[J3Vr6]

Man, I'm happy.  I was talking the other week to one of the guys at work (he's actually the son-in-law of one of the 4 owners) how my little 450 mhz amd was coughing up chunks and that laptop was totally un-upgradable (remember my posts about it? probably not) .

Well, he just told me that he ran into some computer problems with his wifes computer.  He said he tried installing a new sound card on the thing but forgot to disable the integrated one from the bios and the computer didn't like it.  Instead of trying to get it to work, and partly because he wanted to buy a whole new system for himself and give his current one to his wife, he decided to give it to me!!!  

He doesn't know if it works or not after he tried installing the sound card but he said it's mine to fix if I want to.  It's an AMD 1500 or something like that (I'm so not familiar with AMD or even motherboards) and said it can hold up to a 1.5 ghz amd processor.

He says he has the motherboard, a processor, and a video card for me.  I'm going over his house at lunch to pick it up.  I don't know what processor it is or what video card, but I'll post about it when I get back.

I think he just had a conflict and removing that soundcard would have done the trick.  I don't know, and I am certainly not qualified to build my own computer but I'm gonna give it a shot.  I'll ask the IT guy here to help me since he lives so close to me.

If I can get this to work I can finally play current versions FS_Open!  Plus all the games I couldn't play that were awesome in the last few years!

[Fractux]

If the board had integrated audio, you just have to remove any software/drivers for it, then disable it in the bios.

Then istall the new soundcard.

If that's the problem then yoou got yourself a computer for a 5 minute job

Hope it works out.

Cheers!

[IceFire]

Was just going to suggest that.  Also put the sound card in PCI slot 4 (count slots until you reach number 4) if the mobo has that many slots.  Tends to cause less issues with soundcards apparently.

[J3Vr6]

Well I'm back  It's a Gigabyte Socket A GA-7VRXP.  It can hold an AMD Athlon, Athlon XP or a Duron (K7) but I have no idea how big those chips can get.  It says it can support 1.4 ghz and faster… how fast is the fastest though?  It has 128k L1 and 256k/64k l2 cache on die (what is that?).

200/266mhz FSB and DDR bus speeds (what is that?)

It supposed DDR DRAM PC1600/PC2100/PC2700 in 3 184-pin DDR sockets.

It has 1 AGP slot that supports 4x/2x mode & is AGP 2.0 copmliant.  Does this rule out getting a Radeon?  Also had 5 pci slots.

It also has an onboard RAID but I have no idea what that is so I won’t go into the details.  Anyone know?

Also says it supports dual bios... um, whatever.

He gave me a case along with it, plus a 32 meg video card with no markings.  But he said it was a cheap-o.

I couldn't tell how fast the processor was cuz it had a big fan on it.

So, what can you guys tell me?

[Fury]

Apparently it supports up to 2600+ when patched to latest BIOS. At least BIOS updates do not mention higher speeds.

Latest Athlon XP's works with 266MHz DDR FSB speeds, meaning that you get full support for Athlon XP's using 266 MHz FSB.

No it doesn't.

The motherboard's specs didn't say what levels of RAID it supports and I won't bother digging into that. But you can find out what different RAID types are out there by visiting this website. http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html Although basically it means you can use more than four IDE devices.

Dual BIOS is handy when you screw up a BIOS update. Normally you're screwed if the motherboard does not support flashing from a CD or floppy even if BIOS is unusable, second BIOS is used in a case first does not work properly, eg. after a bad bios flash.

You should be able to check what processor it is by looking at the POST table which is shown during early stages of boot. Press pause/break button on your keyboard to keep the table shown as long as you want.

[J3Vr6]

Thanks Fury.

I asked the guy and he has an AMD 1800 on there now.  How fast is a 2600 in mhz?  I guess i can google and find out.

U posted "No it doesn't"  No it doesn't, what?  I think you're referring to the Radeon and whether or not the agp slot rules it out or not but I'm not sure as u didn't really quote.

Besides that, I gotta take my 450 mhz apart and get my Geforce 2 MX out (32 megs) for now.  Plus I gotta put in my harddrives, but I'll probably buy a new one and start from scratch since the other ones are full.

What operating system do you recommend me using?  Plus anything else u guys can suggest or tell me?

[Fury]

2600+ is 2,13 GHz.
I was referring to your Radeon question.
WinXP.

[Grey Wolf]

1800+, meanwhile, is a little above 1.5 ghz.

[Flipside]

Hmmmmmmmm... AMD Didn't make many friends when they started screwing around with their numbers

[Grey Wolf]

They started because of Intel's stupid propaganda durring the Willy era, which basically said "Look, more MHz!"

[karajorma]

There are lots of people who would assume that a 2GHz AMD and 2GHz Pentium are equivalent and they decided it wasn't worth the hassle of repeatedly explain it.

Personally I think AMD made a good choice not just from the marketting standpoint but also for those of us who don't know which chip is equivalent without having to get a table out.

[Falcon]

I have  a Radeon 9000 that supports AGP 4x/2x So you should have no problem with getting a Radon card.

[Admiral LSD]

My 9500 Pro is also fairly flexible as to what slot types it supports. It'll work in 2X, 4X or 8X slots on a voltage of 3.3V, 1.5V or even 0.8V. Not all cards are like this though so make absolutely sure your new card supports whatever voltage your board supplies. At best, the new card won't fit as the "keys" on the slot connect won't allow it but at worst, you may end up frying both the card and the board.

[deep_eyes]

whats wrong with a 400mhz system.... fs2... command and conquer generals and freelancer runs just fine here....

[Falcon]

What would you rather have a 400mhz processor or a 2ghz processor?

[Star Dragon]

It did the job but I couldn't have 400 ships battling to the death on my PII 400 Mhz and actively participate, lag every other second...

   But when I upgraded to my P4 1.8 gig no worries mate! (minor lag), now I can mix it up in the hell that is war!

[Falcon]

Yeah, and all of the were Colossus class ships and Juggernaughts. :devil:

[J3Vr6]

Thanks for all your help guys.  I wasn't able to work on it this weekend cuz my girlfriend was over.

But I have a question someone here said I could do, but am not sure:

As it is now, can I just connect my existing harddrive that has Windows 98 (that I was using in my 450mhz) and power it up to see if it works?  I think all I'd have to do is check the bios to see if my harddrive was detected...

I'm planning on buying a new harddrive as my other ones are completely full to capacity and just use one of them as the operating system and virtual memory.  And the other one will be storage (probably get something like an 80 gig or something)  But til then I was wondering if I can just power up the sucker and see what happens.

[pyro-manic]

Should work. How well it will work is another matter (drivers and stuff could cause problems). Have a go and see!

[J3Vr6]

So there's absolutely no way of blowing up the motherboard or processor if I was to connect my old harddrive?