Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => The Dressing Room => Topic started by: _tom_ on March 22, 2008, 05:04:26 PM
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After 2-3 years, my laptops finally started getting clogged up with stuff so I felt it was time to upgrade. I told my mate I was looking into getting something new and he wrote me up this spec:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Leadtek 8800GT 512MB
2GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer RAM
Abit IP35 Pro motherboard
OCZ 600W Stealstream PSU
Antec Ultimate Gamer 900 case
Seagate Barracuda 250GB hdd
He built it for me last night, its pretty much a beast :D Dont have wireless internet or a good monitor for it yet (just using an LCD tv connected via VGA atm) but will sort that out soon. Looks great
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/tomr61/IMG_0577.jpg)
For anyone who's interested heres the insides. Probably looks a bit messy but its the best we could get it.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/tomr61/IMG_0572.jpg)
Vista 32bit Ultimate is really nice, dont get why everyones complaining about it - it just needs a good machine to run nicely from what I can tell. Looks like I'll be getting Crysis soon :D
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I have no idea what any of that technical stuff means but it looks damn cool!
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How much was it? (I seem to ask that a lot lately on threads, lol)
Mine looks similar and I REALLY need to update. I'm starting to lag behind on the computer games!
Crysis? Surely you should know the best computer to play Crysis doesn't even exist! It's a s00per-d00per comp00ter from the f00ture.
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I think its cost me about £630 ish so far. 3 of the fairly expensive items (motherboard, processor and ram) were on sale on Overclockers so I got a fairly good price on those :)
This definitely makes a nice change from a Dell Inspiron laptop - XP home with 1gb ram, 1.73ghz pentium m processor, 128mb graphics card and 60gb hdd :lol:
Btw, are USB wireless adaptors like this (http://www.dectcordlessphones.co.uk/product.asp?ProdID=4551&REFID=%7B128C576D-37F6-431B-9425-44D9F188AE10%7D&utm_source=Froogle&utm_medium=Shopping-Comparison) any good or should I really get a wireless PCI card? Also, know if this (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-052-LG) monitor would be any good? I'm using a cheap Bush LCD hdtv with a VGA input at the minute and even that isnt too bad so I guess this would be allright.
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If i where you, i'd add a different fan to that videocard if you plan on playing Crysis, because it'll run pretty hot, i've had one customer who fried his vidcard because he had the stock fan, which could not properly cool the card.
Other than that, it looks like a pretty nice, up to spec system :drink:
As for why people don't like Vista, there's a myriad of reasons why, some don't like the new layout of the GUI, some hate the fact they need a super powerful pc to run the equivalent of XP Pro with all the bells and whistles, some don't like the amount of bloatware that comes with it, the UAC is often a feature my customers give for wanting me to remove Vista and install XP instead, and there have been, and still are a lot of concerns about privacy, control over the system (DRM, anyone?), and Vista phoning home for dubious reasons.
And of course, the ridiculous price of this bad re-imagening of Windows XP (because it's not been built from the ground up as microsoft claims, it has bugs that where inherent in XP and NT that could not have come from original code work), is one reason most folks i build systems for opt for XP.
Can't say i blame them :lol:
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i love your pc other than 2 things.
INTEL & that case, my mate has the same setup apart from he has a core 2 duo e6600 thats overclocked.
I know intel are doing better atm but im just a purist and im loyal to brands so its always gonna be amd for me :D
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From what I've read, AMD are so far behind its not even worth it. I dont think the case looks amazing compared to some others but its great at cooling from what I can tell.
I might get a better fan for the graphics card then, or just run the graphics a bit lower? I dont usually notice too much difference when I tone down the graphics quality anyway.
The UAC on vista is pretty annoying, I use Tweak UAC (http://www.tweak-uac.com) which just makes it run in "silent mode" - you still get all the security benefits etc but it doesnt come up with "Are you sure you want to do this.." all the time.
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i love your pc other than 2 things.
INTEL & that case, my mate has the same setup apart from he has a core 2 duo e6600 thats overclocked.
I know intel are doing better atm but im just a purist and im loyal to brands so its always gonna be amd for me :D
Tony, its time to leave our old friend AMD behind, i know it's hard, but you can't keep living in the past like this! intel have us beat! by lightyears!
The only problem i forsee is that my brother has the near exact same set up, with a 600watt case-stock PSU and it crashes now and again because it actually needs more power, though an OCZ may give better performance, i would sure hope so anyway.
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Personally I much prefer the P182 compared to the 900, but that's because I don't like loads of LEDs and stuff.
Other than that its a pretty nice setup - My only qualm is the WD hard drives, the Samsung Spinpoints are about the same price and are sooo much better.
And those OCZ Stealxstreams are great aren't they? Dirt cheap, very quiet, and run nice and stable - Such a bargain.
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i love your pc other than 2 things.
INTEL & that case, my mate has the same setup apart from he has a core 2 duo e6600 thats overclocked.
I know intel are doing better atm but im just a purist and im loyal to brands so its always gonna be amd for me :D
Tony, its time to leave our old friend AMD behind, i know it's hard, but you can't keep living in the past like this! intel have us beat! by lightyears!
The only problem i forsee is that my brother has the near exact same set up, with a 600watt case-stock PSU and it crashes now and again because it actually needs more power, though an OCZ may give better performance, i would sure hope so anyway.
yeah but i can get amds so cheap :P
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i love your pc other than 2 things.
INTEL & that case, my mate has the same setup apart from he has a core 2 duo e6600 thats overclocked.
I know intel are doing better atm but im just a purist and im loyal to brands so its always gonna be amd for me :D
Tony, its time to leave our old friend AMD behind, i know it's hard, but you can't keep living in the past like this! intel have us beat! by lightyears!
The only problem i forsee is that my brother has the near exact same set up, with a 600watt case-stock PSU and it crashes now and again because it actually needs more power, though an OCZ may give better performance, i would sure hope so anyway.
Very few PCs need more than 600 watts of power to be frank. Unless you're running SLI setups or such you wouldn't need more than 500w as far as my experience tells me.
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I think its cost me about £630 ish so far. 3 of the fairly expensive items (motherboard, processor and ram) were on sale on Overclockers so I got a fairly good price on those :)
This definitely makes a nice change from a Dell Inspiron laptop - XP home with 1gb ram, 1.73ghz pentium m processor, 128mb graphics card and 60gb hdd :lol:
Btw, are USB wireless adaptors like this (http://www.dectcordlessphones.co.uk/product.asp?ProdID=4551&REFID=%7B128C576D-37F6-431B-9425-44D9F188AE10%7D&utm_source=Froogle&utm_medium=Shopping-Comparison) any good or should I really get a wireless PCI card? Also, know if this (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-052-LG) monitor would be any good? I'm using a cheap Bush LCD hdtv with a VGA input at the minute and even that isnt too bad so I guess this would be allright.
USB adaptors aren't as good as PCI ones - Period. Get a PCI one unless you're using a laptop, or for some freak reason your Mobo doesn't have any PCI slots.
Make sure you get a good cooler on that Q6600, even if its just an AC Freezer or something - And then show us some clocks. No point in buying a Q6600 and not overclocking.
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when i bought my pc a tech advised me to not hook up the front audio ports, he says using those is bad for your MB or something,
just thought I'd throw that out there. :)
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Personally I much prefer the P182 compared to the 900, but that's because I don't like loads of LEDs and stuff.
Other than that its a pretty nice setup - My only qualm is the WD hard drives, the Samsung Spinpoints are about the same price and are sooo much better.
And those OCZ Stealxstreams are great aren't they? Dirt cheap, very quiet, and run nice and stable - Such a bargain.
This is my first good pc so I dont have anything to compare the OCZ to, but it seems really nice. The machine runs really quiet, I love it.
As for the network adapter, do you reckon something like this (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-007-BE&groupid=46&catid=1002&subcat=) cheap Belkin will work fine or should I spend a bit extra on something like this (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-022-NG&tool=3) (which seems to have better vista support and good range if the reviews are anything to go by)?
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Out of those 2, i'd get the netgear.
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Personally I much prefer the P182 compared to the 900, but that's because I don't like loads of LEDs and stuff.
Other than that its a pretty nice setup - My only qualm is the WD hard drives, the Samsung Spinpoints are about the same price and are sooo much better.
And those OCZ Stealxstreams are great aren't they? Dirt cheap, very quiet, and run nice and stable - Such a bargain.
This is my first good pc so I dont have anything to compare the OCZ to, but it seems really nice. The machine runs really quiet, I love it.
As for the network adapter, do you reckon something like this (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-007-BE&groupid=46&catid=1002&subcat=) cheap Belkin will work fine or should I spend a bit extra on something like this (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-022-NG&tool=3) (which seems to have better vista support and good range if the reviews are anything to go by)?
I personally find EVERYTHING in the Netgear range to be better than the Belkin equivalent.
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Fair enough, I'll go for that then. I assume that'll be able to connect to our BT Businesshub ok, my mums computer has a netgear adaptor though its usb instead of PCI I think, still works.
Is Vista SP1 worth downloading? I remember when I installed a service pack for xp ages ago and it totally $%&#ed up our computer.
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Fair enough, I'll go for that then. I assume that'll be able to connect to our BT Businesshub ok, my mums computer has a netgear adaptor though its usb instead of PCI I think, still works.
Is Vista SP1 worth downloading? I remember when I installed a service pack for xp ages ago and it totally $%&#ed up our computer.
is it still a beta?
when iw as using vista the other week the beta made it so windows live mail wouldnt connect
and windows defender kept on crashing, as well as the aero theme.
unless they've fixed all those things i'd leave it until it was compulsary
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http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b0c7136d-5ebb-413b-89c9-cb3d06d12674&DisplayLang=en
Doesnt look like a Beta to me but I may be wrong.
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Nah, it's not a beta, and you need it, it seems to fix a number of serious issues.
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Cheers, I'll get that installed tomorrow :)
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Totally sick!! I bet that thing eats power for breakfast and spits out heat like a dragon! Those fans must be running at full speed all the time! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:
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Totally sick!! I bet that thing eats power for breakfast and spits out heat like a dragon! Those fans must be running at full speed all the time! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:
one thing that those cases are for is getting rid of heat, they keep eveyrthing really cool.
They also drown out any noise you can hear from tvs etc from other rooms :P
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Its not loud at all :?
edit - installed SP1 now, thought it was quick enough to begin with but theres a noticeable speed increase just for browsing folders etc with SP1 installed, at least I thought so anyway.
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Got my wireless card installed now (netgear one), works perfectly :D Didnt work using the netgear program though but I just did it through the windows connections thing and its fine. I assume when I get it to uni and it doesnt have any wireless networks to connect to and I plug in the ethernet connection it'll just automatically connect to that instead of trying to find wireless signals?
Spent some more time getting used to vista, its really good and I dont think I'll want to go back to using XP! Really do need a nice monitor though, LCD TV doesnt display text too well so its pretty annoying. Need a nicer keyboard as well, this old dell ones giving my fingers a bloody good workout, I'm used to a soft touch laptop :lol:
I'm allready getting addicted to counterstrike again though :oops:
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Computer recycling at it's best
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v662/felineguitars/FUNNIES/00028366.jpg)
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haha nice :D
Monitors are doing my head in, theres so much to choose from. I'm not sure whether to go 17 or 19" - is the 2" size gap that noticeable? I dont like huge monitors, and the 15.4" on my laptop isnt even that bad really. Also dont know whether to get widescreen or not. I think the tv im using now is 20" widescreen which is too big, dont like it at all.
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I would say go for 19 and not widescreen, its what I have on my desktop, which I use for TV and films.
Same laptop as you, but for a desktop, you wana go bigger :D
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Had my eye on this one, the specs look good and the price is nice as well. So you reckon the non-widescreen works fine for films? That was my only worry with going standard..
http://uk.lge.com/products/model/detail/mainlcdmonitor_l1953hr.jhtml
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Had my eye on this one, the specs look good and the price is nice as well. So you reckon the non-widescreen works fine for films? That was my only worry with going standard..
http://uk.lge.com/products/model/detail/mainlcdmonitor_l1953hr.jhtml
Do your best to find an AG Neovoa F-419 - They're SUPERB.
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http://www.wizardprice.com/products/F-419B.AG
One of those? Specs dont look as good as that LG, well the contrast ratio is much lower and has a slightly slower response time.
edit - does contrast ratio matter a lot? Asus do one which they call an ultimate gaming monitor, yet only has a contrast ratio of 800:1 whereas a lower priced model has a ratio of 2000:1.
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The LG's contrast ratio's arent the actual contrast ratio's of the panels in the monitor they are enhanced by software in the panel. the same goes for samsung and a few other manufacturers. personally i think you should go for the biggest screen you can afford I have a 22" LG widescreen and its brilliant. I initially thought it would be too big but the extra size really is helpful when doing uni work (CAD stuff mainly) and Gaming (its alot easier to see enimies in the distance :twisted: .
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Hmm roughly how much lower are they than the stated spec, if you know?
The 22" model of the LG Multi Function I'm looking at is about £60 more than the 19" I think, not really worth it for an extra 3" imo. The monitor I have now is 19" and I dont think I'd want any more. I dont really need all the space anyway - currently using a 15.4" laptop which is fine for me. The only uni work I'll be doing on this is photoshop, video editing and possibly some 3D Studio Max modelling, but thats unlikely as its so expensive and I cant seem to find a good "free" copy that works :(
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Do your best to find an AG Neovoa F-419 - They're SUPERB.
Me gots one of them things! They're superb?! Sweet. 8) (I know ZERO about computers :lol: )
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hmm am now starting to have problems with Vista. Right now whenever I start up the computer, it wont connect to any wireless networks and wont even recognise any - I have to "Diagnose and Repair" then start Windows Wireless Service to get it to recognise and connect. Sometimes when I try to open the Network Centre it all just freezes up. Any ideas whats wrong with this?
Also, when I turn the computer on again from being in sleep mode, I cant open firefox. Have to reboot in order for it to work again... I'm seriously considering going back to XP Pro at the minute, maybe wait til Windows 7 to upgrade :?
I never had problems with connecting to wireless networks from my room, and that was when I had a cr@p computer, wireless card and router. I feel like I shouldn be having these problems with my specs and maybe the reason why is Vista.. If I go back to XP I'll miss things like theintegrated search in the start menu, the much nicer look etc though :(
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http://www.wizardprice.com/products/F-419B.AG
One of those? Specs dont look as good as that LG, well the contrast ratio is much lower and has a slightly slower response time.
edit - does contrast ratio matter a lot? Asus do one which they call an ultimate gaming monitor, yet only has a contrast ratio of 800:1 whereas a lower priced model has a ratio of 2000:1.
The only spec that means anything is resolution imo.
The F-419 may have a larger response time, or worse contrast ratio than the new Samsungs, but the colours, and image quality blows most screens out of the water - Just a shame that there's no number or value to illustrate that, so it doesn't come up trumps in Spec.
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ahh, I see. I've ordered an LGM208WA, it gets good reviews and seems to be really good value. Should be here Monday/Tuesday so I'll see what I think of it when it arrives..
Any ideas on what could be causing the wireless thing to stop working properly? Works perfectly after you've repaired it but I feel like I shouldnt have to be doing that each time I start up my pc. And the whole firefox not starting up after sleeping thing is REALLY annoying.
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Thats a nice spec PC!
Really good price/performance ration on the processor and graphics card, with the emphasis on performance (Q6600s are very good and 8800GT's are shot off a shivel).
Its very close to mine, actually:
E6600
XFX 8800GT @670Mhz/1900Mhz
2Gb 800Mhz CL4 OCZ ram
Asus striker
Win XP
I can run crysis well on the 'hacked' high settings (all the stuff in very high thats reserved for DX10 that DX9 can actually do: they crippled the 'high' settings to make 'very high' and DX10 look better, but a lot of the 'very high' features are perfectly doable in DX9C).
Youre gonna be having some fun with that machine!
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Cheers :) I dont know much about computers at all, but I needed a new one and my mate picked out all the parts for a pretty decent gaming pc as well as working for photoshop etc when I need it :)
I'm undecided on Vista now, due to the problems mentioned a few posts up. Cant seem to get onto the Netgear support pages to see if theres an updated driver I can try for my adapter though :x
edit - got the wireless working properly again, just needed to set the WLAN Autoconfig service to auto startup instead of manual. Still having those sleep mode issues though.
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Apologies for the hijack, but since you young chaps are much more up to speed on computers than I am, what do you recommend in the way of soundcards?
I'm looking to replace my PC soon and at the moment I have an old Creative soundcard which I've moved from one machine to another over the years. It has an interface that slots into the front panel under the disc drive, with a headphone socket and various inputs (midi, optical, phono etc).
I like the front panel interface, but from a quick look round no-one seems to make this type of unit any more. There are lots of external USB/FireWire interfaces, which I guess is good for portability, but I'm quite happy having it fixed in the PC. But maybe I just don't know what I should be looking for.
Any recommendations (including external units, if that's what I'm stuck with)?
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Apologies for the hijack, but since you young chaps are much more up to speed on computers than I am, what do you recommend in the way of soundcards?
I'm looking to replace my PC soon and at the moment I have an old Creative soundcard which I've moved from one machine to another over the years. It has an interface that slots into the front panel under the disc drive, with a headphone socket and various inputs (midi, optical, phono etc).
I like the front panel interface, but from a quick look round no-one seems to make this type of unit any more. There are lots of external USB/FireWire interfaces, which I guess is good for portability, but I'm quite happy having it fixed in the PC. But maybe I just don't know what I should be looking for.
Any recommendations (including external units, if that's what I'm stuck with)?
There are lots of internal cards, with external controls you could look at - the soundblaster pro ones for example.
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Like this (http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=16&product=14659) or this (http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=208&product=16559) maybe?
That's pretty similar to the one I have now. I found it straight away now that you've mentioned it, although I never managed to track one down before. Typical :oops: :roll: .
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If you're looking at recording anything, the EMU 0404USB is meant to be really good. To be honest if its just for listening to music etc, I think you'd be ok with onboard sound, mine isnt too bad and is 7.1 surround capable if you so wish :) I'll probably be getting one of the EMU units eventually but I'm tempted to get a new neck for my old strat body so funds are going to that first :P
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Apologies for the hijack, but since you young chaps are much more up to speed on computers than I am, what do you recommend in the way of soundcards?
I'm looking to replace my PC soon and at the moment I have an old Creative soundcard which I've moved from one machine to another over the years. It has an interface that slots into the front panel under the disc drive, with a headphone socket and various inputs (midi, optical, phono etc).
I like the front panel interface, but from a quick look round no-one seems to make this type of unit any more. There are lots of external USB/FireWire interfaces, which I guess is good for portability, but I'm quite happy having it fixed in the PC. But maybe I just don't know what I should be looking for.
Any recommendations (including external units, if that's what I'm stuck with)?
It really depends what youre willing to spend.
Up to about £300 the Emu gear rules, especially with their new drivers (adapted for widows, but they sound better too; seperation and low end resolution is superior and upsampling routines seem to run better: I have a 1616M, and its a superb piece of kit!).
When you get to 400 or 500 presonus and echo do great interfaces.
RME top that lot if you want to go up to about 800.
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Like this (http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=16&product=14659) or this (http://www.soundblaster.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=208&product=16559) maybe?
That's pretty similar to the one I have now. I found it straight away now that you've mentioned it, although I never managed to track one down before. Typical :oops: :roll: .
I think you'd find an outboard interface, either USB 2, firewire or PCI, to be far superior in functionality to those. They look like half-way houses between sound cards and audio interfaces.
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MDV, do you know if the EMU 0404USB will work ok in Vista?
I got my LG multifunction today. Not sure what I think of it yet - text doesnt seem to be as clear on my mums dell monitor, but its a huge improvement over the LCD tv I was using. Is the unclear text a monitor problem or could possibly some settings just need changing? Cant decide whether to send it back or not yet..
edit - seems to be better now I've adjusted the brightness/contrast/rgb settings :)
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It really depends what youre willing to spend.
Up to about £300 the Emu gear rules, especially with their new drivers (adapted for widows, but they sound better too; seperation and low end resolution is superior and upsampling routines seem to run better: I have a 1616M, and its a superb piece of kit!).
When you get to 400 or 500 presonus and echo do great interfaces.
RME top that lot if you want to go up to about 800.
Definitely not big money - £200 tops I think. I have some very vague intentions of attempting a bit of recording, but realistically it's never gonna happen. I don't have any material to record, for a start... :roll:
Sounds like E-Mu is the way to go.
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MDV, do you know if the EMU 0404USB will work ok in Vista?
I got my LG multifunction today. Not sure what I think of it yet - text doesnt seem to be as clear on my mums dell monitor, but its a huge improvement over the LCD tv I was using. Is the unclear text a monitor problem or could possibly some settings just need changing? Cant decide whether to send it back or not yet..
edit - seems to be better now I've adjusted the brightness/contrast/rgb settings :)
Not out of the box, no, but the vista drivers are up on the website for a bunch of them, and I think that the 0404 is in there.
Well worth getting anyway. I swapped out drivers and got a very noticable improvement in low end resolution and sound seperation. Not upgraded-system improvment, but without question worth the bandwidth!!!
Phil, yeah, for that money the best thing around is probably the 0404, and you'll get a fair whack of change from it too. Get up to 300 and the 1616M is a big contender, very good bang for buck, but it has some competitors. The 0404 is pretty well unbeaten at its price and a bit higher, as far as I know, at least.
Edit: just noticed I repeated myself about the drivers!!!! :oops:
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I know its external but i have just spent less than a ton on an m-audio fast track pro with the idea of attempting some recordings of my guitars at some point (although if you are lucky it wont be me playing :wink: )
havnt had owt like this before but it seems to do what i need - even running on a very stuttery Vista PC its ok once the programs have actually started... i didnt even bother with the discs and just downloaded vista versions straight away and it didnt take long to set up. In fairness the fast track USB (about £60) would have done me fine as i really dont need all the midi and mic connections.
now i just need some decent speakers!!!
oh, roo... i disabled the sleep mode in vista - same as you it always stopped my internet when it woke back up..... if you find a solution let me know!!!
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M-audio stuff is a good buy, no doubt about it.
Theres no disadvantage to getting USB or firewire unless you have LOADS of inputs running at once. Firewire only starts to give up if you daisy chain a few interfaces. PCI has no huge benefits for a low number of inputs (lke, less than 20). The best outboard soundcard (integrated interface, I should say: the DACs and and preamps in one thing) is p-r-o-b-a-b-l-y the RME fireface 800, and that, as the name implies, is firewire.
I think that EMU gear beats M-Audio at the same price, though. The DACs are better and the Pres are a bit sharper. I seem to recall they have lower, latency, SNR and crosstalk too.
Oh:
DACs; Analogue/digital-digital/analogue converters. A big deal. Top end standalone rack ones can set you back £2000, easily. Same with pres.
SNR: Signal to noise ratio
TLA: Three letter acronyms, and I hate em too.
Crosstalk: how much leakage there is from one stereo channel into the other.
Latency: self explanatory; the delay in processing a souind to hearing it and inputting it to it being processed. Less than 10ms should be expected from anything 'decent' (my 1616M gets 2.4ms), but that depends on the rest of your PC, too.
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yeah.. i'm lost in all the techy talk i am afraid... i did look at the e-mu 0404 but i must admit to being swayed by the price - was gonna get a fast track USB but went with the pro because i found a nearly new one on ebay for a good price... it wont see too much useand i didnt want to spend money i couldnt justify
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I'm too lazy to read the middle pages to see if you covered this yet, but I recommend Viewsonic for a good monitor. They manufacture some high quality equip for relatively low prices, probably cause they're not well know.
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Was looking at Viewsonic, someone on HC who seems to know his stuff about computers didnt recommend em though, apparently he's replaced 10 in the past 3 years (dont know why you'd keep replacing with the same brand stuff though but whatever..
I think I may get rid of this LG monitor. Its good for games, video etc but its really not that great for reading text off. Then again I'm not sure if thats just my eyes or what. Either that or I'm just being really picky. When I get closer its easier to read, things are less blurred. Maybe I'm becoming short sighted :?