That’s just a basic USB sound card. To be honest, I actually have one sitting right here at home—though it was just some promotional junk I picked up at an event. I haven't really seen them stocked on any shelves in local stores 🤷 If you want my advice, just order it from DealExtreme—it'll end up being way cheaper than whatever markup some shopkeeper tries to hit you with here in the States 😉
Honestly, it’s not even a massive leap in terms of graphics performance. If I were in your shoes, I’d much rather go for a quick walk and clear my head before deciding to pick up the AMD Radeon HD 5670. That NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 is just weaker and way overpriced—though, to be fair, anything you find on a Bloomberg Terminal tends to carry a premium price tag.
In that Disk Management window you just shared, go ahead and select that specific section on your flash drive, right-click it, and choose "delete volume." That should clear everything out and leave you with the full 4 GB of unallocated space—it’s a bit like wiping a chalkboard clean before you start writing again. From there, you can just right-click that empty space to format it and set up a brand-new partition.🙂
Just move everything from the USB drive over to a secure spot on your hard drive, wipe those two existing partitions entirely, and then create one single new partition using the full available capacity. 🙂
The 6 GHz band is just a frequency—it doesn't actually dictate how far the signal reaches. As Michael Jackson10 pointed out, how are you planning on hooking up your antenna? What kind of wireless adapter are we talking about here? Is it one of those built-in ones, or are you using an external USB dongle?
Regarding the graphics card... you might want to hold out for the NVIDIA GeForce 8000 series. It offers a much better performance jump—plus, I’m personally hoping we see some price drops on the HD5xxx cards soon 😉 In about a month or so, we should have a much clearer picture of how things shake out 😉
I honestly don't think this is even that far off-topic. In my opinion, modern chassis manufacturers seem to be leaning into making everything look downright ugly. From the old Cooler Master HAF series all the way to the new Antec DarkFleet—it’s like they take these cases, run them through a magnet, and then toss them through a field of shrapnel just for fun. Whatever survives the chaos is what you get stuck with. Fractal Design, on the other hand, makes beautiful cases—most of which feel inspired by the classic, clean lines of the Antec P180. They’re elegant, minimal, and lack all those jagged edges and obnoxious glowing bits. It’s just a shame you can't find them easily around here...
Have you checked out the NZXT Gamma series? Aside from the fact that they look absolutely ridiculous, I’d honestly rank them among my top three 🙂
EDIT : fuck, I didn't even realize people were debating this one. Long story short, from what I can gather, it doesn't seem much worse than my Cooler Master—and that’s saying something, considering that case is a total 😉 masterpiece
Besides, if it’s really that ugly... I’ve actually been running my previous case without the front panel for the last year anyway 😁
Oof. It’s not exactly a disaster, but we’re hitting a bit of a wall here—the old architecture and modern processors just don't speak the same language anymore. If you want to swap out the CPU, you're essentially looking at a new motherboard to go with it. And since a new board means moving away from your current DDR setup toward the standard DDR3, you'd need to pick up some new memory too.
If we're looking for the most budget-friendly way to get this running better, here is what I'd suggest: 1 x Intel Core 2 Duo processor, socket LGA 775, BOX, 2MB cache, 65W 1 x ASUS motherboard, ATX format 1 x DDR3 2048MB ( 2GB ) Kingmax, 1333MHz, CL9, FLFE85F-B8EE8
Honestly, going with a Phenom feels like a bit of an overkill given the GPU you're running. Which motherboard are we looking at here? And how much RAM have you got under the hood?
So, what does the rest of your current setup look like? By the way—it’s not that your GPU is bad or anything, it just sits more in that entry-level tier...
slysurfer14 said:I find you "experts" pretty interesting—whenever someone asks a question, everyone jumps in to criticize what they currently have, yet actual answers are hard to come by... My PC has been running smoothly for about 3 or 4 years now, and I was really just looking for a recommendation for a graphics card that’s a step up from my GeForce 8500 GT without breaking the bank. I want this machine to last another 2 or 3 years so my kid stops bugging me when his games start stuttering... Right now, he's playing World of Warcraft, and he can't deal with the lag because the frame rate drops right when he's trying to move units around... So, quite simply: what's a decent GPU better than an 8500 that won't cost a fortune?
A more powerful graphics card is naturally going to pull more power. And since I KNOW the kind of cheap power supplies Best Buy stocks in their budget bins, I wouldn't trust them with anything—whether it's a budget card or a high-end beast.
cosmicfox31 gave the best suggestion here, and I'm happy to second that.
Hmm, am I seeing things correctly, or are you actually working with an HDMI port here? It might be worth double-checking which specific slot we're dealing with—is it HDMI or a DisplayPort? If it's the latter, finding a DVI adapter should be a total breeze. 🙂
Which motherboard are we looking at here? By the way, how is it that you've only got one output on that card? Usually, those 4890s came equipped with two DVI ports 🤷
slysurfer14 said:Gigabyte M55S-S3 (Socket m2) As for the power supply, I honestly can't say—I just grabbed it as part of a bundle at Best Buy... It’s just one of those SuperPower cases that comes with a PSU included.
Well, if that's the case, I wouldn't count on it for anything serious—at best, you're looking at a SunPro unit, which is basically junk.
And of course, you can't expect anything else from a retailer—they’re always going to push their own agenda. Honestly, if they hadn't moved those cards, they probably would have just sat on the shelf forever.
It’s a bit of a gamble, really—walking into a store and hoping they'll let you swap it out for a Radeon HD 4650 just because your system starts acting up with those NVIDIA drivers. It's not exactly a smooth transaction.