PDA

View Full Version : Thank you PC Guide


wenospeak
09-04-2005, 09:48 PM
Hi guys,

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone here for helping me through a traumatic experience (building a computer from scratch for the first time).

You may remember the long affair we had in this post:

Upgrading Motherboard & CPU Questions
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=38390


I thought you should know that my new system is doing just what I wanted it to do while much quieter and cooler than my old system.

The Antec P180 gets high marks for quietness even with additional fans installed and running them at full speed all the time. However, it’s a real pain in the neck to work with because of the compartment design (which is the price you pay for its quietness and coolness). My processor never exceeds 100 degrees and 125 to 130 was common on my old system.

Some other components also deserve comments. The ATI All-In-Wonder 600 Pro appears to be an excellent video card, however ALL the software that comes with it really disappointed me. I had a trouble ticket going with ATI for some time and finally had to uninstall everything from them except the hardware drivers. Basically, nothing worked!

The main excitement is from the dual core AMD chip. It’s doing exactly what I expected. I am in the middle of building a new website and putting my system under the following conditions:

There are approximately 40 processes running in the background at boot, including these Systray residents: MBM 5 Motherboard Monitor, Microsoft Anti-Spyware, Free-AV, and Fuji Exif Launcher.

Actively launched programs all running at the same time are: Photoshop, Dreamweaver, usually two or three open IE browsers, at least two instances of Notepad, Microsoft Media player (shuffling a library of over 1500 .flac files), Outlook 2003, Gaim 1.5, Font Expert 2005, Screenhunter 4.0, IrfanView 3.97, and Word 2003.

No crashes, no lockups, no music interruptions, just sweet performance!!!

Thanks for making an old man happy!!!

BTW – the site I’m building is www.jazzrockworld.com for the few fans out there.

Rick Calic


************EDIT*************

Building computers is like having sex. It's a long painstaking arduous task that seems to go on and on forever, and just when you think you're getting somewhere - nothing happens!

(Stolen and modified from Frank Drebin - scripted by Pat Proft)

poppy
09-04-2005, 10:11 PM
I know it seemed like a long process, but am glad to hear that everything is working out for you.

Enjoy every minute of it! :)

saphalline
09-04-2005, 11:52 PM
Hey, that's awesome! :D Glad to hear the computer is doing very well. And that multi-tasking you have going is just... unreal... :cool:

The ATI All-In-Wonder 600 Pro appears to be an excellent video card, however ALL the software that comes with it really disappointed me. I had a trouble ticket going with ATI for some time and finally had to uninstall everything from them except the hardware drivers. Basically, nothing worked!Hmmm... I hate to do this based on the decent track record of previous AIW's, but I'm gonna have to put the AIW's in the "dog house" until further notice. I don't know what's wrong with ATI and their software, but this isn't the first incident of the new ones that I've heard. There's absolutely no reason that the software shouldn't work on a standardized custom built system like yours with a fresh install of WinXP. :rolleyes: Too bad for ATI, but they better shape up!

wenospeak
09-05-2005, 09:25 AM
I wouldn't be too hard on ATI, I don't think they're much different than other Hardware company. With the exception of the Fuji software (which I only use to offload images), I've never seen a Hardware company that makes good software.

Examples:

Epson Perfection 1650 - Smart Panel
Intel PC Camera Cs341 - Create & Share
TDK CDRW Burner - MixMaster
Creative Labs Audigy 2 Platinum Pro - Applications Suite

I tried all of the above at one time or another and ended up removing their software from my system and using their drivers only.

Also, in ATI's defense, their driver package does include virtual devices so 3rd party software can utilize the features of the Video Card. In addition, the bundled software seems to be fine (Pinnacle 9).

It wasn't very smart of me to expect their software to be any good. It's too bad becasue what they intended their software to do looked really cool!!!

Oh well, back to site building...