New Desktop questions

[Baseley09]

It's right what you said, console games are scaled i.e most 360 games render at 720p (or below!) though you can output them at 1080p etc. PC games you can chose the render resolution at your leisure.

[Malc]

Received the PC yesterday, you know your excited when things like eating and sleeping become an inconvenience.

Quick question about updating the drivers for my motherboard, I used ASUS' official website to detect my exact motherboard, but it's listing different catergories of updates like Bios, LAN ports etc. rather than just one universal update like a graphics card would?

Any idea which ones I should be downloading, or all of them apart from the manual doc's?

[speedlolita]

Surely all the drivers are preinstalled?

If not then yeah, just install all the drivers for the motherboard. A motherboard consists of various controllers/components - hence more drivers than a GPU.

[abigsmurf]

Usually they have an all-in-one driver for motherboards but they may seperate out the chipset, sound card and LAN drivers. If there isn't an all in one package, you should download all of them.

The bios updates are almost always seperate. Bios' aren't always worth updating it's rare they have notable bug fixes, they're generally there to add support for newer CPUs. That said, most bios' now have dual bios' or other features that makes updating almost risk free.

[Malc]

Here is the webpage for my motherboard drivers (just select windows 7 64-bit to see all the files it's offering me): http://support.asus.com/Download.asp...e=en&m=P8H61-M

[speedlolita]

Best to leave the BIOS until you need to update it.

Download:

Intel Chipset Inf Update Program V9.2.0.1021 for Windows 32/64bit XP & 32/64bit Vista& 32/64bit 7--(WHQL).

Realtek Audio Driver V5.10.0.6251 for Windows 32bit XP/64bit XP.(WHQL)
Realtek Audio Driver V6.0.1.6251 for Windows vista 32bit&64bit/WIN7 32bit&64bit.(WHQL)

- Realtek 8111E LAN Driver V5.782.114.2011 for Windows 32/64bit XP--(WHQL).
- Realtek 8111E LAN Driver V6.246.1230.2010 for Windows 32/64bit Vista--(WHQL).
- Realtek 8111E LAN Driver V7.37.1229.2010 for Windows 32/64bit 7--(WHQL).

I never bother installing SATA drivers. Should I? lol

[Baseley09]

I wanna know about the games, how are you getting on with the games. I was dreaming about upgrading my PC while sleeping on the bus this morning.

[Malc]

I've only played CS:Source and Black and White 2 so far, and it's beautiful to see them running at a solid 60fps with max settings at native resolution. No trade off needed for these games unlike the consoles where they need to ditch anti-aliasing for a 60fps experience. I can have both!

I would like to buy Stalker and Starcraft 2 as my first PC purchases as they are some of the only games I haven't been able to play due to being PC only. After that I will probably re-buy a lot of games like Left 4 Dead 2, Oblivion etc. and try out some mods for classic games.

It really is a weird experience for me, as I've never had a powerful PC at any point in my life, so to be able to get a little bit of that feeling like when you see a next-gen console is something quite special to me, even if it is only a 6 year old PC game.

[speedlolita]

Lol, your PC can play a lot better than CS:Source and B&W. Should be 150fps+ easily on both.

[Malc]

Well, my PC certainly isn't quiet when running Black and White 2. I presume it's the fan noise for the graphics card which is doing it as the side of the case next to it gets really hot.

Is this normal for most PC's (Because I thought my original Xbox 360 was noisy)?

EDIT: Strange, this review says that the GTX 560ti was only 1 db louder under full load.

Could it be B&W2 performance related considering it doesn't get anywhere near as loud in CS:S/TF2 at full spec, or could it be some other component getting loud?

[briareos_kerensky]

The board used in the review looks like a reference board, with the cooler designed by nVidia. Other brands can use a different cooler design with different acoustic and cooling performances. Even if the cooler looks exactly the same as the one of the reference board, the fan can change and use a less expensive (and thus more noisy) motor.

[speedlolita]

Yeah, I always buy aftermarket coolers because stock coolers are typically horrible.



Only as loud as the fan I mount on it, and 20c cooler under load.

[Malc]

What is that, looks like a mini radiator?

[Malc]

Just had a crash after playing Black and White 2 for a long time, the side of the case next to the graphics card is getting almost boiling hot.

Maybe problems with overheating?

Is there some sort of graphics card temperature monitoring software that I can use to see if it's getting too hot?

[speedlolita]

What is that, looks like a mini radiator?

Massive heatsink.

I use HWMonitor to check my temps across the board.