New computer!!!!

I bought my Dell Latitude D531 about a year and a half ago, and got a $200 price cut because it was a model they were getting ready to discontinue. It came with an ATI Radeon Mobility x1270. (They are STILL making and putting this chipset into new laptops and netbooks by the way.) Laptop came with Vista. To make a long story short, I eventually had to downgrade the Windows to XP, because the stupid machine wouldn't boot 3/4 of the time. It would freeze halfway through, forcing me to hold the power button and try again (I destroyed the hard drive by doing this, BTW.) Bad video driver. Went to ATI to see if there were updated Vista drivers. No. Sorry, your video card is a legacy card, and there will no longer be any updates after Jan 09. I bought the stupid thing in Nov of 08.
So anyhow, the machine runs great, with the eight year old OS.

Linux, same deal. I can only run older, more stable distributions. I can't run the latest Ubuntu, PcLinuxOS, or SimplyMepis. I can only run versions of those that were put out before Jan of 09. Three guesses why?

That's my beef with ATI. Their driver support stinks. I suppose if you don't mind tearing out a 2 year old video card and replacing it when you want to upgrade your OS, they're ok. You can do that with a desktop, but with a laptop, your stuck. And the thing is, I wasn't looking for an upgrade. All I wanted to do was run the OS my computer came installed with.

From ATI's driver download page:

"AMD has moved a number of DX9 ATI Radeon™ graphics accelerators products to a legacy driver support structure. This change impacts Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Linux distributions. AMD has moved to a legacy software support structure for these graphics accelerator products in an effort to better focus development resources on future products."

In other words: "Screw you!"

 

My last build was in Aug 06 and I'm still using it, as the funds are not available for a new build, plus I do not much gaming any more. These are my specs

Acient but still works great.

Asus A8N32-Sli deluxe MB
AMD 64X2 Toledo 2.4Ghz Processor
4 Gigs (4x1gig) Corsair Extreme Pc 3200 Ram
2X 1500GB RaptorX 10,000Rpm HD
XFX Nvidia 9800 GTX+ Video Card
19" View Sonic Monitor
Logitech MX 5000 Keyboard Mouse Combo
Win XP Pro 32bit on one drive
Antec 900 Case
Antec 650 Earthwatts PSU
Win 7 Ultimate 64bit on the other

 

Actually that's NOT too "ancient" really. That is a great gamers build. All good parts in there. I beat the crap out of that motherboard overclocking on my last build and it was outstanding. That setup would still run most games, and since that is a sweet case, you could get a second one of that video board now for about $150 and then it would actually run just about anything out today quite nicely still. You would have only to go to a 750W or larger power supply to SLI it though. There are 850w units on NewEgg for about $130. So, if you didn't want to drop a bunch of bucks, you actually would have that thing screaming along quite nicely for under $300. Nice job!

(course then you'd be tempted to burn $50 a pop on the newest games)

 

Actually the case I'm not impressed with.. It was hard enough for me to install the current VC. to put in a second I will have to remove one HD.. That mother board is a great board, but had to replace it twice under warranty... I do not have any issue playing any games. In fact I played Fall out 3 with high settings, and have not had any lag at all.. I know it is a 2yr old game, but it is fun anyway...

In the future I'm actually thinking or purchasing a new case.. One with better cable management ability.. I would have to cut holes in this case to hide most of the cables.. To me that is not worth it, so a new one will be in the works soom I hope..

 

Hey guys!!

My Desktops....

Mac Desktop Pro

Two - 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processors (8 Cores)
6GB of 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM memory
640GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB
One 18x SuperDrive
Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel)
OS X 10.6
Macs have used 2 processors long before the dual core processors came out. They have always been a powerhouse. Even the older G4 & G5's ran with 2 processors.

My old desktop
Intel Xeon E5405 2.00GHz Quad Core Processor.
4 gb 667MHz PC5400 ECC Fully Buffered Memory.
XFX GeForce GTS 250 Core Edition Video Card
320 7200-rpm Serial ATA
Plextor PX-B320SA Blu Ray Player
This machine has only run Ubuntu Linux since it was built.

I don't do games on computers. Have a PlayStation 3 for games.
And my last version of Windows was Windows 2000. Jumped to Linux when XP was released.

I know.... everybody hates the Mac guys.....
I did too, until I used one.....

 

I'm not near the geek you guys are...but I just got all interested in this thread.

Mainly because I just had to buy a new laptop a few weeks ago...not even in the same ball park as you guys though.

But I went from an Intel Celeron processor at 1.6 in the old laptop...to a Core i5 at 2.26 (TurboBoost up to 2.53)

And it makes that Celeron machine seem like an old Apple IIc...Oh well, at least I thought I had a "big computer".

LMAO....it does what I need it to do though (surf, video chat with the family, pay bills, etc.)

Interesting thread...

 

I like gaming also! I bought this model!- Toshiba
Qosmio X505-Q880

Intel® Core™ i7-720QM Processor
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64
6GB DDR3 memory
500GB hard drive (7200rpm)
64GB solid state drive
1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® 360M
Blu-ray Disc™ and DVD SuperMulti with Labelflash®
LED backlit keyboard
1920x1080 native resolution (not too bad for a laptop)
Bluetooth®
802.11n wireless
Integrated web cam 18.5" full HD screen I run new games with high FPS speeds! Crisis for instance with all game settings on high 135-150FPS I have yet seceded in slowing this machine down!