So, what are you actually trying to pull off with that hard drive? If I were in your shoes, my best advice would be to grab a Linux Mint live USB—just burn it to a flash drive or a disc—and boot from that. Once you're up and running, you can try pulling your files onto a thumb drive or an external hard drive. After you've secured everything, just wipe the drive clean and do a fresh install of Windows. I don't know if that helps you out much, but it's what I'd do. 🤷
Chris Robinson25 said:I used an EVGA card before, and I had nothing but good things to say about it. As far as the Phantom goes, that's really the cream of the crop when it comes to EVGA.
Right now, I'm running a Gigabyte R9 280 and it's doing alright—nothing crazy to report yet. I mainly picked it up because of the three-year warranty and because it was the only R9 280 that actually fit in my case.
If I actually had the budget, a beefy power supply, and a massive case, I’d definitely go for the MSI R9 290 x Lightning. I've always had a soft spot for that specific card. Then again, I'm more of the type who cares about longevity—I just want something that lasts.
Thanks for the input! If everything goes according to plan with my parents tomorrow or by Friday, I'll be heading out to buy one. I'm torn between the Asus Strix GTX 970 and the Phantom—even though most of the guys here were voting for the Gigabyte, I don't think I'll bite. It's not like I'm going to stare at my GPU all day, but the Gigabyte just doesn't appeal to me... and honestly, neither does the MSI.
Nah, I’m not even remotely interested in the gambling side of things. Thanks anyway, guys—I'll let you know how it goes. For now, it's time to go see if I can talk the old folks into something 😁
Have you happened to read up on whether there are any issues with the fans on the ASUS ROG version? I think someone mentioned something about that on this forum a few months back--can't quite remember who. Also, I really dig the fact that it only needs a single 8-pin connector 😁
Hey guys—so I might be heading out to pick up a new GPU in the next few days, and I’m stuck between the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 from the ASUS ROG series or the Phantom model. Honestly, I don't have a strong preference for one over the other, and while warranty isn't my biggest concern, I really just want to make sure I get at least 24 months of coverage.
So, if you were in my shoes, what would you go with? Looking at Newegg, it seems like the Phantom version is a bit more compact, which I actually really like. Plus, those two "hidden" vents look pretty cool, and I love the sleek, all-black aesthetic. As for ASUS in general, I've always been a fan of their design language. From what I can tell, the temperatures between these two cards are basically identical...
Forget about running SLI or Crossfire. Honestly, just grabbing one beefier card is a much better way to go—it saves so many headaches. If you're really eyeing something like a GTX 970, you might just need to save up a little more cash first.
In my collection of MP3-acs, I’ve got quite a few tracks from the 50s and 60s where the artist is a total mystery to me. It would be a different story if I didn't have the files on my computer or couldn't make out the lyrics—that would be a much tougher spot to be in.
But nowadays, you just hit play, type what you hear into YouTube, and boom—you've found the song title and the artist in no time.
So, I guess that’s pretty much where we stand—not much left to dive into here. 🙂 If you happen to be running a cracked version of the game, though, maybe try grabbing the latest patch? It might actually fix some of those issues, or at least make things slightly less frustrating.
swifttinker40 said:I've got quite a few tracks from the 50s and 60s in my MP3-ac collection where I honestly have no clue who the artists are. I think I heard somewhere that there are apps where you can just play a song and it identifies the artist and title for you. Does anyone know anything about how those work?
Whenever I run into a song where I don't recognize the singer or the title, I just listen closely to the lyrics and type them into YouTube—it works like a charm and finds what I'm looking for every single time.
I remember back when I used to play FIFA 13 on my PC—whenever I launched the game, this little window would pop up where you could tweak all the graphics settings and resolution. Does it show your hardware specs there too? Like, does it actually tell you if your components meet the recommended requirements for the game or not? Here’s an example from 2014.
A friend of mine is running a Pentium 4 with 512MB of RAM—I'm not quite sure what his clock speed is, but he's actually got Chrome installed and can even stream YouTube videos at 240p quality. 😁Maybe he could try turning off all those visual effects that eat up his RAM and CPU?
He should give it a shot, right? There’s really nothing to lose...
From what I've seen, I don't think it matters if you're running XP—Chrome should install just fine, even the latest version compatible with that OS. It’s not like Windows Update where you suddenly stop getting available updates altogether. Hmm, are you running Windows XP Service Pack 3?
EDIT: Yeah, fair enough, I actually agree with William Richardson12—maybe the computer is just struggling so much that it's having a hard time handling Chrome or Mozilla.
If this case is what you're looking at, that motherboard will fit perfectly—no sweat there, since the case supports both Micro ATX and ATX formats. As for that Gigabyte B350 board, did you actually mean the graphics card? Personally, I think an Intel Core i5 would end up bottlenecking an NVIDIA GTX 970, so you might be better off stepping up to an Intel Core i7.
I mean, you probably aren't going to see much of a boost in your framerate just by tweaking a few Windows settings... if you're running low on RAM, your best bet is really just to upgrade it. Which game are you trying to run, if you don't mind me asking? It might be that while the system requirements say 4GB of RAM is enough, your processor or integrated graphics are actually the bottleneck—meaning they might just be a bit too weak for the task at hand.
