Warning: Computer Question

thats nice.

A P45 is a P45, right? I think so, so the Foxconn should be fine provided the MB product page supplies you with a Forum to ask questions about the board with other owners/users. And, is Foxconn's product page up to date with drivers/downloads etc. I never received my rebate for a Foxconn 9600GT. May still show up some months later. I still use an Epox board every day in ther lab and there is no working product page. In fact, there is no company to stand behind their product in any capacity. You'll be fine.

Well, if its an opinion of Foxconn you're looking for, there's nothing wrong with them. They're an OEM provider that made the jump to end-user / enthusiast type stuff. Like ECS / PCChips, but better.

Seems a shame to "waste" the RAM on a 32-bit OS, but hey what can you do? Wow. I mean we really reached the limit of 32-bit. Amazing. 4 GB just seems so. . . small.

He'll get 3.2GB accessable to the OS, so it is a shame to lose .8GB. Perhaps he should dabble in the black arts of 64Bit Linux? www.ubuntu.com FTW.

Well, Id answer one of the Asus P5Qs, but you already kinda nixed that.

Foxconn has a solid rep......among the overclocking kiddies, so take that for what you will. Me...I want rock solid reliability and solid support. Asus has rarely disappointed me.



On another note, I think it was Jeff that was talking about getting a new video card...an ATI 4850?

If so....I just installed the asus 4850 to replace my X1900 yesterday. Mugz that thing is mind blowing.

The X1900 was handling the new Dell 30inch LCD respectably....or so I thought. Im not much of a gamer, dont have the time, but I loaded up C&C 3 to see if there would be a noticable difference. The X1900 handled C&C3 respectably; it was smooth with seemingly good frame rates. With the 4850, the latest drivers, all the options including AA turned up to max at 2560 x1600, that game was so fast it was bytch slaping me like a red headed step child. I might actually have to load another game or 2 to see how they run.

I will say this about the 4850 though. There is an update through MS windows update for "ATI Function Driver for High Definition Audio - ATI AA01" drivers on the 4850....they screwed up video play via the AC3 audio decoding. Both winamp and MS MP (yeah, yeah I know, MP sux and only tards use it, but I was testing to identify the problem so I loaded up vers 9, 11 and the old standby, 6.4) were screwed. Without the AC3 codecs installed, the video would playback normally, but obviously without sound. Installing the AC3 codecs enabled sound, but the video would become choppy, then freeze alltogether while the sound continued normally. So beware of the "High Definition Audio " option should you buy one of these.

edited for high-ayne-ous speeling airorrs

Pfft...you buy me one and I'll let you know if was worth your money or not

Heres the P5Q SE for $104

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131335

or for $129, you can get me an extra onboard lan, and 2 extra sata ports. I'll take all the sata ports I can get....all my transcoded movies are in the full mpeg 2 for max quality so they take up a bunch of space. The 3.25 TB on my system is steadily filling, so you can go with the package deal and get me an extra WD 1TB drive, unless you want to spring for an SSD for a pri drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6813131295

LMFAO!!!

I got nothing against Foxcon. They did (last time I was around) supply ATi ref boards which in all honesty I thought were good build quality.

I know Biostar released a ripper of a mobo (at a good price point) but my shoddy memory will only help me provide it's model number tomorrow.

never used foxconn although i believe in the last few years they have had a growing reputation. not too sure about the newegg specs as it list 16GB support but i think it would be 8 max and i thought p45's supported 1600fsb native but it list it as an OC value, won't matter for 1333fsb models though and the q9550 for me is fine.

sticking with xp i see, any reason for being a luddite

Tried Kubuntu - Gutsy.

Not bad, really. Very smooth. The problem came when I tried to boot back into XP. I had partitioned the drive using Kubuntu, and it would boot to Linux just fine, but when it tried to start up XP, it said it could not read "C" and could not start the GUI.

It would work if I started XP at a prompt (no GUI, but still DOS...).

So I said "to heck with it" and just reformatted using XP. Thing is, it could not "see" the other partician anymore! My drive is 1/2 the size! (It is only a HTPC, so I am not worried about the space, and I can always ghost/swap it sometime later....).

The only thing that kept me from keeping Kubuntu was the lack of a great MM player. Windows Classic with the CCCP works great! And you can queue up a bunch in advance w/o having to text edit a playlist....

Maybe there was something similar in Kubuntu, but I tried the 4 top rated players and either they would not read some of the more unusual formats OR they would not queue....


Would anyone have any clue on that? I will eventually do ashuffle and I may take the last sheep in the herd out to be Linux'd to play with......

Simply, the memory management scheme is still pretty much a victim of the x86 architecture. 640k for programs and 348K for ISA / PCI and other devices (remember DEVICEHIGH and LOADHIGH?. Anyway, this is why, as you approach 4GB on a 32 bit operating system the BIOS will show the whole RAM but 32-bit windows will show you between 2.7 and 3.5 depending on the SP level and the amount of PCI devices installed and the quality of your device drivers-- memory mapping and virtual address space and all that.

32-bit linux suffers from pretty much the same thing although it functions more like windows with the /3gb switch-- 3 GB of user space and 1 GB of kernel/system space. Furthermore processes on both OSes are pretty much limited to 2.8 GB even with PAE (although linix kernels won't complain too loudly if you push them over the 2.8 as with windows, you might get an WILOM when you pass 512 MB (thank you Visual C), but this is where one can see a definite disctinction between Windows Server and Windows XP. Windows Server won't throw an WILLOM until you are out of contiguous pages-- then again so does linux, but its more graceful about it.

WILOM - Windows is low on memory

PAE - Physical Address Extension

Move to 64 bit was more or less hindered by crappy 32-bit performance on the Itanium. AMD licked that problem when it created AMD64, but I suppose, in the Windows world, 64-bit is still soured by the "botched" Itanium and the less than stellar 64-bit XP and Server 2003.

Vista 64 is much better supported.

But as far as 64-bit computing goes, linux (along with other *nix-es, including BSDs) is still king. 386 and x86-64 are esentially identical. Anything that is available for 386 is available for x86-64 (hello source code!).

[EDIT] Oh, right. 32-bit is kinda sorta emulated in 64-bit OS. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. gvim, for example, requires a couple registry hacks, to get it to work in XP-64 exactly like it does on XP. Antivir won't install at all. Niether will Rhapsody. All the Microsoft apps are fine though. Media Player, Internet Explorer, and Office.

Really, in my opinion, if you're not running a databse or similar you don't need 64-bit. however if you are running a linux and your HW supports it-- why the hell not?

One of these days. . .

The only issues I've had with my 64-bit so far is the drivers for my NetGear StorageCentral 101. They were very late with Vista drivers and they aren't making 64bit drivers...

I prefer femail let-her bombs.

I'd say so. 128k...on Vista?

1GB vs. 4GB. Silly man.

ROLF

creative......support......

Man, KL, you are tooooooooooo funny! :lol: :lol:

Sadly, Im old enough to remember the days when creative really did "rule", and their support was unparalleled.

I have a Turtle Beach audio card - loved it.

Worst controllers ever.

True.

But I cant remember any other component company that provided the support and freeware creative used too....I used to think they were nuts for the stuff they gave away. Now, theyre on the verge of CH 11.

Concur.

It doesnt hert that the mobo manufacturers and M$ got their sh!t together, started producing reasonable onboard audio components and most importantly, got their driver/sw interfaces squared away.

I remember when onboard sound made its debut, and the several years following.....you never used embeded audio....to many driver/IRQ/resource conflicts....nowadays with all the problems resolved and the experiance base built, as you point out, most people wouldnt even notice the difference.

You got a credible reason for assuming Vista is the only alternative?
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http://boinkology.com/2007/11/05/o [...] e-porn-os/

GooOS, the Google operating system.
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