked in front of a TV watching football, drinking cans of Busch Lite.  I have some family members like that.  It's sad sometimes that I'm envious of them... I'd have SO much more money in my pocket at the end of the day.

But no, I have to be into all the expensive hobbies.  Motorcycle racing, car upgrades, home theater, computers and computer games.  It's really rough being me sometimes.

;)

Just got back from Fry's (uh-oh.)  New Asus K8N motherboard, AMD 64 3000+ chip, 1GB Kingston DDR400 ram.  I'm going to be up all night.  I gotta find that link I found yesterday for a free download of Windows XP 64-bit beta.

[GSXR RACER MIKE]

Just got back from Fry's (uh-oh.)  New Asus K8N motherboard, AMD 64 3000+ chip, 1GB Kingston DDR400 ram.  I'm going to be up all night.  I gotta find that link I found yesterday for a free download of Windows XP 64-bit beta.

     I see you went all the way, probably be alot better off in the long run. Actually it probably seems like a rather insignificant amount of money when compared to racing, figuring you'll be able to use this for quite a while.

[OmniGLH]

*sigh*

And I encounter my first problem.

Got everything installed and hooked up.  Surprisingly simple.  Boot it up, go into the BIOS, make sure everything is there.  All the devices, etc show up.  Looks good.  Go to boot into Windows... and the PC reboots itself.  It comes back up with the XP prompt to try safe mode.  So I try safe mode.  It reads from the HD for about 1-1.5 seconds and... reboot.

So I dropped in my XP CD and figured I'd try a fresh install.  Boots into the XP setup utility fine.  As soon as I tell it to install XP and it reads from the HD - reboot.

I was so hoping I wouldn't have to deal with this.  I just want it to work.  It's like it's not happy reading the HD or something.  I'm going to bed now, but, any ideas?

[251am]

2 words, 1 letter; X Box  Halo


Sorry, I'm just a smartass. I have not yet found computer gaming comparable to the 27" screen and XBox, but it's cool to watch you guys figure this out. Good Luck with the install.      

[Gixxerblade]

Yeah I have an idea. Check your bios settings and make sure you don't have your HD booting first. Did you say you got a new hard drive? Did you set the pins right? Something doesn't sound right, let me know.  ???

[OmniGLH]

Well I tried a few things.

1)  Removed all other drives (CD-ROM and floppy).  No difference.
2)  Moved HD around on the IDE channels.  No difference.
3)  Tried a different HD.  No difference.
4)  Tried an old, less-power-hungry video card.  No difference.

So it's not the HD, as a different HD did the same thing.  The HD is set to "cable select" on the jumper settings, and when I move it from primary to secondary, master to slave, the BIOS reports it correctly.  If the HD is the only device connected, it's gotta be the only item in the boot order, so I don't think that's it.

I also tried swapping the video card out, thinking that perhaps I was maxing the power supply and as soon as some load was put on the system (HD reading) it would reboot.  But going to an old video card (one without a giant fan on it, etc) did not change the results.

Oh yeah, and an update... I think it did this last night too and I forgot.  I tried the XP CD again (but with a different HD installed) and when it got to the part where it tries reading from the HD, I got a BSOD.

Here's a screenshot (I took it with my camera...) Anybody know what it means?

[ccs_Race_Control]

What where you trying to do before all this?