THE COMPUTER THREAD

[kodiakthejuggler]

If you're getting DDR2 I'd recommend paying $20 more for 2x2GB sticks of DDR2 1066 and getting an E8400 rather than the E7500 it's got double the amount of L2 cache for around $24 more. Upgrades in stuff like that you'll see a difference in performance if you were to play any games on the system.

I'm going to stick with Windows XP for now, so with the capper of 3.5 gigs of RAM available to it, would it be overkill to go for the 4 gigs of ram? Or is it just a better deal in case I decide to upgrade to a 64 bit OS in the near future? I certainly don't mind paying 20 bucks more for something that will give me good upgrade options. Not a bad deal, in any case. And yes, I do play the occasional game, so I do want the extra oomph.

[Doctor Who?]

OK so I was able to make a region free copy of that Doctor Who DVD I bought. However my computer needed me to change the region setting on my DVD burner to initially read the disc.

This is fine, next time i put in a normal region (1 in my case) disc, it'll switch back. But then I wondered, is it possible to set my computer's DVD drive to region free?

Well is it? If so how?

This pretty much requires a firmware hack, and there are many out there.

There are also sometimes hardware-specific "switches" for drives that will reset a drive's region setting count, but it may only work so many times before the drive locks. Depends on the drive, but for some of them holding the eject button during power-up will do it.

Try searching for your drive here or search Google for your drive model + region + firmware for a permanent solution.

A program called dvdregionkiller is what I have always used to make my computer's dvd drive region free.

[jewishcarpenter]

If you're getting DDR2 I'd recommend paying $20 more for 2x2GB sticks of DDR2 1066 and getting an E8400 rather than the E7500 it's got double the amount of L2 cache for around $24 more. Upgrades in stuff like that you'll see a difference in performance if you were to play any games on the system.

I'm going to stick with Windows XP for now, so with the capper of 3.5 gigs of RAM available to it, would it be overkill to go for the 4 gigs of ram? Or is it just a better deal in case I decide to upgrade to a 64 bit OS in the near future? I certainly don't mind paying 20 bucks more for something that will give me good upgrade options. Not a bad deal, in any case. And yes, I do play the occasional game, so I do want the extra oomph.

It never hurts to be prepared and as far as the video card goes I'd stay away from the 4670 you don't want a video with a 128-bit interface I'd recommend something with at least 256-bit otherwise you'll notice some serious bottle-necking when you're playing a game that might put a strain on your video card. As someone that's owned only ATI at this point I'm going to recommend also looking into NVidia's stuff as well the next card I buy is going to have an NVidia chipset in it.

[Tony]

Awesome. Thanks a bunch for the input. Unlike the way I normally do things, I'm taking my time to fully research these purchases to get the best bang for my buck. Being that my hardware choices are usually at least a year behind when it comes to technology, prices have come down so far that I can get something that's really not that old in terms of how fast technology advances. I'll be quite pleased with my new setup, and it will last me for a while.

Yeah, being a year behind will let you play everything out there at literally half the cost of "bleeding edge" or less.

I'm going to stick with Windows XP for now, so with the capper of 3.5 gigs of RAM available to it, would it be overkill to go for the 4 gigs of ram? Or is it just a better deal in case I decide to upgrade to a 64 bit OS in the near future? I certainly don't mind paying 20 bucks more for something that will give me good upgrade options. Not a bad deal, in any case. And yes, I do play the occasional game, so I do want the extra oomph.

Definitely go for 4Gigs - you may lose 1/2 Gig of it on XP32, but you're gaining another 1.5Gigs, and you'll still have two slots left for more later.

[gbeenie]

If you're getting DDR2 I'd recommend paying $20 more for 2x2GB sticks of DDR2 1066 and getting an E8400 rather than the E7500 it's got double the amount of L2 cache for around $24 more. Upgrades in stuff like that you'll see a difference in performance if you were to play any games on the system.

I'm going to stick with Windows XP for now, so with the capper of 3.5 gigs of RAM available to it, would it be overkill to go for the 4 gigs of ram? Or is it just a better deal in case I decide to upgrade to a 64 bit OS in the near future? I certainly don't mind paying 20 bucks more for something that will give me good upgrade options. Not a bad deal, in any case. And yes, I do play the occasional game, so I do want the extra oomph.

If you're buying XP anyway, you might as well go for the 64-bit version of XP Professional (XP Home doesn't have a 64-bit version, alas).

[gbeenie]

The OS won't recognize more than 3gig of RAM if it's 32-bit.

[gbeenie]

How much RAM does it have (I'm too lazy to find your post about it)?

[jewishcarpenter]

Well technically it won't recognize 3.25GB if RAM if I had money I'd drop it on Vista 64-bit that way it'll recognize more than 2TB hard drive space as well.

[Tony]

The OS won't recognize more than 3gig of RAM if it's 32-bit.

No shit? Bugger.

I just got a computer with 32-bit Vista preinstalled. I suppose I'm stuck with that until next computer (3+ years from now)?

This help ya feel better? Straight from Wikipedia:

Limitations
Most 64-bit microprocessors on the market today have an artificial limit on the amount of memory they can address, because physical constraints make impossible to support the full 16.8 million terabyte capacity. For example, the AMD Athlon X2 has a 40-bit address bus and recognizes only 48 bits of the 64-bit virtual address[1]. The newer Barcelona X4 supports a 48-bit of physical address and 48 bits of the 64-bit virtual address.

It's doubtful you'll need more than the 3.5Gigs that 32-bit Windows supports over the next three years. There really doesn't seem to be enough support for 64-bit apps and games right now to make it worthwhile for most people anyway.

If you just bought a new PC, it should be able to run a 64-bit OS just like everything else these days. You could buy the new version of Windows and add more RAM instead of buying a new PC. 'Course it might be cheaper to buy a faster PC at that point anyway.

FWIW, WinXP 32-bit with 4Gigs RAM

[kodiakthejuggler]

I'm just going to do a fresh install of the XP I already have, just because there are still some programs I use that are not available for the 64 bit OS yet. It's just more convenient. Besides, I'm not all that miffed that I'd lose the extra 1.75 gigs of RAM. I'll buy the 4 gigs because it's still pretty darn cheap and I can upgrade to the 64 bit OS later.

[kodiakthejuggler]

Question about RAM: If the Gigabyte motherboard I'm getting says it supports 1.8 volt RAM, and the RAM I get is 2 or 2.1, will that cause instability? Do I need to get RAM that matches the voltage on my mobo's DIMM slots?

[gbeenie]

I would go to the web site for your RAM manufacturer; most of the big ones have pretty detailed lists of which motherboards are compatible.

[Tony]

Question about RAM: If the Gigabyte motherboard I'm getting says it supports 1.8 volt RAM, and the RAM I get is 2 or 2.1, will that cause instability? Do I need to get RAM that matches the voltage on my mobo's DIMM slots?

No you're good. If the board doesn't auto-adjust to the RAM or if you're just not satisfied with the voltage the board chooses, you'll be able to change it in very small increments. Both of my main Gigabyte boards (GA-X38-DQ6 and GA-EP45-DS3L) support 1.4v to well beyond 2.4v for RAM.

This info is probably buried somewhere deep in the User Manual.

[jewishcarpenter]

In my experience you're always going to get the machine dirtier quicker when it's on the floor especially if it's a hardwood floor. I keep my towers on my desktops. I also buy nice looking towers which I like to show off.

[jewishcarpenter]

Not a clue I've got animals at my house and had hardwood floors and carpeting and switching between floor and desktop there was a significant difference in how much dust and hair my fans collected in my case. If you have 80mm, 90mm, or 120mm fans I might suggest something like one of these if there's enough space to to fit it between the intake fan and the case. You'd probably have to go to www.frozencpu.com for an 80mm filter though.