OT: Climbing System Requirements and Specs

[Fyron]

AGP vs PCI Express. Which is better and why? Is there really a noticable differance?

PCI-E is a faster bus than AGP, so you will get better performance with PCI-E.

[Atrocities]

I wonder if my HP POS is PCI Express? I have never looked to be honest with you. What is the major differance between PCI and PCI Express slot? An additional smaller slot or something

[Renegade 13]

***Moved to the appropriate venue.***

[psimancer]

as a computer shop owner for 5 years (1995-2000) and still mildly follow the market

you are correct theyt do make changes every 5 years or so to force a repurchase

example basic motherboard slots

isa vs mca (the pc xt era)
isa was 16 bit mca was vastly better at 32and nearly as fast at data transfer as a pci howwever the isa added two options to compete eisa (extended ) which worked very well and was backward compatible
and vesa an extended slot design that cost more and only 3 slots per machine instead of all eight (thats right EIGHT SLOTS !!!!!) vesa was replaced by pci losing its backward compatible slot design the first instance of a completly non backward compatible design replacing and winning in popularity (note the user base attitude change from tech heads who understood what they were buying and the implications of compatibility and later addons or replacement of a board vs today's userbase that says fix my computer toaster please )then next step was shrinking the motherboard and the case thus forcing fewer slots (cost reduction) now standard at 1 to 3 plus an agp if not a builtin card then as a addon agp the accerlerated graphics port came in to promise faster graphics vs pci slots and now pci express is attempting to replace the agp with an extension of the pci slot standard

the computer industry has to change standards to force business users to change machinery every few years otherwise business the mainstay of the industry would still be running there programs on 80386 computers which can handle most business applications (properly programmed with good tight code) and only purchase faster machines for programs that required the massive bloated power needed for windows and its overblown interface (yes i run wxp pro i havent really become happy with linux like tomany old programs i have)

[kalthalior]

The problem I have with a couple of my older games (that I still enjoy playing) is that my system is too FAST. I only play a couple of "modern" games released in the last year or two. A friend of mine had a similiar problem and wound up rebuilding an old P133, and it looks like I'm going to wind up doing the same with my old P200.

[Thermodyne]

MS has an app called Virtual Server, and it will let you run guest OS’s from within your host OS. VS is a free download, so if you have a decent system with some ram to spare, you can set up 9x to run right on your desktop. You just load it up and it runs on top of your host OS. You can actually use both at the same time.

[TurinTurambar]

I run a dual-head setup with a Matrox Millenium G550. It's been able to handle everything up till this year. I wanted to play the demo of GalCivII but there are no drivers for this thing past DirectX 9.0. (GalCiv needs 9.0c support) The specs on the card (128bit/32) are up to the challenge except for that little crucial tid-bit. Same thing with the new Tomb Raider Demo.

Is there a good card that supports dual-head setups and will run these new games? I can't seem to find one. Well, not an affordable one at any rate...

TT

[rdouglass]

I run a dual-head setup with a Matrox Millenium G550

I run the same card and the obvious Q I had is the driver version. I'm running driver ver 5.95.5.0 on XP Pro and don't have problems with anything. I had lots of prob's with ver 5.21.xxx (or was it 5.27.xxx) either way the new version seemed to solve a ton of probs on my G550 card.

[Fyron]

Or you could get Vmware to do the same thing, also free now.

[Atrocities]

Computers are overrated.