Damien

I have to say that I agree with you, in most instances, people tend to only use around 10% of the capacity of their computers. This is an issue thats been going on for years - I remember very similar discussions in the day of the 386. Of course times are changing, and with the advent of complicated 3D games, the 'need' for faster processers seems more pronounced than ever - larger hertz ratings often falsely promise better performance, faster, smoother games - a picture produced by the clever marketing techniques of companies such as Intel and AMD. However, what most people forget is that the processor is one component in a system consisting of many different pieces. It's all very well having the fastest CPU money can buy, but if your other components can't keep up, then this extra speed goes to waste. As you quite rightly say - in general people simply don't really need more than 600 MHZ cpu's - graphics cards like the Gforce series manage to get highly acceptable results from budget processors such as the Celeron 400. Games will never need the very latest processors to be playable, if companies did this, they would commit financial suicide - remember a very small proportion of computer users own the latest kit. At the end of the day some people will always want the latest kit - it's just a pity they're not prepared to wait - having the latest bits and pieces costs and of course can produce all the niggling bugs and problems that new hardware and software inevitably brings. Still it keeps forums such as this alive and well! [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 21 May 2000).]

I presume you want to know what size to set you're AGP aperture - your post wasn't too clear. Anyway assuming that this is what you mean - there is no clear cut answer, but the general consensus is to set this value to half your system ram. Therefore in your case you would set a value of 128. However in some cases (most noticably with the Matrox G400 series of cards) the manufacturers suggest setting this to 256 - even if your system ram is less than this setting. Generally set it to a value of half - but don't be scared to experiment and see which setting works best for you i.e. benchmark each with a program such as Win Bench 2000 or 3D Mark 2000. Cheers, Damien.

You might like to take a look at the MURC news centre - http://www.matroxusers.com - there they have news of the latest bios and a link to the ftp server where the new file is located. Also if you are going to update your card - I suggest you do it from DOS - there have been several reports of bios corruption from people who've attempted an update from windows - probably best to be on the safe side.

As far as I have found, the Hollywood beta drivers are sound as a pound (sorry - Cockney rhyming slang - I mean stable as a rock - just had to throw that in). As far as I can see this beta release is every bit as good as a final release. I say this because I'm not even running a Hollywood + - but a Creative DXR3 which is made possible by combining the WDM Hollywood drivers with the DXR3 control software. In this respect I don't know about the stability of DVD station - however I've installed this card on four different machines (all running W2K) with thses drivers with no problems whatsoever.

If you mean under Direct 3D then that's easy. 1. Go to Start, Run 2. Type dxdiag 3. Click More Help 4. Click Override 5. Simply enter the desired refresh rate in the box. 6. For other operations - select the desired rate from the monitor section in the display properties. [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 19 May 2000).]

I don't know about the difference in voltage output - however - what I can say is that I've had no problem whatsoever in connecting the cards SPDIF output to my SONY DAT recorder. You may have a problem with the piece of equipment you're connecting to - or it may not be compatable with the output from your Live card. Hope this helps a little, Damien. [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 18 May 2000).]

If no power is getting to the drive, and yet you find that the same cable provides power to other devices - then I'm afraid that the only conclusion I can reach is that the burner is defective in some way. Try connecting the power cable on its own (i.e without the ribbon cable) if the drive starts up then you may have a cable connection problem. However - I've had this problem before - and found that I had a defective drive that lost power whenever it was attached to the ide interface on the motherboard.

You've probably found a bug in the beta drivers - email your findings to Nvidia - they may find the information useful and might be able to provide a fix once the drivers turn to a final release.

I shouldn't get too excited - I did mean the ones that came out in March. Sounds that like me you simply cannot wait for the next release - mid May (apparently) we may then finally see a set of drivers and application programs that gives us the same features as Liveware 3. Lets hope that May brings some good news. [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 17 May 2000).]

I've had personal experience with the WinTv pci card, and to cut a long story short, discovered that the drivers are absolutely crap - my system continually crashed when using the card, and as you say, the overlay function was errattic at best - when run under windows (both Win 2K and 98SE). In the end I ditched the card - it just caused me too many problems.

You might have a problem with two things: 1. The cable you use to connect the drive to the motherboard might be faulty - try another one if possible. 2. There may be some incompatiblilty between your CD burner and your motherboard. Try to put the burner on the other IDE controller if possible - i.e the secondary port or indeed the primary port if it's already sitting on the former. I've had the same bios report as you before, and it transpired that it was a faulty cable. Also check to see if the cables are firmly sitting in their sockets. [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 17 May 2000).]

Could be that you're cables aren't working properally - I assume that you're scsi card doesn't have a built in Bios - mine does, and occasionally it used to fail to recognise certain devices upon initialisation. I solved the problem by replacing my old scsi cables - it transpired that the wires were no longer providing a reliable connection to the drives.

Haven't heard of that util - but have you tried installing the latest drivers (from the Creative website)? When I did this it solved all my problems - it might not work for you though - your only solution might be to reinstall Win 2K

The links haven't been changed - these are the same drivers as before - Win 98/NT 4.0 - I don't think that the Win 2K drivers have been updated at all!

Looks like a mistake on their website - typical!

From what I've heard from Creative, Liveware 4 is due out soon, but what 'soon' means - is anybodies guess. All I can say is it's about bloody time! There has been a procedure for forcing Liveware 3 to work under Win 2K - on this very site I believe - but I never managed to get it to work, and have stuck with the cut down drivers. Unfortunately as you say, the 3D sound quality leaves much to be desired.

I'm no expert when it comes to cd protection systems, but my guess would be that Win 2K doesn't allow low level access to the CD Drive - Win 98 probably does, and this may be why the game falls over under Win 2K.

Did you register Win 2K when you bought it? The only reason I ask is that you might be abble to ring Microsoft Customer Services, quote your registration number or name and address, and it might be possible for them to generate you a new cd key. Other than that you may be able to return the original cd - prooving purchase which would also allow them to give you a new number. It's infuriating when this happens - I've been through the same situation with Win 95 many years ago.

Sorry to say this, but FIFA 2000 just won't work under NT - apparently there are no plans to release an update.

It sounds as though you might need to update the driver for your graphics card - some of the early Win 2K drivers have various features missing which require an update to activate.

I'm sure there must be away around the problem - I don't have an ATI card myself, but I would be pretty pissed off if I'd bought one.

Yep - the 29160 is a PCI 64bit card - will work in a 32Bit slot though - I'm running one in this configuration at the moment - the 29160N is a 32 bit PCI card. Get the 29160 - if you don't have a 64bit PCI slot now, you may have one in the future.

Have you completely removed the SB16 drivers? Have you considered reinstalling Win2k? Do you have any IRQ conflicts? I'm using a SB Live (and indeed a SB16 - only way I could keep my Yamaha DB50XG) under Win2K at the moment, with no problems whatsoever - it might be that the DirectX 7 drivers have got confused by the change of cards. The only way to be sure is to reinstall Win 2K - which will reinstall DirectX 7 and might solve your problem. It does sound drastic, but this might be you're solution.

Zoom PCI internal modems are also very good - I've got one in each of my machines and they run absolutely troble free with good high speed connections (50.6K on a good day!) [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 11 May 2000).]

From what you've said the CD's arent actually being burnt - this certainly suggests a haraware defect to me, get you're drive checked out - I think you have a problem with you're laser. [This message has been edited by Damien (edited 10 May 2000).]