I finally got a quad core!

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri May 09, 2008 5:43 am

That's a pretty weak PSU you've got in there. I've done some Googling and the recommendation for a 7900GTX is a PSU with 22amps total on the 12 volt rail. You're barely there.

May work, but you'll be pushing the PSU so if you get occasional lockups or crashes in games you'll know it's because the PSU is right on the hairy edge.

You'll definitely need to upgrade the PSU for a newer video card. But it sounds like your mobo takes a standard ATX PSU so your only other issue might be a little re-working of the case if the PSU doesn't quite fit right.

Key Keeper · Post by **Key Keeper** » Fri May 09, 2008 7:49 am

Ive had better luck with Dell than HP by far. Im not sure which one is worse for the bloat when bought new but both are pretty plugged up w/garbage. A guy that just quit here had bought a new HP that was loaded to the gills and had way more "balls" than my dell lappy. Both have vista on them and yet my Dell will run circles around his HP any day of the week.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Fri May 09, 2008 11:17 am

Takes me about 2 minutes to de-crappify a Dell from the business division (I wouldn't let my worst enemy buy a Dell from the Home Division). There's very little crapware at all (a URL and a search redirector is about it) and options not to have anything else installed - not even an AV app.

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Tue May 20, 2008 2:43 pm

I finally got tired of the wimpy 2600 Pro and swapped in my 7900 GTO.

I was going to try leaving the Acer 300 W power supply in but it didn't have the 6 pin adapter for the video card.
I have a dual molex to 6 pin converter but it only has 1 four pin molex connector.
I was planning on swapping in my Enermax 485 watt when I bought my new video card so I might as well do it now.
The new ATI and Nvidia graphics cards are coming out in mid June so I'll see what their performance and price points are before upgrading.
Everything fit in the Acer and is working great.

My old Athlon 64 computer needs 3 molex connectors for the DVD burner and 2 eighty Gig hard drives. I'll try 2 molex Y adapters for that.
I fired it up with the Acer 300 watt power supply and the ATI 9600 Pro with 1 old 80 Gig drive and the 320 Gig SATA drive connected. It's working fine until I get the Y adapters.

I just copied over the entire Steam directory and logged on to Steam and everything worked fine.

Call of Duty 4 is another matter. I copied it over and single player works but multiplayer crashes right away.
I tried installing it from the DVD into the existing directory but it still crashes in multiplayer.
I then renamed the directory and tried a fresh install from the DVD but now the installer dissapears right after it starts.
I had a similar problem in MoOA and had to remove Agea PhysX.
I think I'll start with disabling the onboard sound since I saw a post on that causing a problem.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Tue May 20, 2008 3:05 pm

I believe what I did is the procedure Flying Penguin used - install steam then copy over the entire Steam folder.

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Tue May 20, 2008 4:49 pm

My Call of Duty 4 isn't from Steam it's a DVD. TF2 and all my Steam games worked fine by just copying the Steam folder from one computer to another then logging on to Steam.

To get CoD4 to work I disabled the sound and tried running from the old directory and it still crashed.
I renamed the directory again and tried a fresh install from the DVD.
This time the install option worked and didn't dissapear right away. I must have missed the Vista allow window earlier.
I fired up the multiplayer game after the install and it still crashed right away.

You're not going to believe what the solution is!
Plug something into the microphone jack!!!
I reenabled my sound card and plugged a mike into the jack and it fired up fine. I then patched it to 1.5 then copied my Players/Profile directory over and I'm still a 5 star general.

Next I'll install ETQW and Medal of Honor Airborne.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue May 20, 2008 6:47 pm

I got an "invalid CD key" error when I first fired up COD4 because I started it directly without running it from Steam. When I ran it from Steam it fixed the CD Key (I don't have a key, there's one associated with it in Steam but Steam handles it not me) and it reinstalled PunkBuster but in the process I lost my rank.

Not a big deal - I don't really mind working my way back up again, but I need to see if I can fix that. Probably if I re-copy the profile from the old install it will work now.

Nuby, do yourself a BIG favor and disable Vista's UAC. At least temporarily until you install everything, but since you're a power user I'd just leave it off. It will drive you batty.

Here's how:

DISABLE UAC:
Launch MSCONFIG by from the Run menu.

Click on the Tools tab. Scroll down till you find "Disable UAC" (this should probably change to UAC in next Vista beta builds and in the RTM version). Click on that line.

Press the Launch button.

A CMD window will open. When the command is done, you can close the window.

Close MSCONFIG. You need to reboot the computer for changes to apply.

Note that you can re-enable UAC by selecting the "Enable UAC" line and then clicking on the Launch button.

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Tue May 20, 2008 6:57 pm

Thanks for the tip, done.

MegaVectra · Post by **MegaVectra** » Tue May 20, 2008 7:00 pm

Ordered me a Q9700 today @ our store's price of $205. Can't wait.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue May 20, 2008 9:09 pm

Okay I got my rank back in COD4. Pretty easy. Just restored a backup copy of the \PLAYERS folder from the image I made before the x64 OS install. Your whole profile is stored in the Players folder and you can just move the whole folder to a different PC after you install the game.

MegaVectra · Post by **MegaVectra** » Tue May 20, 2008 10:04 pm

FlyingPenguin wrote:Okay I got my rank back in COD4. Pretty easy. Just restored a backup copy of the \PLAYERS folder from the image I made before the x64 OS install. Your whole profile is stored in the Players folder and you can just move the whole folder to a different PC after you install the game.

Or you could just use this.

"This small Tool give you Rank 55 in the Multiplayer Version of CoD4. You can use the Rank 55 Profile later on to play online. My intention behind this isnt actually cheating. The Problem was my crashed Windows & reinstall with the conclusion of beginning from scratch. If you are used to play at lvl55 it is hard to start from scratch."
http://www.solariz.de/download/cat_view ... ls-a-utils

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Thu May 22, 2008 1:56 pm

MegaVectra wrote:Ordered me a Q9700 today @ our store's price of $205. Can't wait.

Do you mean the Q6700?

In any case, nice!

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Thu May 22, 2008 2:01 pm

I got my 2 molex Y adapters and my old machine is running on the 3 hard drives and DVD burner now. I was a bit worried the Acer 300 watt power supply wouldn't be able to handle it but it's fine.

I can hardly wait for June 18 to see what the new ATI 4800 series and Nvidia GTX 200 series are all about. I suspect the Nvidia cards are going to be too expensive, so I might be getting an ATI 4800 series card this time.

MegaVectra · Post by **MegaVectra** » Thu May 22, 2008 6:20 pm

NubyCanuby_OFC wrote:Do you mean the Q6700?

In any case, nice!

Oh sorry I meant Q9300.