obobski
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Posts posted by obobski
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+1 - you'd need to find an Ivy Bridge (that isn't the chipset; that's the CPU family) CPU for this board. There are options, but none that are in current production. You can see what's supported in that board from the Asus website:
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8B75M_LX/HelpDesk_CPU/
I'd go from there to ebay (or whatever you like) to find a chip - the 3570 is a great suggestion, but I have no idea what availability or pricing would be like. It may be that it's significantly cheaper to buy one model down (this is true of many other EOL platforms in my experience - resellers love to gouge "the best chip on this platform"). If the chip you end up with needs a newer BIOS, it's easy to update - just do it with the existing CPU in place, and then install the new one and you'd be set.
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Just to point out, that fan was not installed "backward...for some reason" - it's a downdraft design for a reason: the CPU isn't the only thing that needs cooling, and various components around the CPU (like the VRM sections) need airflow to prevent overheating. That said, if the case is able to provide airflow for that area of the PC it's fine - it doesn't HAVE to come from the CPU fan, but there is a reason that by default downdraft fans are downdraft fans. The original temps you listed aren't going to kill the chip, but the newer temps are much better - I'd just make sure you aren't going to sacrifice the motherboard for them.
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Basic questions and troubleshooting about building my first PC.
(Pardon any spelling mistakes etc.)
After a couple of years my time has finally come, and i've decided that i'll switch from my beloved Laptop to 'proper' PC. ("Gaming PC", <-- really hate calling it that...)
Now, as you might have guessed from the topic title, i've never done anything like this before. And thus I'am afraid of doing something wrong during the process.
(Pluging in something wrong on the Motherbord and killing my CPU and so on...) Which is why I'm going to ask you guys (and girls) some basic questions about building my first PC.
1. Now, first of, how big is the chance of me messing up badly by killing my CPU or something like that? How good are the instructions that come with the parts and does it help to watch a few videos and read a couple of guides on this?
2. I currently run the 64-Bit Home version of Windows 10 on my Lenovo lapto. If i download the ISO-tool that is delivered by Microsoft on their webpage and create a bootable USB-stick or something like that to install Win10 on my 'new' PC, can i use the Windows 10 Key from my current Laptop (found by using a key finder) to activate Windows on my 'new' PC? Or do I have to buy Windows all over again?
3. I've made a lot of research on this, and i think i've 'hit the sweet spot' of getting the best out of my budget. (700 - 800 Euros / something in that area Dollars.)
Now, here is a screenshot of my current idea of what my first build will look like, and I'm open to any suggestions or tips, thanks you!
(The price is in NOK because i live in Norway, 7000 NOK should equal 750 Euros)
Screenshot: http://imgur.com/nr0rkgE
RAM: 8 GB of DDR4
Thanks for any kind of help!
Welcome to the club; building a PC can be a very fun experience, but the first one is usually a bit more daunting. I'd highly suggest leaving an entire day available to yourself for this - don't rush or try to cut corners, and you should be in fine shape.
To your itemized questions:
1) Modern CPUs, especially Intel ones that don't have pins, are pretty resilient, and can only be inserted into the motherboard one way; the heatsink may be a little annoying to install, but there's little risk of cracking the die or anything like that (this isn't the AthlonXP days). I'd always encourage people to educate themselves, so if you've got some videos or guides to watch/read, go for it! More info never hurts.
2) Technically yes, legally no. You can only activate an OEM key on one machine, once - what that means is that key is tied to that machine. It cannot be legally transferred. You can re-install it as many times as you want on that original machine though. I'd also be a little leery of Win10 due to the forced driver updates (there's a thread on Nexus exemplifying why this is a very bad thing); go pick up Win7x64 or (if you must) Win8.1 x64.
3) That could be trimmed significantly and achieve the same performance. First, biggest thing I'd do is dump Skylake and the DDR4 right into the sea. It provides little to no measured, verifiable, objective performance upgrade for gaming - Haswell is as good as it gets and has been for over a year, and DDR4 is silly expensive compared to DDR3 for no measurable material gain. Save your money and get an 1150 with a Z97 or Z97x, grab either an i5 4670/4690 or i7 4770/4790 (there's almost no difference here; only go for the i7 if you have something that can benefit from HyperThreading (e.g. you do tons and tons of video encoding)).
Sources:
http://anandtech.com/show/9320/intel-broadwell-review-i7-5775c-i5-5675c/8
http://anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/15
(you will want to click around in both articles, but the salient point is there is no good reason to dump all that extra money on Broadwell or Skylake for gaming - Haswell and even Ivy Bridge are completely good enough even today)
I'd also dump that PSU for something both more robust and not Corsair (unless you move up to a higher end series from Corsair); Corsair's entry level stuff has dropped off dramatically in quality in recent years and even if it hadn't, 450W is pretty slim for everything that you've got in there + leaving upgrade potential. Dump the DDR4, Skylake, etc and upgrade to a ~600W PSU.
You also only have a single DIMM - that's not the best scenario. Ideally you want two of matched capacity, for dual channel operation. I'd change that up too (and again, with DDR3, on 1150).
Otherwise looks good - nice looking case, nice hard-drive, nice graphics card, Asus makes good motherboards (I'd honestly just switch to an Asus Haswell board; ASRock is also worth considering - just see what prices are like), G.Skill makes good RAM (if you want to comparison shop, Kingston, GeIL, and Corsair are all good too), and away you go.
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Windows 10 is turning into another ME. :psyduck: :teehee:
As much as I had hoped this wouldn't be the case, Windows 10 certainly seems to be living up to this (or worse; ME can actually be made stable and usable on some platforms). I was honestly looking forwards to Win10 for a few features, but the forced-driver installs (and resulting issues with "always must have newest driver" really are the last straw. I get the idea of mandatory updates for security and stability and consistency, and I'm guessing that for the vast majority of users the actual Microsoft provided platform updates, and regular security updates from Oracle/Adobe/Google/Mozilla/etc are only to their benefit, but forcing driver updates (and let's be clear here: this is not the first time, and won't be the last time, that nVidia releases a system-breaking driver) has very little upside, and huge potential for problems (like when you're pushing a system-breaking driver).
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You cannot "force" the application to load the GPU more heavily than it needs to, you *can* tell the GPU's power management to butt out, and run the GPU at full-speed clocks (this can eliminate stuttering issues; if you didn't have stuttering I'd leave power management enabled because it drops temps (this *may* end up having to be a game-by-game thing, I know with my 660 I never had issues with Fallout, but Skyrim would stutter unless it was "prefer maximum performance")). Check clocks in GPU-Z - if they're running at (or near) the card's rated limit (they will still throttle in response to temperatures and TDP envelope) then it's working correctly, if the clocks are fluctuating significantly it's either overheating or "prefer maximum performance" is not engaging for that application.
Either way, the bad performance in Fallout looks entirely unrelated - I'm guessing it's just X combination of mods resulting in poor performance, it may be CPU bound, it may be memory bound, it may just be how it is with the stack of mods you have, etc.
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Looks quite overpriced for what you'll get out of it, if you ask me. Ditch the DDR4, drop a few hundred bucks off right there, and go with a pair of "normal" GTX 960/970/980 or R9 280/290/380/390 and you'll have higher overall gaming performance in the same rough price range. If you dump the X99 platform you'll save some more money, and the overall gaming performance differences between 4690/4770/4790 and Broadwell/Skylake/X99 (2011-3) are usually within a few %; not worth the price by a mile imho. If you're doing tons of video/rendering/etc that will benefit from the 6/8 core chip then ofc that's worthwhile if you need more work done faster.
Monitor looks very nice. I have a similar BenQ (its probably a generation behind by now) - was really a coin toss between Asus and BenQ at the time, not sure if that's still true or not.
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+1 to what HeyYou said - it will likely boot at 666MHz CL9. As far as what's better (clock or capacity), favor capacity, especially when we're talking 4GB vs a larger capacity (assuming you have a 64-bit OS that can actually take advantage of >4GB). However it will also likely boot single channel, since you've got mismatched DIMMs (unless your board supports "uneven channels" (e.g. 2x2GB + 1x4GB in 3 slots for 2 channels, some boards really will do this). Ideal scenario is you have an even number of same-size DIMMs. Give this a gander wrt performance:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6372/memory-performance-16gb-ddr31333-to-ddr32400-on-ivy-bridge-igp-with-gskill/8 (note that they're using an IGP for these)
Or if you prefer video form:
Or anecdotally: I upgraded from 1333 to 1866 and gained nothing in terms of frame-rate in benchmarks (like Crysis) or games (like Skyrim) [why did you upgrade to 1866 then? It was actually one of the cheapest 16GB kits at the time]
Or, tl;dr form: performance differences are very small.
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My PC specs are all in my profile. And yes, I still use a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS sound card... Hey it still works after, what, 11-12 years? :tongue: At least it is still much better than the onboard nForce sound driver on my motherboard.
Boy does my machine need an upgrade... >_>
I have a 2 ZS Platinum in my secondary machine - still a very competent card imho.
Main system (built at Christmas-ish, so almost a year old by now):
Core i5-4690S w/Thermalright HR-22
ASRock Z97x motherboard
2x8GB Kingston DDR3-1866
XFX Radeon 290X Black Edition
Creative SB ZxR
2x500GB WD VelociRaptor in RAID0
1TB WD Green for additional storage (I will literally never fill this either)
PC Power TurboCool 860W ("recycled" from previous Core 2 Quad rig since it still worked, is quiet, etc)
Lian-Li PC-7 case (with 120mm intake and exhaust, and 80mm top exhaust; all SilverStone fans)
Secondary system (since I mentioned it, I figured people might be curious):
2x Xeon 3.06GHz w/Cooler Master sinks
Asus PC-DL Deluxe
2x1GB Kingston DDR-333
GeForce FX 5800 Ultra (w/ Zalman VF-700) + 2x Creative Voodoo II 12MB SLI
Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS Platinum
500GB WD Green
PC Power Silencer 610W
Lian-Li PC-7 case (identical to above; they're identical from the outside except for the Audigy front-bay and different brand DVD drives)
I've got another few gaming machines "in pieces" at various stages of completion too, but none are currently in use.
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obobski; thank you for the hands-on guide for the MCC. It'll be interesting to try myself. I do have the PC version of Halo: Combat Evolved at least so if it is as bad as you say I've got that fall back. I'm glad to see the other titles that aren't available on PC (the ones I really got the console for) run well enough. I'll be trading in my old 360 and stack of games this afternoon; fingers crossed they have a copy of Halo: MCC and Forza Horizon 2 in stock.
I'd be interested in thoughts on Forza - I know that's totally OT. :ninja:
WRT Halo Combat Evolved, the MCC edition is absolutely perfect if you just want to go plod around in it on XB1 - the Cartographer levels look better than ever, and so do all of the levels on Covenant Ships. But if you're after the complete 1P play-through experience, it fall shorts imho. Also worth pointing out that MCC has all levels/campaigns in all four games unlocked from the beginning (at least for me it did), so if there's a section you really despise (or just want to get straight into) you can jump right to it. Very nice for "quick play" too. Another good "remake" for Xbox One is the Metro Redux collection - haven't gotten into the sequel yet, but the original looks and plays fantastically.
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I've not tried the streaming (I'm actually currently waiting on a new Xbox One so I can't even test), but just speaking of Halo on Xbox One (I'm assuming you mean via MCC since 5 isn't out yet; again will be able to comment on 5 once it comes out), I think MCC is largely a success but not across the board. Having played every Halo game on every platform they exist on (except Halo 4 (seen it on 360, only beaten it on XB1) and Halo 2 PC (was very slow to upgrade to DX10)), I feel that Halo Combat Evolved ("Halo 1") is best on PC, and second best on original Xbox. The Xbox 360 remaster, and Xbox One port of that, incur too much input latency to make the final levels enjoyable (I finally gave up on XB1; on PC I beat the library/flood level in a single attempt, on XB1 after 4 hours of excruciating repeated attempts I gave up - that's all due to input lag), Halo 2 on Xbox One is very similar to the "original" experience, and Halo 3/4 are absolutely fantastic (imho best experience for 3/4 is on XB1). My point is, if you're going after the XB1 for Halo, make sure you know what you're getting into. If Combat Evolved is your primary focus, just pick it up for PC - it works fine in Windows 7x64 (and I would assume in 8 and 10 too), and Halo 2 is also available if you're interested. Halo 3 and 4 require a console, as will Halo 5 from what I understand.
As far as re-binding controllers and such, you can directly plug the Xbox controller into the Xbox via USB, and it should otherwise automatically bind to the console on start-up (years ago when I lived with roommates, we had multiple 360s and could literally just drag 360 controllers into one room and they'd all automatically "work it out" with a single console, and then take everything back to its respective "home" and it'd also automatically figure it out - I'm assuming that still works on XB1 too). No idea about the headset - I have all of my equipment hard-wired and just flip switches as needed. :happy:
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I would also point to ESO and say that despite potential interest in a multiplayer game in a Fallout world, it is unlikely they will want to take the risks on a Fallout MMO. ESO is regarded by most as being a failure both financially and in the eyes of the community. It's like players asked for a pony, but got an ox instead.
Isn't there a huge legal back-and-forth that precludes Bethesda from making Fallout a multiplayer/MMO experience? I thought that was part of the ultimate settlement with Interplay, that Fallout Online and related concepts are explicitly *not* Bethesda's.
Anyways, I remember "Oblivion Multiplayer" from years ago, and it was clunky and unstable - not surprising it exists in newer games like Skyrim, or that it would be attempted with Fallout 4.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker
It's a botnet - not surprising if it kills HID to further its goals. I'd take the machine offline, do a complete reformat and re-install of Windows, and load up anti-virus software and use it (and probably improve browsing practices) in the future. :blush:
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There's a number of reasons you can't "use" all of the RAM in there, the quick'n'dirty is:
- DX9 requires VRAM to be backed by system resources (MSDN devnet rule of thumb is system memory should be at least 2x VRAM).
- Skyrim, as a Win32 application on a Win32 environment, cannot map and access 4GB of memory (it wouldn't leave anything for Windows or any other application).
- The GPU drivers will do "stuff" wrt memory mapping for cards with >1.5GB VRAM on Win32 systems.
It's also entirely possible the crash is unrelated to VRAM and could be due to some other factor. Because of that, I'm not saying run out and buy more RAM or something along those lines, because even if Skyrim is hitting its head on a memory cap, the bigger "limit" here will be 32-bit Windows. Under a 64-bit environment you could flag LAA and the process can go up to 4GB by itself (if the system can support it), which may or may not help what you're running into. If unloading mods and turning settings down gets you a more stable/playable game, I'd say go that route and if/when you decide to get a new computer, re-visit this.
The other thing to keep in mind is that application reporting of VRAM usage is usually not very accurate because there is not a good mechanism within DirectX to specifically read physical VRAM usage (because the API doesn't make significant any distinction between on-card and off-card resources - they're abstracted and managed thru the driver and API). As a result, different applications, graphics cards, and drivers will report different things for the same game/workload and the differences can sometimes be dramatic.
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Random guess since you said "lots of malware" - there's something naughty in there that's messing with the HID drivers (like, say, a keylogger) and that's what's causing you the problems. Whatever it is, it probably isn't loading right in Safe Mode (viruses can have glitches too) so that's why you don't "see" it.
Once you get your replacement install media, you may try doing a "restore install" from the Windows installation wizard (boot hte disc and select repair/restore partition) - it may be able to replace damaged system files. However in a more general sense, if "lots of malware" is a reality for this machine, I'd probably opt for a total orbital strike and re-start with a fresh copy of Windows. It will probably take a bit longer than any "quick fix" but it should cut the head off of whatever nasties are in there - back your files up to some separate partition and then screen them very aggressively before you start dragging stuff back onto the machine.
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I don't understand why a clean install wasn't done quite a while ago - like I said, this is a puzzler of an issue and it isn't worth the time and energy to troubleshoot if that time and energy will exceed how long a clean install will take.
Two reasons:
1. It deletes all my files and programs.
2. I need to buy an installation disc, because one didn't come with my computer.
1. This is why we have backups for important files. Re-installing applications is somewhat variable - some things are fairly portable (e.g. Steam games, like Skyrim), but others will require re-installation to function properly.
2. Contact the OEM that made your computer (e.g. Dell) - they will generally provide a disc if you've lost or did not receive one with the original purchase. Alternately your computer may have a recovery partition, which will speed-up the re-install process as it contains an OEM image that will have drivers and other things pre-loaded, so all you'll have to do is run updates.
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My fears envision something closer to a backroom deal than something the developer decided upon. Microsoft is potentially taking a risk and leading to more expenses by opening itself to modding on the Xbone, That kind of modding will naturally need it's own service through Live, will need staff to run it, servers to host it, ect. Microsoft as a company stands to gain little from this other than slightly more Live subscribers. Their tradeoff could be in using FO4 as a means to push more gamers into participating in the data mining service known as Windows 10. A service which is currently free to everyone who owns Windows 7 or 8, and which promises to earn Microsoft continual income by selling personal details to 3rd parties.
We've gone back and forth on this before - and again we'll have to agree to disagree on Windows 10 being the Anti-Christ. As far as modding on the Xbox One, I see it as more of Microsoft trying to gain traction against Sony - they've presented a number of features recently that don't directly earn them money, but also don't likely cost them much (if anything) to implement, which they can hold over Sony/PS4 as "exclusives" (and I would guess their ultimate goal is to increase hardware sales, which does directly improve their bottom line).
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Ok, scratch that last post. The problem resurfaced after rebooting, and my previous solution doesn't work this time.
Honestly, I'm about ready to throw my hands in the air and say "Screw it, time to do a clean install."
I don't understand why a clean install wasn't done quite a while ago - like I said, this is a puzzler of an issue and it isn't worth the time and energy to troubleshoot if that time and energy will exceed how long a clean install will take.
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Skyrims port was half arsed and lazy, they didn't even bother to make the thing Large Address Aware, an oversight that saw the game crashing for those running high settings, they could have offered both 32bit and 64bit, other games have, the 360 and PS3 both had 64bit CPUs (albeit IBM based ones) so porting that over wouldn't have been impossible. It was DX9 too, even EA offered a DX11 option with Dragon Age 2, a game released around the same time. I'm expecting another poorly optimised port riddled with bugs, hence I'm not going to be buying it until next year when its had a few patches and community fixes.
You can't really directly compare the PS3/Xbox360 CPUs to an x86 CPU - they're both custom IBM parts derived from the POWER architecture (specifically ISA v2.03), which is a RISC paradigm ISA. PS3 uses Cell, which extends the POWER-based PPE with eight SPEs. The Xbox 360 uses Xenon (also from IBM), that is (essentially) comprised of 3 of Cell's PPE. The closest analog to this in the desktop segment would be the PowerPC 970 (found in a lot of Apple computers, branded as G5 - it is also ISA v2.03 compliant). Porting (efficiently) to and from an x86 CPU (like Pentium 4 or Core 2) with code optimized/written for PowerPC is not trivial, and bringing in the heavily multi-threaded Xenon or SPE-assisted Cell does not help the situation - they're very different machines.
As far as the LAA configuration on Skyrim - I don't consider that a "lazy oversight" - it's not done for good reason. Specifically, compatibility. Running LAA on Win32 has no effect, but on Win64 it can cause stability problems if the system has less than 4GB of memory (and yes, there are retail configuration machines running 64-bit Windows with less than 4GB of memory, especially if we rewind back to 2011 when Skyrim came out). Developers don't target the top .5% of machines, so compatibility with the widest range of systems is their goal.
As far as the "system requirements are lower than FONV" - my launch-day box says:
- 2.0GHz Dual Core (does not specify type)
- Windows 7/Vista/XP
- 2GB RAM
- 10GB Hard-Drive Space
- nVidia GeForce 6 Series/Radeon X1300XT series Minimum
Fallout 3 lists a Pentium 4, and you can find videos on YouTube of both games running on fantastic things like AthlonXP or Pentium 4 systems, as long as the GPU supports SM3.0 (Fallout 3 has a SM2.0 path that will run on Radeon X (and in theory Radeon 9 as a result); NV afaik requires 3.0 like Skyrim). VRAM requirements are not really that high (even for Skyrim, which lists 512MB as the minimum) - but again, we're not talking about the top .5% of configurations that demand full max ultra at 8K at 12,000 FPS in 3D with all 32K textures in 30-bit color with 128x SSAA and 7300 mods loaded.
As far as "just a lazy port" - I'm guessing that era is (thankfully) largely behind us now, because the Xbox One and PS4 are extremely similar to a modern PC (both are x86-64 CPUs with eight cores and GCN graphics), so multi-platform development shouldn't be as problematic. Going off of using Xbox One and PS4 as a meter-stick for system requirements, their CPUs are going to be equivalent to some of AMD's mobile parts (they're AMD Jaguar based), and the GPUs are similar to Radeon HD 7700/7800 series graphics cards. Now that doesn't mean that becomes the "floor" for all games, but it also seems reasonable to say a PC that is similar to that should be able to run games that are running on XB1/PS4. The Core 2 Duo as the minimum requirement also makes sense in light of that, but the GT 240 seems misplaced. I did a bit of Googling and I suspect the 240 is a typo - here's what GameDebate has:
http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=5013&game=Fallout%204
Same Core 2 Duo, but notice: GT 740.
As far as requiring Windows 10 - that seems very unlikely. It doesn't have 100% market penetration and it wouldn't make sense to constrain yourself like that, from the developer's POV. If the game required DX12 it would require Win10 though, but I haven't seen anything that says DX12 is overtly required.
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Don't worry about! I fixed it!
And ... not to sound like a six year old boy, but ... I did it all by myself! I'm proud of me! :smile:
You fixed the larger issue with your system? What was ultimately the problem and solution? (I'm curious now)
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The drive is already unplugged. Remember, I bought it OEM. It's screwed into the rack right now, but there are no cables connected to it.
Hrm. That's a head-scratcher then. If you're connected to the MB-mounted USB ports and Windows isn't recognizing the peripherals, but they work outside of Windows, that leads me to believe there's a problem with Windows start-up. If it isn't that drive causing the failure, it may be some other driver, but it's tough to say without hands-on. At this point I'd say call clean slate, nuke the thing from orbit, and go with a fresh Windows install. Back-up whatever important data via Safe Mode where possible. If it still doesn't work with a fresh Windows install ++ driver reload (which seems unlikely), there's likely a hardware problem, but that seems less likely due to the USB ports working outside of Windows.
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You can also just add the "Take Ownership" regkey to your system - http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/add-take-ownership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/ - it saves a lot of time and hassle when dealing with files that've been migrated from 2k/XP or installed in weird ways (usually by older game installers). I'm not certain this will fix the problem, but it'd be worth a try.
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On the Skyrim question - yes you can transfer the whole thing over. For extra fun: you can actually transfer EVERYTHING in Steam over. Just pick up your entire Steam folder and drop it down on the new machine, install Steam on the new machine, and point it at the "old" Steam folder. It can take time to transfer everything, but even if you only have 100Mbit networking at home, it will probably be faster than re-downloading and re-installing everything. Especially modded games. OFC keep back-ups on your existing machine in the event something goes wrong.
On the new machine, you've gotten great advice from Griede and LeddBate, the only bits I'd add:
- Give a look at the Radeon R9 290/390 cards. They're great performers and cost somewhat less (at least last I looked they did) than the GTX 980. Either is a good choice. I have a 290X in my new main system (its almost a year old now, how time flies! :ohmy:), and have had no complaints; I had a GTX 660 (older nVidia card) before that, and also had no complaints. Basically I'd just get whatever represents a better deal in terms of price<->performance.
- I can't overstate how important a quality PSU is. Don't mess around with this - get something high quality and it will last for a long time. JonnyGuru is a great place to find reviews of PSUs, and if you're even lazier than that ( :yes:), just go with a top-tier brand like PC Power & Cooling ( :thumbsup:), Corsair (their higher end models), Seasonic, etc. :dance:
- On Skylake, I wouldn't get horribly fired up. I'm not saying "don't do it" but more "it doesn't make a huge difference" - you can find benchmarks from Anand, TPU, TR, etc if you like. Generally CPU performance hasn't improved much in terms of gaming in the last few iterations, especially for single-thread heavy games like Skyrim, so anything from the last 3 generations (Haswell, Broadwell, or Skylake) will be perfectly competent. If you need killer IGP performance ( :teehee:) go with Broadwell.
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The equivalent would be the R9 280 or GTX 760.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1033?vs=1332
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1033?vs=1038
You'll need something better if you're thinking of 1440p and you still want a decent framerate.
+1. Those two should be okay with old games at 1440 or 1600p (e.g. I ran Fallout 3 at 1600p on a 4870X2 back in '08 - that's slower than these cards, but Fallout 3 is older than these games; StarCraft II probably wouldn't be a problem though). If you wanted to upgrade a little, bump up to the R9 290/390 series. :happy:
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Safe Mode generally won't allow h/w acceleration, so DirectX won't work properly, hence no gaming in SafeMode. Emulation isn't using h/w acceleration so that's why it works. Doing day-to-day stuff in Safe Mode is generally not a great idea, because it bypasses a lot of security features, among other things.
I tried to untangle the various forums and posts you linked (this isn't a "you" problem per se - there's a lot of links and ideas from various other posters to unravel). Here's what I'm *guessing* is the problem, but if it sounds entirely off-base feel free to correct my understanding:
- You bought a new DVD drive for your computer.
- You tried to install this drive, and once loading the new drive, keyboard and mouse don't work.
- You are having trouble getting a front-panel header re-connected.
Random guess: the drive itself is dead/defective, and that's why the keyboard/mouse aren't working, because Windows is hanging up on boot and not loading the HID drivers. Safe Mode "fixes" that because it more selectively loads stuff and bypasses the hardware problem. Unplug the new drive entirely from the system and see if it returns to working, if not, then we're back to step 1, but I'm guessing that's the issue.
Source: I've encountered this issue a total of ONE time in over 15 years of working on computers, and it was easily the most frustrating thing I've ever troubleshot. It's also why I'm no longer a huge fan of internal optical drives. I can fully understand why you're being told to replace the CMOS battery, re-install Windows, etc etc too - none of that would make a difference, but it's all very typical "I have no idea what's going on but here throw some nuclear option stuff at it" troubleshooting.
Pulling the CMOS battery and/or clearing the CMOS is what reset the clock - that's expected behavior (the battery backs-up the clock and other BIOS settings when the machine has no other power). CMOS batteries rarely ever die though IME - I've got some that are still alive and kicking after 10 years. If/when they fail the machine will throw an error that CMOS/BIOS defaults have been loaded (some BIOSes will prompt you to enter BIOS to confirm, some will let you just F1 to dismiss), and this will happen on *every* boot after the machine loses power, because there's no battery to back-up the settings. Some really slick systems will throw an error that the CMOS battery voltage is low (prior to the battery dying), but I've rarely encountered those. On anything reasonably modern (like post-ISA, post-LPT, post-manual IRQs, post-fully unlocked CPUs, etc) the defaults will auto-configure everything, so the only real "buggabos" about a dead battery are boot order and the clock (and Windows will reset the clock as it syncs to NTP servers, as long as the machine is connected to the Internet). On older machines it can cause more problems (e.g. if you had to manually setup IRQs, non-plug'n'play hardware, etc) because those settings also aren't preserved, and it won't just "auto" them. A modern Dell should have no such problems.
On the FP header being disconnected, it would have no bearing on anything but the ports it correspond to, so if you don't need them, you can probably just ignore that, or figure out where it came from and/or what it needs to connect to (might help to use a flashlight if you've got an all-black motherboard with all-black ports lol).
100% CTD in loading screens
in PC Gaming
Posted
If it's not occurring on a new save, sounds like the save is corrupted - if TESVEdit can't fix it, that's pretty much game over. Back up to whatever "a few hours ago" is represented by, and go from there (I'd also make back-ups of working saves).