Ack...I have a RAM question

Unless i'm mistaken, PC133 DIMMS mean SDRAM (not DDR SDRAM, which is what PC1600 and up is). Ok, so u can either buy slow RAM for really cheap (pricewatch has some 512 sticks of 133 for 20 something bucks) or it's time for a new mobo. Or am i wrong?

I'm just your average habitual smiler =D

I was afraid you were gonna say that.

I'll wait for consensus. But this POS has been giving us grief ever since we bought it so it wouldn't surprise me ONE BIT!

<font color=green>"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "<i>doesn't</i> come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"
~The Grinch</font color=green>

*sigh*

Well...my original hope was to purchase RAM and a new vid card. But, as is the way with these things...I'm looking at significantly more $$. The only salvageable part is the LAN card!! LOL

Perhaps I can sell it to one of hubby's workmates.
You think they'd mind if I scrawled POS on the side with a sharpie??

<font color=green>"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "<i>doesn't</i> come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"
~The Grinch</font color=green>

With that mobo u have a Via KT133 chipset, and it only supports SDRAM (DDR has different number of pins, though it runs @ same frequency, just delivers 2x the bits per cycle). Anyway, you really can't do much- what's ur processor btw? IMO, get a cheap AD11 w/ PC2100 DDR (266Mhz) and run ur athlon on that, it'll be 15% performance increase or better.

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti

ddr 266 has a bandwidth of 2100MB. 266X8=~2100 and so on

<b><A HREF="http://www.lochel.com" target="_new"><font color=orange>LOCHEL</A>

scamtron@msn.com

your chipset runs at 200 or 266 fsb and supports pc100 or pc133. you can't use ddr, but you can buy some pc150 at cas 2.0 and oc your pc. that chipset supports tbirds up to 1.4ghz and comes with a agp4X. with pc150 at cas2.0 and a new vid card, you'd be set.

<b><A HREF="http://www.lochel.com" target="_new"><font color=orange>LOCHEL</A>

scamtron@msn.com

$450 from scratch? What kind of games. Keep in mind that a videocard alone is going to cost you either:

$100 (Radeon 8500 64MB)
$150 (GF-4 4200)
$200 (Radeon 9500 Pro)
$350 (Radeon 9700 Pro)

That's going to decide what you have left. You're going to definitely need something around 2Ghz or 2000+ for good gaming. As a second computer though you could easily go for a 1-1.5 Ghz CPU with the Radeon 8500 and be happy.

Yes you can bypass onboard sound.

The A7N266 is roughly $75.

AMD 1600+ is $50
AMD 1700+ T-bred is $60
AMD 2000+ is $95

Take your pick...

<font color=red>
<A HREF="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/" target="_new">Forum Assassin</A></font color=red>

Yes. The KT133 only supports PC100 or PC133 SDRAM. Not DDR. You can still find a fair bit of sdram about though, you just have to look.

Heh. for any via board i strongly reccomend the latest via 4in1 drivers, and in your case also check out your memory integrity using MEMTEST86.

Easy things to do for a lady of your talents

<b><font color=purple>[Rik_]</font color=purple> I wonder how many people have made their own phasechange system?
<font color=blue>[LHGPooBaa]</font color=blue> I get phasechange whenever i eat a hot chillie </b>

hmmm. how "slow" is the current rig?
U only wanted to spend 450 right?

<b><font color=purple>[Rik_]</font color=purple> I wonder how many people have made their own phasechange system?
<font color=blue>[LHGPooBaa]</font color=blue> I get phasechange whenever i eat a hot chillie </b>

i see you have slipped in there a 1700 tbred. nice.

<b><font color=purple>[Rik_]</font color=purple> I wonder how many people have made their own phasechange system?
<font color=blue>[LHGPooBaa]</font color=blue> I get phasechange whenever i eat a hot chillie </b>

I run it on a Tbird 1000 w/ a GF2 Pro and it's ok. Playable at the very least.

With a xp1700+ she'll be fine. It's the video that I worry about. It'll be playable with onboard, and nice with a Radeon 8500.

<font color=red>
<A HREF="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/" target="_new">Forum Assassin</A></font color=red>

Okay...here's the specs for my POS.

A7V-E KT133
AMD Duron 750
256MB SDRAM
GF2 MX400
28GB HDD (how this is I <i>don't</i> know. Our receipt says 20GB...and we don't remember upgrading this...?)
Netgear FA311/312 PCI Adapter
Win98

Okay...so the main problems are that it's very slow, with many video glitches and just lethargic performance. I want to upgrade the OS, and am leaning towards XP, although I'm curious about Linux . Does anyone know if Linux does alright with gaming?

Anyway...with this info...please tell me what I can do to help this thing along until I can *really* go wild. I want quick fix type stuff that's fairly inexpensive.

I checked ebay, and found a number of 512MB SDRAM on there for around $30. If I do that, plus a better video card...that will hold me I should think. I'll also update my VIA drivers as PooBaa suggested...


<font color=green>"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "<i>doesn't</i> come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"
~The Grinch</font color=green>

Apparently not! What do you mean?

<font color=green>"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "<i>doesn't</i> come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"
~The Grinch</font color=green>

1. Download the latest GeForce drivers from nvidia.com
2. Download Cacheman from <A HREF="http://www.outertech.com" target="_new">http://www.outertech.com</A> and tweak the cache settings
3. Install latest Via 4-in-1 drivers
4. Disable unneeded stuff running in the background.

See if that gives some more performance.

My PC eats so much money that I'm in 'desperate' need of it to buy PC3500 RAM, help Svol with his OC project!
--- PM me for information.

You can use a videocard with DDRRAM on it on an SDRAM system as those cards are connected with the AGP slot and has nothing to do with the RAM on the motherboard. So you can buy every videocard you want... GeForce 3, GeForce4 MX or Ti, Radeon 8500, 9000, 9500 (PRO), 9700 (PRO). It depends on which games you're going to play on it.

Your CPU has a 100Mhz FSB... so 100Mhz SDRAM should do... but if you can get 133MHz for almost the same price choose those and perhaps with a little better heatsink you can OC your CPU by FSB.

My PC eats so much money that I'm in 'desperate' need of it to buy PC3500 RAM, help Svol with his OC project!
--- PM me for information.

Oh deary.

If you're an ugly bastard click <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq¬found=1&code=1" target="_new"> here</A> to feel better about yourself.

I'll do that...thank you.

<font color=green>"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "<i>doesn't</i> come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"
~The Grinch</font color=green>

Yep, you're right.

My PC eats so much money that I'm in 'desperate' need of it to buy PC3500 RAM, help Svol with his OC project!
--- PM me for information.

X-Setup Version 6.2
- no specific reason for this update so far
- FIX: Spelling error inside plug-in error
- FIX: DefaultIcon entry for Plug-ins and Wizards didn't included full path or icon number
- FIX: Clicking in the empty space around an plug-in in the UI does no longer load any plug-in
- MISC: changed the Development IDE from Borland Delphi 5.0 to Delphi 6.0 (http://www.borland.com/)
- MISC: Added StartCHM.bat to /help folder that launches hh.exe for systems where .CHM is normally used by another program
- MISC: Added XQXSetupInfo.exe for displaying several information screens (non blocking), e.g. Item Information, Configuration, About Window, Team Window, Logfile, Stats etc.
- MISC: Added "WM_XQ_XSET_CONFIGCHANGE" message that indicates that the configuration has changed
- MISC: Text inside About box is now loaded from about.cfg
- MISC: Because many people still use XSET without license, a one-time nag-screen has been build that will remind the user about the LICENSE status of XSET
- MISC: Added "Favorites" function to Default UI - Favorites can be controlled using File -> Options. Thanks to Russell Henry [abcdefg@shreve.net] for the idea
- MISC: When activating a plug-in that has several UIPaths (using Favorites or the Search Window) a message is now displayed (inside Status Bar)
- MISC: XPL and XWZ files inside Explorer should now have different, newly designed icons
- MISC: Improved X-Update so several items can now be packed together into the same ZIP file without generating the old "file not found" error
- MISC: Tip index is not longer system-wide (stored in tips.ini), it is now a per-user setting which is stored in the registry - tips.ini has been renamed to tips.cfg
- MISC: Moved all CFG files to a new folder \cfg, which should allow better ACLs (if needed) in the XSET folder
- MISC: Tip Windows has now clickable (hot) links
- MISC: Created XQXSetupRegComp.exe which registers all COM applications of XSET. This is a last resort help if the COM Registration of SETUP has failed
- MISC: CSV files for X-Update can now have a field "Description" which contains a description for the item
- MISC: X-Update will now ask to launch Default UI on program shutdown when a download has taken place
- UI: Changed "Windows XP" to "Windows XP/DotNET Server"
- UI: Added "Selection" menu to UI that performs the same operations as the pop-up menu
- UI: Links inside the plug-in description, wizard description and comments (Item Information) are now hot and clickable
- UI: Enhanced URL display, is now also able to detect embedded URLs, for example [www.url.com]
- UI: Menu buttons inside XQXSetupUI.exe are now enabled/disabled, based on the current selection
- UI: "i" button is now disabled if no plug-in is selected
- UI: Finally fixed the "Menu jumping around at startup" bug (Hi Chris@lockergnome.com, hope you like that :-)
- UI: Added "Version History" to "Extras" menu, a little feature to compare the plug-ins of the current XSET version to an older version
- UI: Default UI, Wizards, Config and X-Update have also new icons
- UI: Create new UI for X-Update which should be better to use than the old one
- UI: If running on Windows XP and the new "Luna" UI is activated, X-Setup will use this new look
- UI: Tested all UI Elements on a machine with "Big Fonts" enabled, so the old "UI elements too small with Big Fonts enabled" should be gone now
- WIZ: Fixed several typos in Wizards
- ENGINE: Massiv internal changes so showing additional information does no longer block the UI
- ENGINE: Created XQXSetupRuntime.BPL that includes all UI/runtime components for XSET. This reduces the size for each XSET application by about 250 KB
- ENGINE: Removed XQCommon.dll from all files, reduces setup size by 500 KB
- ENGINE: All XSET apps are now build using VCL/RTL BPLs which reduces the size from 600 KB to ~ 100 KB for each XSET application
- ENGINE: Some people have reported that had problems using the "Edit..." command since some editors would like to have the file in "" quotes. This is now implemented
- ENGINE: Used new version checker toolbox for X-Update to detect updated (e.g. 1.85 to 1.85a) better
- GLOBAL: Moved information screens from XQXSetupGlobal.exe to XQXSetupInfo.exe which reduces memory footprint by about 1 MB
- GLOBAL: As soon as XSET is running, a Mutex (XQ_XSET_MUTEX) is created so from now on the setup knows when XSET is still running. This should prevent the common "File is locked" error when installing XSET.
- START: The start-up check is now much faster, since there no hidden windows generated as it was in 6.1
- START: The start-up check now displays only a step ID (e.g. "Step 1.1" ) and offers the user to view \bin\chkfail.txt which includes detailed instructions for every step. This should be more intuitive than the old solution
- START: X-Setup will no longer update its system settings on startup. These settings are now generated once by SETUP.EXE and then never again
- SETUP: XSET does now create system wide icons on setup.
- SETUP: If the user selectes to have the Control Panel Icon for XSET, SETUP will now use a registry setting on Windows ME and above instead of coyping the CPL file to \WINDOWS\SYSTEM. This should remove the Control Panel Icon problems on these platforms.
- SETUP: if XPL or XWZ files should be associated with X-Setup can now be configured during SETUP because of problems with RealPlayer (XPL = eXtended Play List). Thanks to dj-egg@onebox.com for reporting this issue

My PC eats so much money that I'm in 'desperate' need of it to buy PC3500 RAM, help Svol with his OC project!
--- PM me for information.