Upgrading My Computer. What to get.

[cabby]

Yeah, one of the main reasons Chrome is just a secondary browser for me, it just doesn't have the stuff implemented as well as Firefox.

[chaos5061]

Does that work with FireFox 5 Cartman? That's going to be the new version that I have after my computer is done. Have 5 on my laptop now. Don't really notice any difference between 4 and 5 right now but haven't really dug into it either.

[Cartman]

Oh, I already have FF5 and the modified CookieSafe works.
FF5 is such a small update, seems they want to catch up with Opera regarding version numbers
It's a cookie management similar to the functionality of NoScript, you have a small icon in the status bar and can allow cookies from websites and / or servers.

[chaos5061]

Well I'm going to be getting the full update after all. The MB I got uses AM3 which is what I thought my cpu was it's not it's AM2+. So they just called me and asked me what I want to do and gave me a list of choices. I could get a AMD Phenom II x4 970 which is the highest they had in the quad cores or I could go to the 6 cores. They had the 1055, 1090 and 1100 of the 6's. So I went ahead and got a 1100 6 core cpu. I could have swore that dang 940 was AM3.

[Cartman]

I looked this up and AMD caused a lot of confusion...

Technically all AM3 CPUs fit into AM2/AM2+ boards as long as the board manufacturer released a BIOS update. AM3 CPUs support DDR2 and DDR3 RAM while AM2 only support DDR2 which is the main difference.

But you can only place AM3 CPUs into an AM3 board because only AM3 CPUs support DDR3 RAM and AM3 boards only have DDR3 sockets (I think except one Asrock that has both).

The stupid thing is that AMD did not change CPU names when changing the socket. They could have simply named the AM3 ones xx5 and AM2 xx0 but they brought the 910, 950, 960 and more for AM3...

[chaos5061]

Computer's back. So far with what I've done which is just putting stuff back on here it seems to be working great. Haven't tried any games yet but so far it seems that my new HDD (Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s) is as fast as my old HDD (Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10000 RPM). That 6.0Gb/s must be making a big difference for a 7200 RPM to be as fast as a 10000 RPM HDD.

[Cartman]

No, it's not the S-ATA interface that makes the difference. The new HD simply has a higher density so more data can be loaded in less time. This compensates the lower RPM.

Just compare a current 5400 RPM HD with more than 1 TB to an older 500GB HD with 7200. The newer one will win.

S-ATA 1.0 has 150MB/sec, S-ATA 2.0 300 and S-ATA 3.0 600. Even the fastest harddisks and most SSDs are below the 300 MB/sec so S-ATA 2.0 with 3 Gbit/s is sufficient. The higher speed is only needed for SSD RAID arrays.

[chaos5061]

Ok Maybe someone can help me here. My problem is that I have a sound card on my motherboard and another sound card my sound blaster x-fi. My problem is this:
On Windows 7 they have that sound speaker thing on the taskbar. Right click it and selecting playback devices brings up a list of devices that play sound. The list only has three things in it.
1. Realtek HDMI Output which is my video card sound going through my TV. Works fine.
2. Same thing as number 1 since I have 2 video cards but is Not Plugged IN which is fine since I don't need it.
3. SPDIF Out Creative SB X-Fi says ready. I switch to it but nothing comes out of it even though it shows on the sound bar that sound is going through it. Don't care about this though.

Now there is also supposed to be a option to either select headphones or speakers for the Creative SB X-Fi but the options are not there. Does anybody know how to get them to show up?

[cabby]

Sounds like driver conflict of some type. First thing you'll want to do is reboot your system and hop into the Bios to make sure that the on board audio is disabled. After that go to creative's website and get a new driver install from them. Before installing it go into your Device Manager (believe you can still get it in Win7 via right click computer icon and select properties) and uninstall any drivers currently assigned to your sound card. After that install the new drivers stuff you get from creative. That should hopefully get you going.

Personally, I'd just get rid of the creative sound card and use the built in audio. For 99% of all systems that built in audio will work perfectly fine and be just as good as a separate sound card.

[chaos5061]

Actually may be a defective card now. There is software that it installs when you install the things on the disc that comes with it and whenever I try to open them they say the device is not detected. Called place that I upgraded with and they said to bring it back to check the mobo to see if it's a problem. I know the mobo won't be the problem because I had the issue before I took it in. I was hoping that when I upgraded it would start working again maybe a loose cable or something but no dice. So they say if defected card could still be under manufacture warranty. Usually 2-3 year manu warranty they say. But if not and I want another card newegg's price is 199.99. Actually I'm going to activate the mobo sound so I can at least use my headset for vent. Without the mobo I have nothing to plug my headset into so that needs to turned on. Now to find out how to do that.

[cabby]

That will be in the Bios, just look for the on board audio stuff to enable it. Sometimes it's listed as AC'97.

[chaos5061]

Got it. Setup vent also while I was at it. They said I was better than before.

[Cartman]

The onboard sound devices are not that bad as they used to be.
I also had Soundblaster cards for a long time until Creative decided to not release Vista drivers for a 3 year "old" card that costed about 200€.