My extra 2Gb Ram arrived and I immediately noticed two things after it was installed
Firstly, Vista didn't seem to recognise it claiming that it only had 3.25Gb. At first I thought the RAM may be faulty, particularly as the computer slowed down quite significantly which was a nasty surpise. WoW in particular became unusable as it was down to less than 10 frames per second even with all the graphic settings turned down.
Using my wifes machine with its Geforce 6600GT showed there was something seriously wrong as her machine was faster even though it was a lesser spec, and she had some of the graphic settings on WoW turned up. Though she was still complaining that her frame rate was slow when my machine was turned on.
After a lot of poking around I discovered this which at least explained the RAM issue frustrating though it is. I was almost tempted to try Linux on it instead at this point, as this didn't explain why the machine was so slow
At first I wondered if it was Symantec Antivirus that was slowing it down so I looked through it's logs to see what it was doing. It was then I noticed that Symantec was checking some strange looking IP addresses. A quick Google and I realised that I had somehow installed IPv6 on the machine. At the moment no one uses this (at least no one I know of) and so I disabled it. Miraculously the machine returned to full speed.
So the moral of the tale is don't install IPv6 unless you know you need to
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Liftoff
The machine worked!
Only a few minor glitches, the fan on the back of the case wasn't plugged in properly, that was soon resolved. After that the Graphics card wasn't properly recognised by Vista which is ironic as it was more or less built for Vista. A quick scout around the Nvidia site identified what I needed and than I was away.
The Vista install was pretty nice, as I recall it has been streamlined over the XP one. Then everything was looking good - in fact large on the 22" widescreen.
I tried to play some music using media player and it started to refuse point blank or it would work intermittently. At first I wondered if it was the LaCie but it was playing fine to the other computers. A bit of messing about with driver downloads from the Asus site (the sound is on a daughterboard) and it started working as expected.
Overall it's looking good, there are a few annoying things in Vista but I will get used to them or work around them. The machine is blazingly fast, in fact the Microsoft analysis came up with 5 as the lowest score and that was only because it has 2Gb RAM, I'm about to buy another 2Gb so that should improve.
The only issue I have is, as to be expected for an "early adopter", that installing drivers that come with hardware is a bit hit and miss. Some of the software with the DVD writer complains and takes you to the software manufacturers website. I'm still not clear if the download it points you at is trial software or not, It seems a bit unfair if an XP install would give you the full application even if it was a lite edition
Only a few minor glitches, the fan on the back of the case wasn't plugged in properly, that was soon resolved. After that the Graphics card wasn't properly recognised by Vista which is ironic as it was more or less built for Vista. A quick scout around the Nvidia site identified what I needed and than I was away.
The Vista install was pretty nice, as I recall it has been streamlined over the XP one. Then everything was looking good - in fact large on the 22" widescreen.
I tried to play some music using media player and it started to refuse point blank or it would work intermittently. At first I wondered if it was the LaCie but it was playing fine to the other computers. A bit of messing about with driver downloads from the Asus site (the sound is on a daughterboard) and it started working as expected.
Overall it's looking good, there are a few annoying things in Vista but I will get used to them or work around them. The machine is blazingly fast, in fact the Microsoft analysis came up with 5 as the lowest score and that was only because it has 2Gb RAM, I'm about to buy another 2Gb so that should improve.
The only issue I have is, as to be expected for an "early adopter", that installing drivers that come with hardware is a bit hit and miss. Some of the software with the DVD writer complains and takes you to the software manufacturers website. I'm still not clear if the download it points you at is trial software or not, It seems a bit unfair if an XP install would give you the full application even if it was a lite edition
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
New PC - Graphics
My graphics card came for my new PC yesterday. I got an email from the supplier to say it had been despatched. By the time I had read that, looked on the couriers website and texted my wife, it has been there nearly an hour.
The card is enormous. It takes 2 slots in the back of the case which I realise these days is not too unusual. The whole thing looks like a slab of metal about an inch thick with a motherboard stuck to one side. My motherboard comes with an audio daughter board and I was concerned that some of the capacitors on that would press against the graphics card. Fortunately there is a small gap of a few millimetres. My plan was always that I may be able to buy a second graphics card in the future and put them in an SLI configuration. What I have realised though is that this would put the second card very close to the Power Supply fan, with the two fans facing each other. The case is very well ventilated so this may not be an issue but I may never know until I try it.
Having installed the card, I realised there was one thing I hadn't purchased. The Graphics card is DVI and the monitor is VGA. I was appalled to find that these devices are £15 in PC World. Even worse, a cable to replace the monitor one would have cost me £25 even though it would be a better solution
All I needed then was to install the OS. Eventually after hunting high and low (I had put it in a safe place) I found it at a quarter to midnight and so had to leave it for tonight.
Of course I haven't yet switched the computer on yet, hopefully it will work first time.
When it is running I can think about overclocking it. I've seen suggestions that all the dual core processors can be overclocked to at least 3GHz. In my opinion this is not to be sniffed at
The card is enormous. It takes 2 slots in the back of the case which I realise these days is not too unusual. The whole thing looks like a slab of metal about an inch thick with a motherboard stuck to one side. My motherboard comes with an audio daughter board and I was concerned that some of the capacitors on that would press against the graphics card. Fortunately there is a small gap of a few millimetres. My plan was always that I may be able to buy a second graphics card in the future and put them in an SLI configuration. What I have realised though is that this would put the second card very close to the Power Supply fan, with the two fans facing each other. The case is very well ventilated so this may not be an issue but I may never know until I try it.
Having installed the card, I realised there was one thing I hadn't purchased. The Graphics card is DVI and the monitor is VGA. I was appalled to find that these devices are £15 in PC World. Even worse, a cable to replace the monitor one would have cost me £25 even though it would be a better solution
All I needed then was to install the OS. Eventually after hunting high and low (I had put it in a safe place) I found it at a quarter to midnight and so had to leave it for tonight.
Of course I haven't yet switched the computer on yet, hopefully it will work first time.
When it is running I can think about overclocking it. I've seen suggestions that all the dual core processors can be overclocked to at least 3GHz. In my opinion this is not to be sniffed at
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)