New Hard Drive... suggestions?

Get the biggest bang for the buck. I just ordered an 80G Maxtor for a server at work. If I was doing it for home, I would probably get a bigger one, just because.

New inspiration:
Add another 512 MB to my Linux-Windows (vmware) machine, making 1 gig total, and add a sound card
I already have a Riva TNT vid card in there... for no real reason
That one is already running a 1 ghz T-bird and has a 30 gb HD, with 10 gb put aside for windows... I won't use that much space
So do I buy basically a new system?
Or do I double my working system?

For a harddrive, the most important thing is that it's 7,200RPM. I like IBM, but Maxtor is very good too.

I've got a WD 120GB 7200RPM Ultra DMA/ATA-100 (I think it's this one: buy.com). I bought it for $301.69 (after tax) with a mail-in rebate for about $120. That made the end cost about $180.

I'm still using my old TNT2 video card. Yack! Being as I haven't bought any new high end games lately, it works for everything I have.

However, at a recent LAN party, I was playing Soldier of Fortune 2. That game was noticeable slower on my machine (1.4GHz, 256MB RDRAM) than the guy next to me with a GF4 (I think 2GHz, 512MB DDR). My frame rate just sucked.

I think I would recomment getting a new system. 1GHz isn't much compared to what's out there now. Being a gamer, you'd probably appreciate a 2GHz with >=512MB DDR, but the final decision will probably be decided by the end cost and how well you talk yourself into buying stuff.

I have decided to get a new video card only... The machine I am on has onboard video.
Would it be possible to 'override' this with a new Video Card, or would the motherboard not recognize the PCI video card?
Thanks

you should be able to override the onboard video card but by using a pci card you will use an irq vs agp does not.

What does using an IRQ change?

You should be able to disable the video card in the BIOS.

Quote: Originally posted by nike_guy_man
What does using an IRQ change?

All hardware devices connected to your system must use some of your Central Processing Unit's (CPU, or Processor's) processing power in order to operate and do something useful for you. When the hardware device needs your computer's CPU to accomplish such a task, it sends a message to the CPU telling it that it needs it's attention. This is called sending an Interrupt Request (IRQ). When the processor receives such a signal (an Interrupt Request), it remembers that the device in question needs it's attention (that it wishes to interrupt whatever it is currently doing), and proceeds to doing so only when it is finished taking care of the other system devices that are also requesting it's attention at the same time. Of course all this happens so fast that you probably will never notice that one device is requesting the CPU's attention and waiting to get it.

Alright, so all this seems simple enough, right? The thing is that each device can only send an Interrupt Request (IRQ) to the system processor using an assigned IRQ line. Furthermore, no two devices may be assigned to the same IRQ line. The problem arises when you consider that all modern IBM PC's or compatibles, have only 16 such IRQ lines (they are numbered 1 through 16) (much older computer might only have 8 IRQ'S), and you might sometimes want to have more then 16 devices connected to your system, without having a conflict. Also, some devices will only work with certain IRQ lines, adding more to the problem.

Bottom Line is you can run out of IRQs and then have problems with printers, scanners, network cards etc.

Only partially true about IRQ's. It is not quite as big an issue as it used to be. You really don't have 16 IRQ's since about half are already assigned to devices like keyboards, printer ports, serial ports, IDE controllers, etc. Most devices will share IRQ's without a problem though. Some cards like SCSI controllers don't share IRQ's well. Some don't share well with certain OS's. For instance, trying to share an IRQ with 2 NIC's in a 9x system can be hard to do. An AGP video card does use an IRQ. It usually shares an IRQ with the first PCI slot in the motherboard.

Here is a listing of IRQ assignments:
1 Keyboard Controller
2 Tied to IRQs 8-15
3 COM 2
4 COM 1
5 LPT2 or Sound Card
6 Floppy Diskette Controller
7 LPT 1
8 Real Time Clock
9 Substitutes for IRQ 2
10 Not Assigned
11 Not Assigned
12 PS/2 Mouse Port
13 NPU (Numerical Processing Unit)
14 Primary Hard Disk Controller
15 Secondary Hard Disk Controller