Indy - It could have just been a glitch; it happens sometimes. Maybe your fans are going downhill, or something. I wouldn't worry about it .

Blaze - *Shakes head* I had whole topic on the X800 and the 6800. I'm not going over it again!

Where!? Where!?

@Blaze,

Set your view to the past 30 days and you'll find his thread. The title is unmistakable.

<Edit>

PS: This evening. No beep or pause to boot but low growl and moan for about 15 seconds and then all back to normal.

This is driving me crazy now. Well, now time to play with the unit so I'm just gonna look at it more closely this weekend.

Edited by - Indy11 on 6/3/2004 4:52:05 PM

Well tell us how it works out. It could be the HDD or an optical drive spinning up now that I think about it...

The benkmarks show that the 6800 is better plus Nvidia is a Californian (and so am I) company so I'm going with them. Thanks. Do you have any answers to my question above?

I think it's the 1.2 pint of fresh orange juice Ed's daughter poured into his cd tray

Don't you mean cup-holder Taw?

Blaze - *Sigh* Fine, but you owe me . "Dual-channel" simply uses two DIMM slots and thus two DIMMs of RAM to effectively double the amount of bandwidth. It has better performance and should be preferred, especially if you have a matched (see tested) pair of DIMMs.

As for a "RAID hard disk", I assume that it means that it is an HDD that is capable of being used within a RAID array. As for what RAID is, well, that's something else entirely .

"cup-holder" oh yes indeed. d'you know that actually happened to me?

RAID - Redundant Array of Independent Disks - a way of combining hard-drives together to increase data throughput and/or preserve data integrity. There's no such thing as a RAID hard drive, the RAID controller (sware or hware) allows ordinary IDE drives to be used. Never do it with 1 disk, it "pins" the front end of the drive, you should always use a minimum of two and ideally they should be exactly the same for an array. usually gives a dtr of ATA100/133.

if you want fast single drives, you should be looking at Serial ATA (SATA) @ATA150/166

Esq's answered the DDR RAM question

as to video cards, ATi, ATi, and Ati - don't even think about anything else (waits for the "fanboy" comments)

..i was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now..

@Blaze, the 6800 and the X800 are relatively comparable EXCEPT in one very significant are which you may want to consider from a practical standpoint.

Look at the relative sizes of each card. The 6800 is huge AND it will block the next available slot because not only is it super long, thus limiting where you can install it and here's hoping your AGP slot is positioned to allow for its superlong length, but it is double wide.

Actually, notwithstanding fanboy Taw's near religious fervor for the ATI, the nVidia is NOT a bad card and in some ways currently seems to have room to overtake the X800 altogether BUT the jury is still out because both the 6800 and the X800 are editions of cards that are waiting for PCI Express. I am sure that with PCI Express, the current seeming advantage to the 6800, in performance, may end up being compensated for by ATI's X800.

<Edit>

PS: Took cover off and powered-up. Heard a low moan for 10 seconds, no scraping sounds. No beep and pause before boot. I wonder if it is the bleeping 250mb Zip Drive (internally mounted). I've heard some rotten stories about the 250....

Problem was that I couldn't isolate the sound source.

Note: Baby is too short to be able to dump the OJ into the CD Tray.... although it did spark a surge of panic in me when the thought occurred to me that this too is something for me to look forward to.

Edited by - Indy11 on 6/5/2004 6:59:22 AM

"Baby is too short to be able to dump the OJ into the CD Tray"

I used to say things like that too. Remember they can climb, and build things. That cd tray is doomed. but please, don't listen to me, what do i know about small children and computers?

Thanks Esq and Taw for the info. I'm waiting for the PCI Express version of the Nvidia graphics card. How long do think everyone will have to wait?

Taw - I thought that RAID had changed, and was now "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks". I think that either is acceptable these days.

Blaze - ATI are almost ready to start producing PCI-Express cards, so it should be a few months.

Yeah I always thought it was inexpensive too, though I never really quite got it. Especially when it some to SCSI drives, dem bloody expensive.

My comp will soon be following, The little "fatal exception" messages tell me so.....hmmm, time to break out the vinegar and syrup (old custom)