Preacher

The performance with the Omega drivers is slower, but image quality is quite improved. Now if there was a possibility to reduce the bilinear filtering in D3D mode a bit the image quality would be equal to OpenGL. Right now it´s just too blurry.

I´m definately going for the onboard sound of my new Abit NV7-133R. Has true 5.1 support and a S/PDIF out. That connected to the S/PDIF in of the Creative Inspire 5.1 Digital 5700 decoder should provide superb sound and costs one PCI slot less

I too found XP to be the more compatible OS for games, althou Win2k crashes a bit less often. XP also has the better caching system; on XP I had one third the level load time of Serious Sam (1&2) compared to Win2k. However, XP needs some major tweaking and a decent firewall to go online with. All of this is with my current and known to be buggy rig. Maybe it changes with my new one. Personally, I´d buy the XP Pro license, install 2k and wait until at least SP1 for XP is available, then do a dual-boot slipstream installation and check it our for a few weeks to see if the bugs and flaws I absolutely can´t live with are gone.

I had the same problem, too. Had to check several web sites until I found that link: ftp://ftp.epson.com.au/pub/epson/drivers/win2000/twain%2034.zip . This is the Win2k Twain driver for the 7000 SCSI scanner, but it works with XP, too. If you´re looking for other drivers, check http://tech.epson.com.au/downloads/downloads_categories.html?

@ Alien No, it´s revision 1.0. But since 1.3 too uses the 686b southbridge, what is won here?

Definately "other": I´d rip out that ****ing motherboard of mine, put it on the road, start that nasty ***** of caterpillar and start some heavy freakin' modding. Dammit, I can´t describe how much I hate that bastard! I don´t need a new monitor, my EIZO / Nanao FlexScan works like a charm and has excellent image quality. Makes up for the crappy signals from my GeForce And diskspace neither, 380GB net diskspace is enough for the moment. However, I could use a DVD burner, if only it supported up to DVD-10 dual layer double sided DVDs which work in stand alone DVD movie players.

Before buying anything I´d check if the OS you´re using can access all of the disk space. If the BIOS incorrectly detects the size of your new hdd doesn´t mean your Operating System does so, too. Especially the NT based Windows versions are very good in detecting the correct size. It even detects my 3x 120GB IBM hdds even thou there´s no entry for them in the BIOS.

European versions of Fallout 2 are missing children in the game, but they have something that other version don´t have: LaserLock copy protection

@ Faber38 Hast Du die Möglichkeit, das Netzteil mit einem anderen Board zu testen? Möglicherweise hat Dein jetziges Mainboard nur einen Fehler beim messen der Spannung. Bei mir wechselt das auch ständig. Mal nur 11,5V, dann wieder 12,7V. Do you have the possibility to check the PSU with another mainboard? Maybe your current mainboard does incorrectly read the voltage. I keep getting different vlues, too. Sometimes 11.5V, sometimes 12.7V.

Is the nForce 415 really a good chipset? Does it not have errors of some sort? There´s got to be something, noone makes flawless products these days

@ Faber38 Wirf mal ´nen Blick ins Forum von www.amdmb.com. Dort werden alle möglichen Probleme über alle AMD Prozessortauglichen Mainboards diskutiert. Ich denke, daß bei Dir der undokumentierte Überspannungsjumper gesetzt ist. Wenn Du mit "Trafo" "Netzteil" meinst, wäre das "Power Supply Unit" oder kurz "PSU" Take a look at www.amdmb.com's forum . All possible problems with AMD compatible mainboards are discussed there. I think that in your case the undocumented jumper for overvoltage might be set.

Are there any boards with SiS or nVidia North- and Southbridges with 5 PCIs and an onboard RAID controller?

It´s not the speed decrease by going back from ATA133 to ATA100, it is the speed decrease caused by the southbridge. If you have an ATA100 device on an ATA100 controller which is powered by, say an intel chipset, everything is fine, you get about 97megs/s burst speed. Same thing again, but with a VIA southbridge, you only get about 65megs/s burst speed.

Well, I too had planned to upgrade to an Asus A7V333 and Athlon XP 2200+. With the knowledge I have now, I won´t do this. The reason is the VIA 8233A Southbridge. At default configuration, you don´t have any data corruption but your harddisks transfer data slower as with any other chipset (talking about 33% drop in transfer speed). If you try to fix it by applying several netwide available patches (OS drivers, BIOS hacks, ...) your drives become as fast as with other chipsets again, but you will experience data corruption. However, the VIA 8235 southbridge which will be out later this year is supposed to fix this issue. I´ll wait and see. Good things come to those who wait. For full details on the issue, visit www.tecchannel.de , which is (you probably guessed it) a german site.

I have to admit I coudln´t resist and downloaded the leaked UT2k3 demo. After setting the details to ultra high I have to admit that my system can´t handle it on 1024x768. In addition, I won´t upgrade to Athlon XP 2200+ and Asus A7V333. I just read that the KT333 chipset (especially the 8233A southbridge) has problems with data corruption just like the KT133A (686b southbridge) had. I hope VIA will learn their lesson and fix bugs with the new 8235 southbridge which will appear later this year. It looks like my next CPU won´t be a T-Bred, but a Hammer Or back to Intel, if boards with SIS and nVidia chipsets continue to have no RAID controller onboard.

Partially I thought I was playing WWII Resident Evil than a Wolfenstein successor. Same with the Doom III footage. I too kept asking myself why id software went on that trend to make everything darker and darker, then I was enlightened by someone. The reason is the fans want it that way!. So now I say don´t care about fans and start using brains. If the fans aren´t satisfied with what the programmers delivered they better start making the fitting mods. I sure wish Doom III would continue where Doom 2 ended, both gameplay- and color richness wise, but I fear that licensees will make more of the Doom III engine, just like Voyager: Elite Force did with the Q3 engine. Once Doom III is out I will be very disappointed because it´s the same brainless shooter id keeps producing for several years now. Another 30-40 bucks down the drain.

@ M4Carbine If you like sidescrollers you probably know the just recently released game "Solaris 104". Sidescroler with today´s graphics

Solar Winds 1&2 also were some great games, just like the Crusader series.

No problem. If P2 won´t run ok, just underclock the CPU

Remember Ports Of Call? First it came out it had Hercules / CGA graphics, later it was enhanced by fabulous VGA graphics.

I always preferred not to use WinME, so the best thing I can do concerning this specific OS is guessing. What WinME does not have is the ability to boot in DOS mode like it was possible with Win95, 98 and 98SE. There is however the option to obtain the necessary files from several sources on the net. With that you should be able to boot into DOS mode but since I´ve never tried that (like I said above, I never had WinME), I don´t know how well, if at all, it works. In DOS box under Windows however, I think it would be possible to run the game. If not, just downgrade to Win98SE. Besides, I´m just assembling an old 486 DX50 and a Pentium 266. First machine is for old DOS games only (like Privateer 1 and Quarantine, from which i finally got the uncensored US Version ), the last one is for performance hungry DOS titles like Hi Octane and early Win9x games like POD. Does anyone know what one has to do to hook up three PCs to one speaker system? If I remember correctly there was some electrical circuit to assemble to stop the soundcards (one for each computer) to interfere with each other? I can´t find it on the net for some strange reason... Edit: is there a switch that not just switches one keyboard, one mouse and one screen to several connected PCs, but a joystick, too?

Origin later released Privateer 2 Deluxe (try ebay to buy one) which runs under Win2k/XP, but way too fast. Actually, I´m looking for a working slowdown util to play the game, but the ones I´ve found so far don´t work. The original Privateer 2 (the DOS Version) ran fine in a DOS box under Win98SE, no real DOS mode needed. However, I don´t know if USB joysticks work in a DOS box.

1. Privateer 2. Deus Ex 3. System Shock 4. Homeworld 5. Fallout 2 6. Unreal 7. Fallout 8. Master of Orion 2 9. POD As for Doom (1+2 and the TNT + Plutonia addon): download Legacy Doom (Google search), patch your WADs to the latest versions (www.idsoftware.com) and enjoy. Althou the programmers of Legacy Doom said they´d never support WinXP, it works flawlessly for me.

I too have those access violations. It always turned out that one of the three images of the game (image of the installation cd not counted)has given up the ghost, thanx to the via bug. Fortunately, it will all be over soon...

Via has released the KT333A as KT333. According to their specs, the only way to tell if the board has the "real" KT333 or it´s predecessor is the AGP speed. The old one has only 4x, while the new one supports even 8x AGP. So, when can we expect ASUS boards with KT333 and AGP 8x?