mutant

No more prebuilt computers for me, that is for sure :).

I don't know about anyone but I get very annoyed with the software that is bundled with new computers. Not only it is very limited or useless in some cases, but it is such low quality that those big computer manufacturers should be ashamed that they let the software go through. One example, on my computer, the software that came with a card that had a TV and VCR connection won't work if the card itself is moved to another PCI slot, and I have to move it since the sound card won't fit anywhere else. Anybody has the same problem ? :)

Finally got the card. It sounds great and I'm very happy with it. The good thing is that they provided full version games that present the Advanced EAX technology and it sounds great, even on my old speakers (still have to wait for the new ones to arrive).

I decided to go with Audigy 2 ZS. It seems like a nice product. Now all I have to do is wait and wait for it to arrive :).

I looked at M-Audio too, but their prices a just a little bit more then what I want/can spend right now. If I will go with Sound Blasters then I think Ill go with Audigy 2 ZS rather than Audigy 2. It has better features. And newegg.com has ZS for $88 which isnt that much over $75 like you said.

I was happy with my onbard sound until I found out the experience of Digital Sourround 5.1 on XBOX. The difference is just astonishing. In process of further investigation I found that the Santa Cruz card hasn't been really supported since mid-2003 because that's when the last official drivers were released. That is probably because the card is old and Turtle Beach came out with new ones which unfrtunately don't compare to Creative's in terms of specs even though the prices are considerably lower. This makes me lean over to Creative's side and their Audigy 2 ZS card. Well, no matter what card I already ordered a set of nice 5.1 speakers. Logitech sells them for $80 but amazon has a HUGE deal on them, lowering the price to 46.94, even better then newegg.com's price. They are pretty good, support Digital Surround, and thats all I really want :). If anybody needs them (:)) then just search Amazon.com for Logitech Z-640, but do it fast because they might be out at some point, yesterday's amazon sales rank was 3!

The visitor counter on the main page doesn't seem to work very well. Every time I reload a page a new unique user is added to the count. Im using FireFox as my browser.

I'm looking for some nice sound card to add to my computer. I don't like the on-board sound anymore, after all how can I enjoy the new 3D audio in games or try to program some cool things in DirectSound with on-board audio :) ? My first thought was to simply search the net for Sound Blaster cards and buy a decent one for the lowest price. But in the process of doing that I found that Creative is not the only make of good sound cards . With that said, anybody have any experience with cards from TurtleBeach? Mainly their Santa Cruz card? The URL for official product page: http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/soundcards/santacruz/ I've read that it is a great sound card. Any opinions on this?

I can do that by right clicking on the desktop, then properties, Desktop tab, then pressing the Customize Desktop button. The procedure probably varies by the version of the OS.

Great news Bob. :)

It depends if you want to buy some additional tools or stick with what Windows gives you. If you are willing to buy some software then PartitionMagic is the way to go. If you don't want to buy any software, then go into the Help And Support section for Windows and search for DiskPart program. The help will give you everything you need to know about the usage of that program. It is a command line program btw.

I remember thinking about AMD taking over the market but didn't know it would come so fast :).

Overclocking the memory highly depends on the access times for it. So sometimes, core overclock will do you much better. The higher the access time for memory the harder it will be to overclock, which in turn means that you will have little gain. Check what kind of memory you have on your card, I hear that Samsung is high quality memory and has low access times. Always try to increase only one at a time, that way it will be easier to figure out which setting is causing the problems. Also, remeber to do it in small increments.

If anybody has this card or is simply interested, here are my results of overlcocking it. Test computer -P4 2.4Ghz -512MB DDR333 -PowerColor Radeon 9600 PRO 256MB - speed: 400 core/2*200 memory(stock) -Windows XP Pro (best one for testing in my opinion) -Newest Catalyst drivers from www.ati.com Achieved results - Core: 448Mhz - Memory: 2*241Mhz If either one of those was raised by a small amount, it wouldn't work well anymore. The overclock gave me about 10FPS gain on most of the tests I ran, on other ones the gain was smaller. Pixel Shader was the most noticable speed increase. Also the fill rate increased by a nice number. Overall, Im very happy with the result of the overclock. I know this isn't the best card, considering the speed of memory was lowered by 2*100 than the Radeon 9600 PRO "Built By" ATI, but still its good for now. No additional cooling was used.

I think it was bought in the last 4 months (somewhere around that), but the computer was probably sitting longer in the store. But unfortunately its the 533MHZ version, too bad.