Dell owners, assist a rookie?

[DB]

Funny you mention that... When the DSL connection was first installed it worked really bad. It was similar to dialup and real choppy. Pings worked fine though (only 32 bytes each). The registry TCP/IP controls (packet size I believe) had been tweaked for dialup sometime in its past. After restoring the Windows defaults it worked correctly.

[DB]

I only find time to play late at night while the family sleeps... Can't have mayhem echoing through the house... Someday though…

[xm177e2]

Nah, if you want to really play games, get headphones. You'll be able to tell which direction the sound is coming from, it helps me immensely when I play Counter-Strike.

[this_ol_patriot]

Then you never heard GOOD sound from a computer, a GOOD sound card and GOOD speakers WILL beat headphones hands down everytime. Frequency response on the bass end will always be better with good speakers than headphones and you also cannot forget the visceral feel from the subwoofer shaking the floor and environs. You cannot hear the middle channel or the rear channels properly with headphones either, it can only be synthesized. You cannot get 5 channel sound from 2 speakers. Trust me.

[xm177e2]

It would also drive me roommate insane, at the rate I play Counter-Strike, I'll stick with headphones =)

(plus, the headphones I'm using have a microphone attached, and you can actually talk to other players (if they have low ping) while you play Counter-Strike these days)

[this_ol_patriot]

It would also drive me roommate insane, at the rate I play Counter-Strike, I'll stick with headphones =)

That I understand and you can get good localization with headphones. Wait till you hear the new SB Audigy card, I picked one up for 99 dollars and it's amazing, I can't wait till more games are written and the programmers become better aquainted with the new EAX Advanced technology. It's getting closer to putting 3D sound on par with 3D graphics. Here let them tell you:

EAX ADVANCED HD™ Game Audio Library takes in-game audio acoustics to a whole new level. New Multi-Environment™ technology renders up to 4 simultaneous audio environments in real time. Environment Panning™ makes spatializing and localizing environments in 3D possible. Environment Reflections™ offers localization of early reflections and echoes. Environment Filtering™ accurately simulates the propagation of sound in both open and closed environments. Finally, Environment Morphing™ allows for seamless transition from one environment to the next. These high definition environment effects will power the next generation of cutting-edge PC games.

[Kermit]

My nephew recommends a dual cpu mother board. What do you think? Oh, btw, thanks for the great advice.

[MississippiMan]

Kermit, I don't recommend a dual-CPU board unless you have something specific in mind that you know will use the duals. The OS has to be capable of using dual CPUs and the software has to be written to take advantage of it as well. It's not something that you just have and automatically reap the benefits of. You'll find some video processing stuff, particularly 3D rendering type applications, that will take advantage of dual CPUs but most common stuff will not.

And there's still the fact to consider that rarely is the CPU the bottleneck anyway. As someone else mentioned, there are some tasks that are CPU intensive, processing video, processing large files in Photoshop, audio editing or mixing or whatever, stuff like that.

MM

[Crispy]

Dude, you got a Dell!

Sorry.

[Crispy]

Hehe. I can't stand that kid in the commercials. I would recommend buying a PC from a local computer builder. You will get much better support if anything goes wrong with the hardware.

[New Horizon]

Yeah...for about 6 months :^)

[tje]

Get the writeable DVD. I'm not all that impressed with Dell, but then I've built all my desktops.. just to easy to go over to www.pricewatch.com and screw together a good machine cheap.