[Freddy]

I know Mav has had a lot to do the past couple of weeks, but maybe he will surprise us all in the new year 

Datahopa, another question - does the HD4890 provide integrated audio with the HDMI ?  Just wondering because currently I have been hooking my HD3850 up to my TV and it's handy having only the one cable.  I guess they wouldn't change that aspect...hmm ?

[Data]

Yes Freddy the HD4890 and HD4870 do put the audio through the HDMI cable if you want it to. Indeed one cable is a smart way of doing it, personally I don’t use it so I have turned it off but a friend of mine does use it and it works great.

[Freddy]

Cool thanks

I've been looking at memory too lately - it's gone up in price hugely - it's double the price it was last year.  I hope it comes down again.

[Data]

I built a system just over a month ago, memory was about half the price it is now, your right Freddy I hadn’t noticed it had gone up again and I was thinking of getting some more memory for mine, not going to happen now, or until the price drops.

Might get a blue ray ROM, can get one of them for about £45. and these ATI HDxxxx graphics cards have the HD codec built in. Ive downloaded some demo vids, all the video decoding is done using the graphics card GPU, and not the CPU, neat idea and picture quality is really good and silky smooth.

[lrh9]

The memory is too high. It's the seasonal demand. You have to love capitalism when it works in your favor, hate it when it doesn't.

The memory I bought for my system is now double the price. I've been eyeing hard drives, and saw the prices rising on them, but only until now did I link it to the time of year.

 

[Freddy]

Aha thanks, I never thought it could be seasonal...I can wait for it to come down.

Yes I have my eye on a blue ray too - this is part of the reason why I wanted to link my PC to the TV.  The one I was looking at was about £50 though I think, here it is :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Liteon-IHOS104-37-Internal-Blu-ray-Software/dp/B002BAT1GQ/ref=pd_cp_ce_1

Comes with some nice software apparently, but as you say the HD's can do playback already - even with stepping-up the images.  I was reading about that last night hehe..

As for hardrives - the SSD's seem astronomical still, but maybe the season has affected them too - IMHO they are just not viable yet, as they don't have enough capacity for me - yet.

[Data]

Ahh! Christmas that will be the reason then

From what I’ve read about blue ray on a PC, Power DVD 8 or 9 are probably the best players and they use the graphics card GPU for decoding the video, as we said, the HDxxxx cards already have the capability of playing the HD files ( H264 codec ) but you need Power DVD to get past all the piracy and copyright bits.

Would be nice to be able to play blue ray’s in Media Center, just get the cheap OEM blue ray drive. I have a feeling Microsoft and Sony don’t see eye to eye on that one.

When the SSD’s get to a more reasonable price maybe get one and just put windows and games on it and put all your videos and music etc on an external USB drive. (Something im considering, down the line)

[Freddy]

Yes, that blue ray drive I posted comes with Power DVD 8, I looked into it and I agree; it does look good.  You only seem to get the step-up feature with Power DVD 9, but you can upgrade for about £25 I think it was.  It certainly seems worth the money compared to a regular retail blue ray DVD player.

My telly already does some kind of up-stepping and the picture quality from regular DVD's is excellent, so I'm not too worried about the upgrade - I feel it's a good deal to get the player with the bundled software for £50.00 and be happy with that for now.

Yep, it will be a while before I go over to SSD's too and I have similar plans.  The cheapest SSD's would already be full by now and I don't even have much stuff installed here at the moment.

[Carl2]

  I had to read through seven pages, Hi everyone and Happy New Year.  Had to replace my computers so I am starting from scratch almost.  Snowing   here in Mass. yeasterday, today and tomorrow, the amount isn't much thank god.
  I looked at Freddy's link,  and went to Newegg.com where I shop, thay had 20 with the 755 socket, I've built in the past and bought lately.  I somewhat recently got two computers, one a midstream and another a power house.  I bought them before win 7 came out and the prices were way down, the power house was so low I couldn't put a cheaper one together for the price I paid,  the CPU sells for over $500.
  I looked all over for info on solid state disks, Hp put out a white paper on SS disks, which seemed to say thay are still new, mainly the memory still has a certian life span and after so many cycles thay fail.  The effect is reduced by putting in excess memory and replacing memory as memory fails, also thay have software to avoid using the same memory address repeatly.  Reviews I've read say thay are very fast but for the time being I'll stay with raid.  As far as hard drives this is what I found at tomshardware.com   
      HD502HJ Samsung sata 500G 16Mb   Newegg, $55 
     I ordered two for a Raid setup, waiting for them to come in.
Writing too much page acting funny
Carl2

[Data]

Sounds like you have a nice power house PC there Carl, I mean a $500 cpu, wow extreme

One thing that puts me off buying a pre built system is the motherboard, the manufacturers hardly ever mention them but to me they are the most important part of the PC, does the mobo have a good chipset i.e. if its an intel cpu does the mobo have an intel chipset or have they decided to use a cheaper chipset mobo, can the mobo overclock at increments of one mghz, has the mobo got the new solid state capacitors, is the mobo a well known manufacturer. All these questions are important to me.

I had forgotten that the SSD drives still have a limited life, and I didn’t know there is software to avoid using the same memory address repeatedly, thanks for the info about them Carl.

Our other option could be to use the Western Digital Velociraptor 10,000RPM S300 16MB drives, the fastest SATA drives out there but they don’t come cheap.

Happy New Year All

[Carl2]

  It's a gateway FX6801, the cpu is a 950 , 3.07 gh, 9 GB memory has a very good video card. Meant to be a gamer.   Gets a 5.9 score in everything using vista, still have to upgrade to Win 7, once i get the disks.  It comes in a midsize case, in the past I'd used the full sized Antex cases.  So far I haven't used it much,
  The computer I'm using is an Asus, lower power CPU, video rating not as good but I don't think I can see a difference.  Not sure about overclocking in the gateway since it seems quick enough for me, Waiting for the Hard drives to come in since I'd like to set up a raid 0 then install vista on it and upgrade to Win 7.
  I went to tomshardware to learn about SS drives and the speed of hard drives. The Velociraptor is very quick, in the past I'd tried some raptors from WD used in Raid, nothing great that I could see. the regular raptors didn't even make the list in toms hardware.  Anyways from looking at the tests I came up with the Samsung which got good reviews at newegg.
  I started the computer, loads fairly quick compared to this one, While looking around the chipsets are Intel, the user guide is useless for info about the motherboard.  I'd opened it and it's tight, one possibly 2 open slots pci slots.  Probably made for Gateway, I know Hp has boards made for them.  I'd thought about changing the Mobo in the past, need a good reason.
Carl2 

[Art]

Yes, even with the fastest CPU, it all comes down to hardware. It's still waiting for the hard drives to get the data.

Read about some SSD's in the 512GB range and costing over $1200.00 USD.

There's a price to pay for everything, the old man used to say. Eventually the prices come down but if ya want to play "right now" then ya gotta pay!

How fast is instantaneous and do we really NEED to go faster than that? Hmmm....

[Carl2]

  I've downloaded Dragon version 10.1 the other day, it's 1.3 Gb and took about four hours to download.  Version 10.1 is needed for Windows 7 and after a small amount of training it's working quite well.  I should mention that I am using an Asus wireless headset.  The headset has a signal-to-noise ratio of 24 DB and works very well with Dragon, also it is very reasonably priced.
  The quick hard drives which I'd ordered a while ago have come in, both are in the computer and the computer has an Intel matrix storage console, I had used something similar in the past to create a raid zero volume, I am not sure how to do that using this console.  I had looked at controller cards, at this time I am not sure where I would put it, and I am also concerned about compatibility with Windows 7.
 Carl 2

[Carl2]

  I've gotten the computer up and running with the raid 0 drives.  Raid has to be enabled in the bios before the Intel matrix can create a volume.  Next to get the operating system on the volume, Gateway provides an image that must go to the original hard drive so I downloaded true Image that dosen't have this restriction.
I checked out my work by looking at the performance index in control panel and I'm getting 5.9 on both the original drive and the Raid drive.  Just checked this computer and it also has a 5.9.   
  Any thoughts on this?
  Also dragon will not work on this screen.
Carl2

[lrh9]

Windows scoring isn't the most intelligent system of measuring system performance. The total score is always limited by the lowest score in the key system areas. The reasoning behind this is that software developed for Windows should be able to run at a minimum score level, regardless of the components of the computer. This number means little, because anything higher than 5 represents the best modern performance. Numbers above this indicate advanced, superior technology on the Windows index. I'd even say that the Windows index is a little bit outdated, because I'm getting 5.9 scores on hardware inferior to yours. Yours would probably scale more accurately into a 6 or maybe even a low 7 if the scale kept up with new hardware.