Re: I hate... oh I guess everyone -- PCTECH

From: daparnin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Like I said, I haven't done the current research that you have.  Unless
I'm
misunderstanding it looks like you may be using the nVidia along with the
built-in motherboard video.  That may be the source of the
incompatibility.
If so, you may have to disable the on board video and buy a second nVidia
card.  An AGP slot would give you better performance but since you don't
have one then you will have to go with the PCI-whatever.


Nope, no AGP slot.  Decent on-board hardware (an ATI 7000, I think), but
it's throttled down to 1024x768 in order to support terminal services.  If
you make the resolution any higher, what you get is a "virtual desktop",
where it only show 1024x768 pixels of the screen as a time, and as you move
the cursor it "scrolls".  Not much good for anything.

When I built my system a few years ago I decided to splurge.  I decided to
invest more up front to not compromise what I really wanted, get good
quality, and have a fast system that would last longer than a low-priced
one.  It looks like you are a "value-conscious" consumer.  I'm all for
saving money as long as you get what you want.  I "saved" money by
investing in the specific components and not buying a brand name like the
xSeries.


On the cost-conscious side, yes and no.  I bought the xSeries because I got
a decent deal from IBM: dual 3.2 Xeon with 2MB cache, 2GB of RAM and 146GB
of 15K RAID-5 disk for about $3000.  This is a machine that ought to last a
couple of years, and I couldn't match the price anywhere (the disks alone
cost $900).  I could probably beat the price if I built my own, but not by
much, and I don't really want my mission critical systems to depend on my
hardware expertise (or lack thereof) :).

If it's just business apps then you should be fine going the
low-price route.  If you plan on playing games or playing/editing video
you
may want/need to invest a bit more than $100.  Again, I'm not up on the
latest cards, prices, and performance.  YMMV.


On the other hand, yeah, I am trying to be a little cost-conscious on the
board.  I don't need a $500 board; I really just want to have the extra real
estate for application development (it's really nice to have two full pages
of a document up, or be able to have Google and Word side by side; now I
want to take advantage of that same width for WDSC).  So all I need is a
card that can handle SWXGA resolution and fit in one of my slots.  I have
several PCI-X slots and two PCI-E slots, with the caveat that the PCI-E
slots are only 8x.

Unfortunately, people advertising on Google are now using "PCI-X" to stand
for PCI Express, so I can't even FIND any PCI-X cards.

So I continue to hate hardware :).

Joe