Official "Upgrade Help" Thread

[OtakuD]

Another option are the Intel 335 series SSDs. I have the 180gig version and it flies.

Aah ok I see the 330 on rebel tech is sold out, I think I might just skip the SSD and get my monitor sorted this month since Im tired of my LCD 19" >.<

Edit: getting so sick of looking at reviews and have so many number jumbling around in my head, will be so glad when this upgrade process is over :D Thanks for all the help guys

[jhl]

Full HD LED Monitors. Under R2500. Go

Thanks :D

[x-scon]

Just look at the last 15 posts. That is literally all we have been talking about. Go!

[Acinixys]

Full HD LED Monitors. Under R2500. Go

Thanks :D

I have this and its awesome

[OtakuD]

I have this and its awesome

I was really thinking of getting this guy but then I read about IPS and ppl seem to be raving about that. I'm still not sure whether or not its worth the extra bux since there are zero places in my town that have any on display -.-'

Edit: Ive also now seen that the Dell U2412M is 16:10 which is pretty bad for me since I dislike black bars on my movies so yeah I guess I'll go for the Asus VG23AH due to that, the 72Hz and the semi-gloss finish.... Time to bite the bullet!

[Wesley]

Microsoft may help Dell in becoming Private Equity Firm

A big challenge for Dell Corporation (almost read that as "Dahl Corporation", hehe) is to get you to part with your money for their products - so far, they're not doing very well. Revenues and operating profits for the company have been at their lowest in the last decade and the company last year started seeking a shares buyout to return to an equity-based firm, taking it off the stock market and helping secure its cash reserves better in case of another global economy crash. Microsoft may offer up to $2 billion to help Michael Dell finance the $22 billion required to buy all the shares back, in return for Dell continuing to put Windows software on the majority of its devices - this could possibly mean the death of the Ubuntu-running XPS 13 Ultrabook. The buyout will probably commence sometime this week and Dell will become a private corporation once again mid-way through February. As the PC market declines, more companies will follow Dell's exit from the stock market in order to direct their futures better, without the constant threat of stepping on the toes of shareholders. One thing's for sure - without Dell, Microsoft's job of selling its OS to the market would be a lot harder.

Source: Hexus.net

[Wesley]

Giblets: Nvidia has a GTX685 on the way

Of course, "GTX685" is one of the working titles floating around at the moment, but I like it. A popular story with Nvidia fans is that when the company was trialling out its cards, it originally had something much more powerful than a GTX680 planned - a card based on the GF110 design, which was later redeployed to serve Nvidia's high-end Quadro and Tesla market. Codenamed "Titan", the newcomer should be dropping in to say hello in Q1 of this year. Consisting of 2880 CUDA cores, a 384-bit bus and GDDR5 RAM, this could be launched and handled by Nvidia and its partners in the same way they did the GTX690 - no custom coolers, no stickers, just pure Geforce goodness. Some claims going around the internet suggest the card will boast around 85% of the GTX690's performance, while still remaining a single-GPU product. At launch, it'll be the fastest single-GPU card ever made and probably will remain so for quite some time. It'll be big, it'll suck a lot of power, but it will carry with it ultimate bragging rights.

Just to put this in perspective for those of you who aren't familiar, GK110 is basically TWO GTX670 chips smashed together into ONE die. If you have to ask about the price, you probably cant afford it.

Source: TechpowerUp!

[OtakuD]

Hi guys, so I went to Gateway to actually check out some of these IPS and TN 120Hz monitors so that I could decide for myself what to get... Ended up walking out with a S27A950 even though I told myself 27 inch is too large >.< Oh well time for a bigger desk! The only problem is that I need around 3-5m of mini display cable or dual dvi cable to get my monitor where I want in 120Hz, moving the rig is not really an option.... Where can I find such cables? I have a 7950 with a dual DVI and 2 mini displayport connectors but online I see most places have only 2m cables at best (which came with the monitor) Help is always greatly appreciated, thanks!

[McDangerous]

You could also look into just getting a DVI-HDMI adaptor and running an HDMI cable?

HDCabling.co.za stock some of the cheapest cables and adaptors, I've bought a couple of things from them with no hassle, and their prices are usually great. With HDMI 1.3 or 1.4 you should be able to do 120Hz at 1080p without issue, even over an extended distance.

[OtakuD]

You could also look into just getting a DVI-HDMI adaptor and running an HDMI cable?

HDCabling.co.za stock some of the cheapest cables and adaptors, I've bought a couple of things from them with no hassle, and their prices are usually great. With HDMI 1.3 or 1.4 you should be able to do 120Hz at 1080p without issue, even over an extended distance.

Not sure if this is true as I've read that 1080p @ 120Hz is only possible with Dual link DVI or displayport connections and 720p @ 120Hz is HDMI 1.4.... Lot of conflicting opinions on this though so I would prefer to just get my hands on a displayport cable. Thanks for that link I will get it from thereas there is zero in my town! :D

[Chevron]

Not sure if this is true as I've read that 1080p @ 120Hz is only possible with Dual link DVI or displayport connections and 720p @ 120Hz is HDMI 1.4.... Lot of conflicting opinions on this though so I would prefer to just get my hands on a displayport cable. Thanks for that link I will get it from thereas there is zero in my town! :D

Blu ray 3D requires hdmi 1.4. So it'll work just fine.

[Wesley]

Giblets: Cisco to sell the Linksys brand to Belkin

Back in 2003, Cisco systems wanted to break in to the consumer ADSL wireless router market and bought out the Linksys brand to do the dirty work for them. In a bid to streamline the company following the global recession, Cisco started shutting down parts of its portfolio back in 2011, with its Flip Video camera division shut down in April 2011 because the margins were too thin. Linksys has been popular in the past but margins in the consumer industry are even smaller now than ever before. Belkin will buy out the Linksys brand in its entirety and will continue the brand as-is, complete with full warranty support. The exact details of the deal will be revealed in the weeks to come.

Source: Hexus.net

[Wesley]

AMD quietly pushes the FX-4130 out the door

While the naming might indicate that this is a Bulld0zer-based chip, AMD's FX-4130 is apparently based on Piledriver and comes from the Vishera family. Compared to the FX-4100, it boasts a 200MHz boost in stock clocks and will Turbo boost all cores to 3.9GHz when under load, should you leave that option on. It does have half the cache of the FX-4100, but does ship with a better stock cooler, the same one found shipped with the FX-8350. AMD has sent out a skewed graph together with their press release and it promises performance improvements in the range of 3-9%.

Linky

UPDATE: Until further notice, consider this an overclocked FX-4100 Bulldozer-based chip. Its not based on Vishera, that would be impossible as TDPs don’t match the FX-4300.

[Shaderow]

Ok so this is the year I finally replace my dinosaur of a pc with a laptop. I'm going to need one eventually for University so now's a good a time as any. Now the one thing i really want to be able to do on it is run Guild Wars (which system specs aren't too high) at a decent frame rate and pace. Not maxing out the graphics mind you just running them at above average and at a decent framerate.

So who here can recommend me a laptop that isn't ridiculously expensive and able to do the above. I also just wan't to make sure it lasts a few years and is a reliable peice of gear. I really don't know anything about hardware aside from how to plug it in so.. Thanks in advance,.

[Wesley]

How big of a budget do you think you'll be able to scrounge up? There's a large amount of options with good discrete graphics.

[Shaderow]

up to R5000, R6000 maybe, depends on state of my wallet.

[Wesley]

Packard Bell EasyNote TS11-HR 15.6" @ R4732

The Packard is pretty much only capable of 720p with low to medium settings, but does handle games with aplomb. Might even be able to add a little Physx in there, who knows. If you have six grand by the time it comes to buy it, consider using that for a SSD or more games :-P

[Shaderow]

Thanks Wesly, nice to know what i want is in my price range, might go for the Packard.

[Wesley]

AMD's Never Settle bundle gets some new games

Over the Christmas season there was a amazeballs games bundle that AMD was offering for all new Radeon HD7000 buyers, bundling a free copy of Far Cry 2 and 20% off your purchase of Medal of Honour: Warfighter (sadly, even a discount doesn't make the game worth buying). If you bought some of the more expensive cards, you'd also qualify for free copies of Hitman: Absolution and Sleeping Dogs. That promo ended on 31st November last year. It must have been successful, because AMD is going in for another round. This year's bundle is properly awesome.

Linky

[@@GJC@@]

Hi Guys,

So I currently have 2x 1TB drives in my PC and I am planning on buying another drive (probably 2TB or 3TB). Now I thought this would be a few too many drives showing up in my explorer so I want to merge or let the 2 1TB drives show up as one logical drive (that sounds quite dumb :P). Anyway as far as I have been able to find out it seems that the only way to do this is by using a RAID array.

Since its not too big of a deal if the array fails and I don't want to lose drive capacity I thought RAID 0 would probably be best, or is there a better RAID? Also is it still possible to have multiple partitions on a RAID array and can I boot from the RAID array or would that be unwise?

Another thing is I have looked at some of the RAID PCI cards and they seem quite expensive, would I need one of these or would a software RAID's performance be adequate (just has to be as fast as a normal drive?)

Also do all the drives have to be the same brand/make/model or size?

EDIT: I see now that you get PCI RAID cards, motherboard RAID as well as software raid. Provided I decide not to get a RAID card, motherboard RAID would be better than software RAID right?