Recent content by Blood Raven

They'll run reasonably well on most laptops with dedicated graphics. Anything with integrated graphics will choke, though.

4670, hands down. It uses very little power (no external power connector needed). Don't get that 8400 - it's a very weak card, and unbelievably overpriced at the site you linked. Check out newegg for a nice cheap 4670 (I'm seeing some for under $60 after rebate).

Surprisingly enough, there have been some extremely overclockable chips from ages ago. The Celeron 300A was one of the greatest OCing chips ever - people would routinely take them from 300MHz right up to 500.

The guy from that forum is talking about using the jumper to clear the CMOS. Consult your manual for a diagram showing the location of that jumper and what pins to use - odds are there will be 2 sets of pins with the jumper currently covering one set. Use a set of pliers (or your fingers if you...

There's really no harm in overclocking if you're careful. Why shouldn't he at least try it? Assuming he doesn't do anything foolish, the worst case scenario is he doesn't see a performance gain. If he achieves a stable overclock, though, he'll get a completely free performance boost.

From another forum: "I was having the same problems using 4GB of RAM (2x2GB). What did work for me, after I tried booting with both sticks in and it didn't work, was switching the CLRTC (Clear CMOS) jumper position without unplugging the power cord. The motherboard green LED was on, and, as I...

What CPU is this, Jester? As for loading times, you won't see much of a difference - that's determined almost entirely by your hard drive speed (major I/O bottleneck).

I'd definitely upgrade the graphics card first. That CPU may be weak, but it's still decent. The graphics card, on the other hand, is downright terrible. For something really cheap, stay on the lookout for deals on stuff like 9600GSOs and 3850s. Those should run for $50 or less (I saw a new...

I wouldn't recommend upgrading your sound card just because that microphone is too quiet - it may be the mic's fault. Also, due to the way Vista handles sound, dedicated sound cards are becoming less and less important in gaming. Have you tried a different mic with your computer, just for...

Overclocking is definitely worth it if you're careful and don't push too hard. Make sure you read up thoroughly beforehand, and use no more voltage than absolutely necessary (and for the love of god, don't leave your voltage settings at "auto"). Too much voltage drastically reduces the lifetime...

Hm... if you don't have a custom tab and the boost option isn't in your levels tab either, I'm afraid your hardware doesn't support that option (your sound card/chipset, not your mic).

The 4850 is a better performer than the 9800GTX, hands down. In fact, the entire reason the 9800GTX+ exists is so that nvidia had something to match the performance of the 4850. The regular 9800GTX (no plus sign) loses to the 4850 in almost every single case. I would not buy a 9800GTX unless it...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=165319 That's got complete instructions with diagrams. If you don't mind my asking, why'd you switch back to XP?

When you say boost is on, do you mean the boost in Steam settings, or the one in Vista's audio settings? If you go to your microphone properties in Vista, you should have something like a "20dB Boost" option under the "custom" tab, depending on your sound card.

Do you mean screen resolution? If so, it depends on the video source - if you're watching a regular DVD, for instance, that's standard def, usually 720x480 (NTSC). HD movies like Blu-ray, on the other hand, are often 1080p, which is 1920x1080. If you're thinking about reducing your desktop...