Posts by Jeffrey Peterson

So, I've been chewing on the idea of picking up a used graphics card just so I can actually play some decent games for once. Honestly, I am completely fed up with this HTPC junk I'm running right now..

I've been looking at models like the Radeon HD 4870 (though if I can help it, I’d steer clear of that one since it runs hot and pulls way too much power), the HD 5770, the 5750, the HD 6770, maybe even a GTX 550 (either the standard or the Ti version), and so on. My main hang-up, though, is whether my CPU is going to be a massive bottleneck here. I'm rocking a Dual Core E5700 at 3.0 GHz—not overclocked, and it certainly won't be. What do you all think? Any advice at all would be appreciated.. 😉

Cheers!

I’ve noticed that certain moderators have these perfectly formatted signatures—you know, they’ve messed with the colors and the fonts—but for some reason, I can't seem to get mine to look any different. At least, that's what the settings say when I'm trying to edit it.
"Allow Color BB Code Ne"
"Allow Size BB Code Ne"
"Allow Font BB Code Ne"
Do those folks have special administrative privileges or something? Or am I just missing something obvious?
My apologies if this question has already been asked and answered elsewhere. 🙂

brightviper13 said:The CPU is decent enough, though the motherboard is pretty mediocre, but whatever, it gets the job done. Just tell me what kind of budget you're looking at for a GPU, how much you actually want to shell out, and what specific power supply you're running—I need the exact wattage and the brand name, don't be vague.

Oh, please... stop talking nonsense.

Maybe take a breather and cool off for a second? You really ought to work on your vocabulary and the way you put sentences together, because honestly, it feels like nobody can even understand what you're trying to say.

roughly. $400 for the tower and maybe $167 for the monitor. Plus, I'd say +-$33 for the whole setup (depending on what the buyer is looking for, obviously). Though, if I'm being honest, I have this nagging feeling I might actually walk away with more cash if I just stripped it all down and sold the parts individually... but hey, that's just my two cents. 🙂

This is a bit off-topic, but I didn’t want to clutter things up by starting yet another thread when there are already way too many 😁...

I was wondering—purely from a practical standpoint—just how much of a performance boost would I actually see if I switched from single-channel to dual-channel RAM on an integrated graphics setup? (And just to be clear, I'm talking about standard onboard graphics on a motherboard here, not some fancy modern APU). I'm not planning on messing with any RAM overclocking or frequency tweaks either. Thanks in advance for any insight! 🙂

🤣

Just a quick question for the group... why is it that whenever these two power supplies come up, they’re just "somewhere in the middle," but the moment someone mentions putting an EVGA unit in their rig, everyone immediately starts lecturing them? You know the type—suddenly they're experts on how that specific series "hasn't exactly been reliable." Yet, somehow, that Corsair CX450 is treated like some holy grail that belongs in every single build. (And look, I'm not pointing fingers at any one person here, just talking about the usual crowd on these forums.) It honestly feels a bit ridiculous...

Hey there. So, I’ve been grinding away on a PowerPoint presentation, and I decided to get fancy by downloading some custom fonts from the web and installing them on my home PC. Now, here’s the thing—I have to present this at school, and I’m starting to sweat a little. Will those custom fonts just magically show up on the school computer, or am I going to have to lug them over there on a thumb drive and install them myself? I know, I know, it might sound like a rookie question, but I really don't want to walk into class only to have my entire layout fall apart because the formatting broke. This project is pretty huge for me, and I can't afford to have it look like a total mess. Thanks in advance! 🙂

I did a little digging, and honestly, there isn't much in the way of actual reviews out there. It seems like a lot of people are running into the same wall with this board—they just can't get a decent overclock to stick. I’ve been reading accounts where the CPU voltage refuses to budge regardless of what you do in the BIOS. People try bumping it by +50mV, +100mV, or even +150mV, and yet it stays stubbornly stuck at stock. Now, thinking back... yeah, I actually ran into that myself. Even after I tried pushing it up by +50mV, it just sat there at 1.28V like nothing happened. Whatever. I think I'll just park the whole overclocking idea for now. To be fair, I'm actually pretty happy that I managed to squeeze a jump from 3.0 to 3.3 GHz out of it anyway. 😉

Thanks for the help! 🙂

So, the RAM was on "Auto" until now. I finally locked it at "880" today after all those failed overclocking attempts. Since then, the PC has booted up just fine and hasn't missed a beat all day. Honestly, I don't see much difference between "Auto" and "880" since the DRAM Frequency ends up being the exact same thing—880 MHz—but whatever. I'll probably just flip it back to "Auto" once I'm actually sitting in front of the rig.

But man, what is actually holding me back here? What's the real bottleneck killing my overclocking potential? The motherboard isn't exactly top-tier, but even so, it shouldn't have such a low ceiling. The RAM seems solid enough, considering it handles 1333 MHz without breaking a sweat. Could this be a bad CPU? Did I just get stuck with a dud model?

I’m with Junior on this one. Honestly, I feel like people on this forum love to tear into certain budget power supplies just because they carry a cheap price tag, rather than actually pointing out any real flaws in the hardware itself.

I bumped the voltage up by "+50mV"—that’s actually the smallest increment possible, I misspoke about that in my previous post—and pushed the FSB to 230. I fired up Prime95 to see if it would hold, but the second test just died after a single second and slapped me with a BSOD (specifically, page_fault_in_nonpaged_area). So, naturally, I went straight back into the BIOS to revert everything to how it was before (FSB back to 220 and CPU voltage set to "Auto"), but I did switch the DRAM Frequency from "Auto" to "880," since I've heard through the grapevine that you shouldn't leave anything on "Auto" when you're messing with overclocks. 😁 The moment I hit "Save changes & Exit", the whole machine just shut itself down. It flickered back to life for maybe a second or two right after that—honestly, I have no clue why it did that or what it signifies, though I suppose I should mention it.

I’m going to give the voltage a shot... hopefully I don't end up frying the whole damn thing.😁 I’ll bump it up by just 5mV—that's the smallest increment available, anyway. I haven't touched the latencies yet. Honestly, I don't fully grasp what that actually entails; I know it has something to do with the RAM, some sort of access timing, I suppose, but who knows? And frankly, I doubt I can even adjust it on this motherboard. Regarding the DRAM Frequency, I can set it to 800 if the FSB is at stock (which would be 200), or just leave it on Auto (based on the Democratic Party settings). Now that the FSB is sitting at 220, I've got either 880 or Auto to work with. It looks like it's currently set to 880. I actually went and asked over on the Asus forums about how to configure the FSB:RAM divider—or multiplier, whatever you want to call it—and they told me it isn't manually adjustable; it just scales automatically based on the FSB. Apparently, the RAM stays locked in a 1:2 ratio, or at least that’s what CPU-Z is telling me. 🙂

1. It looks like the processor clock speed is probably pushed way too high, which is why Prime95 keeps throwing errors and crashing during the stress test. In the "results.txt" file, it says "FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.5, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file." Now, what on earth does this "rounding" thing actually mean? Does it have anything to do with my RAM?

2. According to the specs for my motherboard, it’s supposed to support 1333MHz OC RAM. Right now, my RAM is running at 440MHz—mostly because I’ve got the FSB set to 220, though the stock setting is 200. How do I actually hit that 1333MHz mark on the RAM? I heard someone mention that since my CPU is stuck at an 800 MHz FSB, that might be capping the max RAM speed. Is that true?

Alexander Moore67 said:just give it a shot, won't cost you much🤣

It might. $117 😢 Honestly, I’d rather skip the experiment entirely if there’s even a slight chance of making a massive, stupid mistake.

I need a quick answer here! I’ve got this situation where I need to drop a power supply into a build running a Pentium, an ASUS card, and a single 160GB HDD. The problem is, the 12V rail on this PSU only puts out 5A. Now, look, the CPU and GPU aren't exactly power hogs, but that rail is capped at 60W total. If the processor pulls 35W max, and the graphics card probably takes another 35W, then you still have to account for the hard drive... Should I actually try this and see if it works? What’s the absolute worst-case scenario here? Are we talking about a literal meltdown/fire, or will the computer just refuse to boot? Right now, this exact power supply is sitting in a rig with some integrated graphics on an AM2 motherboard—the CPU is a mystery, honestly, but between that and the 160GB HDD, everything runs perfectly fine. (I'll dig around to find out which specific processor it is and get back to you.)

I don't even know where to start with this one. It’s just... it's a mess. Honestly, I feel like I'm losing my mind trying to make sense of the sheer chaos of it all. Sometimes you think you've seen everything, you think you've hit rock bottom with the nonsense people pull, and then—bam—something like this happens. It's exhausting. Just completely draining. I need a drink. Or a nap. Probably both. kaže:
I’ve been sitting here staring at this Tom's Hardware review for the latest hardware, and honestly? My head is spinning. It’s one of those deep dives that makes you realize just how much we take for granted until we start looking at the benchmarks. I spent the better part of my afternoon trying to wrap my brain around these numbers, and frankly, I feel like I need a drink. Or a nap. Probably both. There's a lot of technical jargon flying around—typical for these kinds of write-ups—but if you strip away the fluff, the core message is pretty clear. Performance is up, sure, but at what cost? It feels like every single leap forward requires us to dump an entire paycheck into a new rig just to see a marginal improvement in frame rates. It’s exhausting. I find myself nodding along to some of the points made by Jeffrey Peterson, but then I hit a section where the logic seems... well, let's just say "questionable" would be a polite way to put it. He’s got a point about the thermal throttling, but his take on the power draw feels a bit hyperbolic, don't you think? And don't even get me started on the price-to-performance ratio. We’re being sold this dream of seamless, high-fidelity gaming, yet the reality is often just more heat, more noise, and a much emptier wallet. I was talking to crimsonstag84 about this the other day—well, I was mostly venting at him while he tried to explain why my old setup wasn't cutting it anymore—and we reached the same conclusion. It's getting harder to justify these incremental upgrades. It’s all very well and good to talk about teraflops and clock speeds, but for those of us who aren't living in a lab or working at Intel, it starts to feel a bit disconnected from reality. I suppose I'll keep reading, though. Someone has to stay informed, right? Even if it means a headache.

Based on what I'm seeing here, the integrated graphics are nowhere near strong enough. Honestly, looking at all these different sites... it’s all just incredibly sketchy. One page says this, the next one says that... it's completely inconsistent.

I can't say I quite follow that. It sounds like one of those nonsense words people toss around when they aren't paying attention, or maybe just some inside joke I'm too out of the loop to catch. Honestly, if this is some new slang popping up on the forums, I'm going to need a manual and probably a coffee to make sense of it. Anyway, moving on... kaže:
Doesn't matter.

I’m going to try running this through Google Translate... ☕

So, I was poking around, wondering what kind of integrated graphics I actually had on this new motherboard of mine... then I head over to Game Debate to run some comparisons against my current setup, only to find out that the integrated chip is supposedly 18% faster!😲 Now, the site claims that, but I’m sitting here wondering if that actually holds up in the real world once you start running stuff. I'm looking at an Asus EN210 512MB paired with Intel GMA X4500 integrated on an Asus P5G41T-M LX3 board 🍿

darkowl72 said:A 7% difference? On what, 60fps? That's like 4.2fps... you wouldn't even notice with your own eyes...

And honestly, GameDebate isn't exactly a gold standard for anything. If you actually want to compare those two cards properly, go check HWCompare. You'll see the seven series only holds a tiny lead in memory bandwidth—maybe 7%—but the six series actually beats it in both texel and pixel fill rates, which makes sense given its shader count and TMUs. So, asking "which one is better" is a massive stretch, especially for such a minuscule percentage. You have to factor in the CPU, and frankly, the specific game you're playing matters too, since different titles lean on certain hardware features differently...

http://www.hwcompare.com/11774/radeo...adeon-hd-7750/

Thanks for clearing that up! 🙂 If you don't mind, could you please tackle the second half of my question? How much of a hit am I going to take on graphics performance, considering my motherboard only has a PCIe x4 slot instead of an x16? Is it even "worth it" to buy a new card at all if my motherboard is this old? (I'm not planning on swapping out the motherboard anytime soon because that's just too huge an investment right now. And if I do, I'd be forced into buying a new CPU and RAM as well...)

crimsonstag84 said:The Radeon HD 7750 is basically just an HD 6770 in disguise, except for one thing: it’s actually efficient. It pulls about half the power—only 50W even when you're pushing it at full load. Honestly, it's a massive difference if you aren't trying to melt your power supply. 😉

So, I was actually going back and forth on this with a buddy at school today. We were debating performance specs, and according to Game Debate, the Radeon HD 7750 is about 6% more powerful than the 6770. Just one of those little technical deep dives that turns into a whole thing when you're just trying to kill time between classes. 😁 ...anyway, I’m curious—how much of a performance hit am I actually taking if my motherboard only has an x4 PCIe slot? (Look, I know, I know... the board is absolute garbage, don't even start with me). It feels like my frame rates are just tanking because of this bottleneck, regardless of how mediocre the rest of my gaming rig actually is.