Power supply Questions

[Jem 2]

I have done a search and cant find a relative topic so i hope im not in trouble he he !!!

 

I have a DELL dimension 4550 and it runs a 250W power supply, i need to upgrade to 400W because my new graphics card Requires it, according to spec !!!

 

Can i find a new one to slot straight in or do i need to slice and dice the back of my PC ?

 

Don't really want to do that, but if need be i will break out the hack saw :(

 

Odd question i know but any help would be appreciated :)

[Marxist ßastard]

You're completely SOL here. Dell has their mainboards special-made such that they are incompatible with retail power supplies. If you try to change out the power supply, both the mainboard and the new component may be irreparably damaged (think dust fires, exploded capacitors, and fried chips), or, at best, completely dead.

 

Additionally, if you've already bought that video card, you may want to keep the receipt handy --- most video cards nowadays use the PCI-Express standard to connect to a mainboard. The mainboard in your Dell uses the older, obsolete AGP standard. However, since these connectors aren't designed to damage yourself or your possessions if you mix them up, a PCI-Express card simply won't fit in an AGP slot.

 

You could always get your upgrade parts from Dell, but I think you'll find that their prices are outrageous. They're truly, truly outrageous. (No, I don't care what you think. I can use that joke twice. It's gold --- pure gold, and there's no way I'm wasting it all on the import-Oblivion-gems-to-Morrowind guy.) In the long run, you'd be better off saving up your money, salvaging what your can from the old computer, and using off-the-shelf components to build a new computer around its remains. That way, you can control that it uses industry standards and is thus easier to upgrade.

[Jem 2]

Woh!!! thanks for the head's up on that :ohmy:

 

I will contact DELL and see if it's possible. :D

 

 

Edit:::

DELL are CRAP i tried to contact them with no luck or help, so i guess i got to build my own pc, this is gona to cost a bomb ?

[Guest Tessera]

Edit:::

DELL are CRAP

 

Yes... yes, they are.

 

i tried to contact them with no luck or help, so i guess i got to build my own pc, this is gona to cost a bomb ?

 

I can tell you that I built an entirely new gaming rig for Oblivion and the total price was close to 3000... just for the PARTS. Granted, I went overboard... but you asked. The one I built is based around an AMD Athlon 64 Toledo running on a WinXP x64-bit OS and it eats Oblivion for breakfast... so it can be done, if you have the funds.

[Switch]

Not all of us have Tessera's funds when it comes to our computers however. :P You should be able to build a better PC than that rubbishy Dell thing for not much more than 600 dollars I would think...

 

I've recently ordered a new rig from somewhere called CyberPower Inc (they have an American site too). They build your computer to the specifications you state and give you a 3 year warranty and lifetime tech support to boot. They even throw in stuff like special thermal paste and wire jobs for a little extra. Considering the service their prices seem reasonable, and they're recommended by quite a few magazines such as PC Gamer and PC Format. I got tired of building my own rigs that croak in 18 months with no warranty or cover, so you might try them.

[Guest Tessera]

Not all of us have Tessera's funds when it comes to our computers however. :P You should be able to build a better PC than that rubbishy Dell thing for not much more than 600 dollars I would think...

 

Heh, well I did say that I went overboard, Switch. But yah, if I was on a budget, then I'd look at the following areas most of all, for any PC that I wanted to run Oblivion with:

 

(1) Use SATA hard drives, in a RAID 0 array. This can be time-consuming to set up, but not all that expensive these days (around 300 bucks, tops).

 

(2) Use a newer (less than a year old) video card, with at least 256 megs of VRAM. 512 megs is better. I've seen such cards as cheap as 140 dollars.

 

(3) Buy more system RAM. If you can reach 2 gigabytes total, then you'll be at the optimal amount for Oblivion and many other cutteng-edge 3-D games. As a matter of fact, the entire PC gaming industry seems to be coming around to the notion that, officially speaking, 2 gigs of system RAM is gonna be the de-facto standard in the future... for quality PC gaming rigs. They're already designing the next generation of 3-D games based upon that standard.

[Marxist ßastard]

Use SATA hard drives, in a RAID 0 array.

RAID 0 for gaming was supposed to be all the rage for a few months back in 2005 or even earlier than that. Tessera obviously needs to update his sources, though, since this brief fad was ended once someone with a little bit of sense stepped into the fray and brought up five points:

1. The only way better hard drive throughput will help gaming performance in general is if you're constantly swapping --- and if that's happening, you just found your bottleneck. Suffice it to say, if your game is running out of the page file, you'd notice.
   
2. Furthermore, better throughput would only help at all when a game is loading. Due to Oblivion's loading system, the only noticeable difference would be right at the game's start-up, when restoring a save, fast-traveling, or possibly when changing between two interior cells.
   
3. Due to the convoluted methods game engines use to read, store, compress, decompress, and process data within the files they use, a lot of the load time is actually overhead between disk accesses in which the engine is tying up the processor to manipulate the data it just read.
   
4. ...But that's only the half of it. If you get a cheap RAID controller, it won't have the processing power required to effectively manage its little gaggle of hard disks, so it'll use the system's processor to help sort things out. However, since the game engine is already using the processor to interpret the data it just retrieved from disk, the RAID controller and game engine will compete for resources, effectively nullifying whatever load time reduction you could've gotten.
   
5. To top it all off, if one disk fails in a RAID 0 array, all the data on the array is lost. Thus, for every disk you add into the array, your chances of a catastrophic failure wiping out all your data increase exponentially. Consider also that RAID 0 fires up all the disks in an array simultaneously even if you're just getting a very miniscule amount of data --- all that unnecessary wear and tear adds up after a while.
   

EDIT: Yeah, it was the first half of 2004.

[Guest Tessera]

Use SATA hard drives, in a RAID 0 array.

RAID 0 for gaming was supposed to be all the rage for a few months back in 2005 or even earlier than that. Tessera obviously needs to update his sources, though, since this brief fad

 

Incorrect. There was no fad involved, nor is this information dated in any way whatsoever.

 

Please direct your attention to this page of current and cutting-edge recommendations from nVidia, regarding the construction of an optimized gaming rig, which includes either dual or quad SLI features:

 

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_howtobuild_2.html

 

I will also quote directly from that page, which lists nVidia's recommendations for the best ways to build a high-end gaming PC.

 

Here's their top three configurations... nVidia's cream of the crop:

 

Extreme SLI PC Configuration:

Dual GeForce 8800 GTX or Dual GeForce 8800 GTS or Dual GeForce 7950GX2

AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 2.8GHz (AM2) or Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.9GHz

NVIDIA nForce 680 SLI or NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI motherboard with 2GB system memory

Two HDDs in Raid 0 configuration

Two optical drives

PCI Sound Card

LCD at 2560x1600 resolution

 

Ultra High-End SLI PC Configuration:

Dual GeForce 7900 GTX or Dual GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 2.6 GHz or Intel Pentium EE 955 3.46 GHz

NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 motherboard with 2GB system memory

Two HDDs in Raid 0 configuration

Two optical drives

PCI Sound Card

LCD at 1600x1200 resolution

 

High-End SLI PC Configuration:

Dual GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB or Dual GeForce 6800 Ultra

AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 2.8 GHz or Intel Pentium EE 840 3.2 GHz

NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 motherboard with 2GB system memory

Two HDDs in Raid 0 configuration

Two optical drives

PCI sound card

LCD at 1600x1200 resolution

 

 

In each case, take notice of the line that I've placed in bold type. Apparently, nVidia... a company which makes the some of the most intense gaming hardware available on this planet, is recommending the use of RAID 0 arrays for all three of their top SLI gaming rig configurations. They could have recommended anything. Well, they didn't... they recommended RAID 0 and that page is current -- not 2 years old. It simply works the best of anything available right now. I've been a certified harware tech for 15 years and I agree with their recommendations 100%. Until something that is actually better for 3-D gaming rigs comes along, I will continue to recommend the best choice and right now, that choice is dual SATA2 in RAID 0.

 

Lastly, I will point out that a hard disk failure is no more catastrophic in a RAID 0 array than it is in ANY type of hard disk array. The end result of a drive failure will always be the same: you'll need to replace the bad drive and then restore the data that it contained. That data should be have been backed up in another physical location, regardless of whether you have a single or a dual drive system. Furthermore, the monetary cost of fixing a drive failure will likewise be exactly the same in any of the possible drive configurations, since they all require that the drive be physically replaced. That ancient noise about RAID 0 being somehow "more risky" is only true in the case of lazy or naive users, who fail to do what EVERYONE should be doing with their most important data: backing it up, regularly. If that user experienced a drive failure on a typical, single-drive system, then he or she would be in exactly the same boat: screwed, because they didn't back up their stuff and now, it's gone.

[Marxist ßastard]

To get things started, let me just say I love how you aren't even making the slightest attempt to challenge the points I brought up, instead just trying to convince everyone that there are people besides you still clinging to this fad. More evidence for you to ignore can be found here and here.

 

Incorrect. There was no fad involved, nor is this information dated in any way whatsoever.

 

Please direct your attention to this page of current and cutting-edge recommendations from nVidia, regarding the construction of an optimized gaming rig, which includes either dual or quad SLI features:

Ipse dixit! Er, ipse marketing droid dixit!

 

They could have recommended anything.

That's sort of the point. The nVidia marketing droids that put those suggestions together only have a responsibility to push nVidia products whenever possible in their example system configurations. Anything on that page that doesn't represent a market nVidia has entered is just a placeholder. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if those placeholders were carried over from previous nVidia marketing ventures going all the way back to when this fad was in full swing.

 

Ars Technica's system guide --- which is compiled by people who actually know bus from accumulator, in stark contrast to nVidia's marketing lineup --- doesn't currently recommend RAID 0 and hasn't all the way back to Summer 2004, which happens to coincide with the date I set for the RAID 0 fad being officially over.

 

I've been a certified harware tech for 15 years...

You can't even spell "hardware," and I also find it very difficult to believe that figure doesn't predate your own birth.

 

Lastly, I will point out that a hard disk failure is no more catastrophic in a RAID 0 array than it is in ANY type of hard disk array.

How about any real RAID setup?

 

That data should be have been backed up in another physical location, regardless of whether you have a single or a dual drive system.

...And wouldn't it be just grand if cancer was cured by ice cream?

[Guest Tessera]

I'm glad you know more than the hardware engineers at nVidia. I'd love to see your credentials sometime. I already know what their credentials are.

 

In the meantime, I'm going to continue to respect not only their expert recommendations, but my own benchmark tests... which have conclusively demonstrated that a RAID 0 array works the very best for games like Oblivion that are heavy on texture swapping. If something better for such games comes along some day, then I'll happily recommend that configuration instead. The priority here is speed and overall game performance, not the flavor-of-the-month in the novice magazines.

 

Later.