The right Card for my needs?

Dublin_Gunner

The angled ones are great - I usually then tuck the rest of the cable behind the casing where the drives are, and then just route what I need to the back of the drive

I can't imagine any major problems, but then again - it is a Dell, so you'll just have to try and see!!

(no disrespect to Dell pre-builds, its just problems can occur with any proprietary based system)

jasonb

Picking up the Card and PSU this evening in Komplett, so I'll be doing this tonight and I'll let you know how I got on tomorrow.

I've read lots of good things about the 4850 from online reviews, but worryingly I've read lots of bad things about the 4850 & FSX ( which is what my main use will be ). Something to do with Nvidia Drivers better suiting FSX than ATI Drivers. Anyhow, I'll get the card working first and then suss out FSX!

J.

Dublin_Gunner

I wouldn't worry too much about FSX. Its probably one of the most dreadfully optimised games ever made.

Toms Hardware did a test - and an old 8800GTX beat EVERY new card lol

Its just the engine used in the game is crap. It looks good, but its really very poorly optimised.

It will still run fine on the 4850, but maybe not as nice as you'd hope.

jasonb

Well, considering I'm currently using a Ge Force 6200 256Mb PCI and my monitor is only a 19" at 1280 x 1024, hopefully the 4850 can still impress me!

J.

oMega_2093

I would go for the HD 4770 rather than the 4850. Sometimes 4770 outperforms 4850, and it has a very low power consumption, so it should work well with lower power supplies, though I would also recommend you to buy a good PSU (such as Corsair 550W, OCZ 550W... that's more than enough).

jasonb

Thanks for the tips Omega but unfortunately I've already bought the PSU and Card now!

Well, I've got all sorts of problems with the PC, but I don't think either are linked to the new PSU and Card. The PSU was easy enough to install and the PC booted up perfectly with it.

Then the card was also easy to install, especially as it's 8 inches long ( not 9 inches which are the dimensions given by a few different websites ) so it stops just short of the Sata Cables. I booted up the PC again, ran the install from the disk and everything was rosy.

But then I hit a few weird problems. I was removing a USB Memory Stick ( after stopping it ) and I got a Blue Screen. Once I recovered from that I did the same thing ( to test it ) and it happened again.

Then, after having the PC up and running for 3 days and 'fully patched', Windows finally detects that IE8 is available as an important update. So I installed that. And then it detected Vista SP2 ( why didn't it spot either of these updats back on Mon / Tues? ). When I went to install that, it said one of the loaded drivers was incompatible ( MSDSM ) and to check a KB article which was to do with Remote Storage for Windows Server 2008. Then it Blue Screened again.

A quick check online ( which actually took ages 'cos Eircom was having DNS issues again last night ) suggested this might be my Sound Blaster X-Fi Card, so I removed it and SP2 installed fine. And getting Blue Screens while removing the USB Memory Stick has also stopped.

So, where I am now is tonight I need to install the X-Fi again and see if it's ok. Also, I think the USB Stick issue might have been from adding my monitor, which has a USB Hub ( and I removed the Hub to see if that helped ) so I'll add the Hub again and see what happens.

And then, and only then, will I get around to installing FSX and seeing what it's like! All I can say about the 4850 so far is that it was easy to install, I've now put the latest drivers on too, and I'm now 5.9 across the board in the Windows Experience Index. But I haven't tested the card apart from that yet, hopefully tonight if the Blue Screens stay away...

J.

Dublin_Gunner

There have been various issues with the XF-I cards and Vista since launch - however I was certain that the latest driver should have sorted that out?

Creative are probably the worst manufacturer when it comes to drivers though, and as far as I recall, you need special modded drivers to get the XF-I niceness in Vista (as Creative haven't bothered themselves, in over 2 years to release drivers that work with Vista's non-use of a hardware abstraction layer, disgraceful from Creative IMO).

What I did with my XF-I was - got rid. I used onboard sound for my games and barely noticed the difference. The onboard had full surround sound, and dolby, so sounded pretty good.

jasonb

I'm very tempted to go that route myself. The onboard sounds supports 7.1 and I'm only using 2 speakers anyhow. The most I could see myself using is 2.1 and to be honest I just don't use the sound that much, or expect that much from it. So sticking with the onboard is probably easier all around! I mean, how amazing can the drone of an engine in FSX sound?

Assuming reattaching the Monitor USB Hub ( which I need, to be honest, I need the extra USB ports ), isn't an issue then tonight will be all about getting FSX installed and setup as well as possible.

I have to say, the 4850 is physically very cool looking, and very quiet ( unless I put the fan up to 100% which I only did once to see how loud it was! ). There are some vents in the side panel of the Dell and I now have a blue glow coming from the side of the PC from the card.

Anyhow, hopefully tonight will go smoother than last night. If I have more ISP issues I might look at Open DNS or something like that, I'm tired of the Internet being dog slow just when I need it to look up a solution / download drivers etc.

J.

Dublin_Gunner

I always download every driver I'll need in advance of a new build / upgrade, and burn them all to a disk so I have everything for when I put it together.

Bit late for that now I know, but maybe something to remember in the future

Let us know how you get on later anyway

jasonb

That's a good point about the drivers. I'd do something like that if I was messing around with the only PC I could connect to the Internet with, but I didn't think of doing it for a second PC install.

Anyhow, I'll update either later on tonight or tomorrow morning, hopefully I get FSX running this evening...

J.

jasonb

Well, I have to say, so far so good, I'm very impressed with FSX...

Got all the little issues ( USB Hubs etc. ) sorted very quickly and spent a little while double-checking I'd the latest drivers installed for everything. Then I went through the rather long FSX install ( including both Service Packs ) and followed a procedure I found online to get a decent starting point for the all settings.

Then I kicked off a flight and it looked great and was very smooth. So much so that I've already upped some of the settings and I'm still very happy with it. I reckon I'll keep on tweaking for a while to see what the max I can get is, but really I'm delighted with what it's doing so far, running really smooth with a pretty high level of detail, far far better than what I had before!

So thanks to everyone for all their help / advice and especially to Dublin_Gunner who spent almost as much time on this as I did! I'm off to fly around some more and see just how much I can really push the card ( I haven't even looked at the Over-clocking settings yet ) with the FSX settings. But as I'm already delighted with what I'm getting, anything more is just an even bigger bonus...

J.

Dublin_Gunner

No Problem at all

But most importantly - enjoy!

:D

jasonb

Oh don't worry, I will! FSX is a completely different experience now. Apart from the much higher levels of graphics and the much smoother flying, I'm also able to fly in the 3D Cockpit mode, which means I can spend much more time looking out the windows and only glancing at the controls rather than having a 2D panel of instruments taking up half the screen...

My only problem now is spending too much time using it. Thankfully the weekend is here

J.

Dublin_Gunner

He he excellent stuff!! You have plenty of time now to hone those piloting skills!

colmbob

hi, just looking for a bit of advice. im thinking of buying a laptop mainly for gaming and im wondering which graphics card would be better.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 512mb

or

NVIDIA GeForce GT 130M 1gb

Dublin_Gunner

colmbob wrote: »

hi, just looking for a bit of advice. im thinking of buying a laptop mainly for gaming and im wondering which graphics card would be better.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 512mb

or

NVIDIA GeForce GT 130M 1gb

Please start your own thread.