Dman155

I want to spend about $100 - $150 on a video card (price from Ubid, ebay, or new), looking at GeForce2 GTS and MX, Voodoo4 4500. Any other chipsets worth looking at? I play a lot of Quake 3 and I want to run it at 1024 x 720 or 1280 x 1024 (so it fills my 19 inch monitor) at decent quality without being choppy (even in mplayer). Right now, I'm running a piece of crap compaq p3 550 with a V3 2000 PCI and I have my Quake settings at high quality, 800x600. These settings work well with my card, no slow down or chopping. However, when I up the res and other settings, system bogs down. I think a geforce mx or v4 4500 would do it, but I'm not sure. Anyone have experience with these? Is the V4 for sale yet? Is getting a GTS worth the extra $$? I've been checking pricewatch out a lot and i've found the following prices geforce mx around 100$ geforce gts around 160$ no V4 Thanks for your help.

I guess it could just be really good stereo imaging, but I swear to god the drums in this one clip sound like they all come from different speakers. I can't upload the file, its too big, but its called something like THX dolby surround test

I know mp3's are only stereo, but recently I was listening to some THX trailers and dolby surround tests and they were in surround (sounds distinctly going from side to side and back to front, as well as around). Do sound cards do some kind of surround decoding to stereo playback? FYI, I have an SB PCI512.

This is the general computer questions board isn't it? Yeah price watch looks good, I was just wondering whats good these days and what to look for.

How much does partition magic cost?

Of course I have all the CD's. Well between my friends and myself I probably have about 3/4 of them. Anyway, thats a good name, comcrap. I'm gonna tell my dad to submit a proposal for a company name change. I know what you mean about problems. When I first got it, I must have spent a couple days talking to customer service trying to get the integrated sound disabled (don't laugh). Anyway, I'm gonna build a new rig soon anyway. Any suggestions for components? Its been a while since I've built a system and I'm not up on all the new gear. Specifically, whats good for: Mboard: 100$ Hard drive: 150$ DVD: 100$ Cheapest GeForce2 GTS board? Best price on an SB Platinum 5.1? Those prices are for ebay, ubid, egghead etc.

Seb, I got a Compaq cause my Dad works for them and I got a good deal. I had no experience with compaqs prior to this computer (so I didn't know what I was in for) and I've already replaced most of the components because it came with crap. The partitons are even in disk space. Its a 13 gig hard drive split almost exactly in half. I've been using one disk for music only, but I ran out of space so now I have to have another music file on the other disk. Its just an annoyance having two files, but I guess I'll deal with it.

Link works now, good stuff. Problem with CD's is with a single cd drawer on my comp, it gets real annoying real fast when changing cd's.

Does anyone know how to change hard drive partitions? I have a compaq piece of crap and it came with two partitions. I want to remove them so its just one disk.

Seb, I can't get your link to work. Whats up with that? Kimber, does musicmatch have good list management tools? Also, did anyone see last months issue of Sound and Vision? They did a codec test in there, but I only heard about it, I didn't read it. What were the results? All I know is they said mp3 was the lowest quality code format and Pearl Jams Daughter sounded like crap on mp3.

Does anyone use real jukebox? I use it, but only for the list capabilites. Jukebox lets you arrange the play list all kinds of ways, but its a crappy program. Are there any all in one programs that rip, decode, have good sound quality, sound controls, and play list capabilites?

Whats the best mp3 ripper then? (free would be good) Anyway, in my testing I can tell the dif between even 320 kbps and a CD. I have a minidisc player and it sounds better then 320 kbps too. The format for minidisc is atrac3, is there anyway to get that for a computer? The difference I notice is how loud I can crank the speakers w/out pain from trebble peaks, and general dynamics are also better. Quiet sections on cds and minidiscs are also quieter then mp3s (less hissing/background noise).

I know that winamp supports just about every sound file made and I was wondering if any of these formats are better then mp3's quality wise.

I was wondering if anyone knew the crossover points for the promedias? I think I read somewhere that the sub crossed over at 150 hz but I have no idea about the satelites. The quintets are crossed at 4900 hz so the promedias are probably even higher. What do you think?