Newbie Questions, To Upgrade or Replace 3 systems?

[bumperscookie_2002]

Firstly, this site is astoundingly amazing, thank you so much for creating it! Stupdendous!

I have 3 different systems and want to do something with one or all of them but I'm not sure what the best approach is.

The main one is a 2.5 year old custom built gaming machine almost identical in specs to the SuperPC, God I love this thing!:D I didn't build it though, I paid someone else to do it, which seems rather silly now but ya know, it's a gradual learning experience! :cool:

Having a problem with the graphics card saying there's not enough power so it's auto-lowering the settings, even though there is enough power as it's in one of those spiffy 450 Watt Aztec towers and I had the techs confirm that there is more than enough power. They told me to just ignore the warning that comes up :confused: but it never did this before I upgraded the graphics card and I want to resolve the issue as well as upgrade the processor (AMD Athalon 64 3000+) and RAM (3-512 sticks).

Second system is a 6-year old top-end HP that needs upgrading but still works better than the third system.

Third system is a 2-year old piece of crap :mad: cheapo Compaq that hasn't worked right since the day we bought it and is in the closet collecting dust :mad: From what I can determine the internal network card is defective as it won't maintain a wireless connection and is constantly having fatal errors even after reformatting the hard drive with the Compaq installation discs (a set of 10 ordered from Compaq, the on-board "restore" feature never works of course).

So I guess my three first questions right now are:

1. Anybody know how to resolve the graphics card issue on the custom built? (NVidia GeForce 7600 GS)? And is it possible on the Asus MB to replace the 512 sticks with 1 giggers?

2. How can I determine the ability to upgrade any of the systems without waisting money on components that aren't compatible? I pretty much only want to focus on this for the custom built and the HP as the Compaq is going to be my learning machine and I intend to have fun internally torturing it for all the grief it has given me, after which I will pitch it off the roof of the house :eek: :D

Okay not really, what I want to do with the Compaq is get it running properly without the errors, replace whatever components are causing the issues, is there some sort of diagnostic program that anybody would recommend for me to run in order to determine it's major malfunctions?

I have System Mechanic 6 but it always seems to cause more problems than it fixes so I don't have it installed on any of the machines. Should I rely on that or is there something better out there for this type of thing?

3. Are these quad cores the way to go now or is there something new coming down the pike shortly? Mine is not even a duo-core in the custom built, I got the system just before duo-cores came out :( And what about Vista? Have the bugs been sufficiently worked out to take the big leap or should I stick to XP?

Anybody that can give me some guidance on any/all of this would be my hero for sure!

[shyster]

Well I will answer what I can and hope someone else picks up the slack.

1. I am not familiar with the power needs of that graphics card, but I am sure if your PSU is working correctly it should have enough power to run it. Even the second newest cards the 8800GTS's only require 400 watts to run correctly. Of course you should always go above the minimum requirements but that is getting off topic.

The graphics card itself, or the software that runs it, too be more precise, is telling you that you do not have enough power? I have never heard of such a thing I guess you could try opening the case and making sure everything is actually connected to it. That would mean making sure the GPU is correctly sitting where it should be, and that it has a power connection running to it, if it has a place for a power connection to plug in. Although unlikely that would seem to be the quickest and least costly solution.

The second thing you could try would be getting a new PSU, it is possible that your power supply actually has gone bad, these things do happen especially since it is older.

If you could find out the exact make and specifications of your board we could tell you more, but you should definately be able to change out your 512 Ram for 1gb ram. Of course you need to make sure which style of ram it is and get the correct ram accordingly. For example is it ddr, ddr2 or dd3, etc. Clearly it will not be ddr3 since that is new and barely out now, but it could be dd2 I am not sure on when those first started coming out. After confirming which type of RAM it is second would be to find some good, cheap RAM and then make sure it is compatible with the board itself, even if a board supports dd2 RAM it may only support a bus speed of 600 instead of 800 so that limits which style of ram you should look at and how fully you could use the ram.

By the way it sounds like you are currently using three sticks of ram and not two or four? Is there some reason for that setup? As I understand it most RAM configurations always work best in pairs.

2. There are programs out there that can auto detect your software, since your program manager does not always do a great job of it. Find one of those programs run it on the computer whose information you want, and them post the specs. That will give us an idea of how much it can be upgraded, and from there you can tell us what you want to do with it. For example do you just want to upgrade the RAM on one of them so that you can use it to serf the ever expanding high traffic and memory use of the web? Or do you want to be able to play some mid range games on it, which would require probably a new graphics card as well.

Compaqs are peices of $H!+ plain and simple. In the old days more so, but even still today. I had one, it was my first actual pc, and it would crash everytime it went into sleep mode. That was just one in a numerous series of errors that it had.

Of course none of that is any consolation to you other than that you have company in your misery. I guess it is too late to call them for tech support? I know Dell usually offers some kind of service plans for there computers that are always at least a year long and sometimes longer if you get the extended plans. So that would be the best thing if you still have it as an option.

Other than that I hate compaq too much to even begin to think straight enough to figure out your problem.

If you could elaborate on what type of problems you are getting we could probably narrow it down, but just saying "constantly having fatal errors" without any cause behind them is too vague. Do they usually happen while trying to run games, MS office, or even from trying to move the mouse left at 10 frames a second instead of 5?

Again compaq is just a shifty company that uses cheapass parts so I do not know if it is really worth fixing, but probably the easest way to get an idea would be to load on a fresh OS without relying on the compaq crap.

A fresh OS could possibly resolve the fatal errors problem as compaq puts too much extra software on their computers than there computers can handle.

The network card, as well as your other problems could as be something as simple as updating your drivers. Old drivers often cause problems when run with programs that require newer drivers.

3. Quad cores are really for graphics work and video work, if you are not doing such things, they are usually not worth the extra money. If all you are doing is playing games and not doing any graphic or video work at all, nor do you plan to in the future a duo core should be fine.

I know absolutely nothing about AMD so you will need someone elses help here but again we will need the specs or model number of your motherboard to which which chip slot it has, and consequently which CPU it can use. It is possible you could not even use a duo or quad core depending on if you have an old chip slot.

As for vista yeah it is pretty good, I have had it about a month now, and other than forgetting to run rivatuner with my video card, and causing a BSOD because of it, I have not had any problems with it. It takes some getting used to compared to XP visually and I am still trying to tweak it to a confortable place, but change is always painful I am told. Ricky also mentioned in another thread that service pack one is due out within the next month or two and that should also fix numerous things.

As a side note, because I do not know the full use of your computer if security is a big issue for you, and I mean that both in protecting your computer and not being spied on by microsoft, vista may not be for you. I have heard they have tracking software built into vista and there are still numerous sercurity leaks if the computer is going to be used for business purposes. Of course these things are hearsay and I have no actual proof of them, just things I have heard, so if I am wrong someone please correct me.

Hopefully I have answered at least some of your questions, as well as given you some questions to think on and answer so that we can help you further.

[chunkylover53]

Yeah, what he said. :o

Cookie: Two things. One, post the Model numbers of the Compaq and the HP. Two, I like PC Wizard as a free tool to find out what hardware you have in your system. Easier than looking at the components themselves.

http://pc-wizard-2008.en.softonic.com/

[RickyTick]

If its a 7600GS AGP then there is an additional power connector becasue the AGP interface does not provide enough power to run the card fully. The connector is on the back end of the card. You could simply connect a molex connector or molex Y from an existing power source.

If its a PCI version of the 7600 then, I don't know. Maybe something isn't connected properly. My bet is you have the AGP version.

Like the other fellas said, we need more information about your systems.

[bumperscookie_2002]

Wow Shyster and others, thank you so much for taking the time to reply, I'm sorry I'm just seeing this in June! I had the links to this site running off the HP which subsequently crashed and I couldn't remember the name of this site!

Now it is many months later, I've ripped apart and re-built 3 machines!! Two pc's and a laptop! I've toasted the Compaq, the HP is now nothing more than a server, my custom built has a few upgrades and even some pretty LED fans!

Just a bit of independant progress since this original post! lol

AND I'm getting ready to build a gaming machine with two Athlon Phenom quad cores, two 9600 GT cards, 6 gigs of RAM, and a mondo hard drive to hold all the videos, games, music and such I can stuff onto it! Since there isn't a game on the market yet that even requires that kind of juice, I figure it shouldn't become obsolete for at least a six months or so! lol

I'm addicted to new components! I feel like a power junkie and it's not like I even need them! I replace a fan and want to find a better one a week later! What do they call that around here besides insane? lol

Seriously though, I read through all your answers and have learned stuff anyway about RAM and how to know what to look for, so it wasn't completely wasted typing, and thank you for your help!