Scott's "Computer suggestions"

[Tariq]

Hi Scott,

In this feature you suggest staying away from motherbaords that have video and/or sound cards burnt in. But the Intel boards with the 815E chipsets that support the high-end P-III's all have sound & VGA as a standard feature? Anyone have any problems running RFD or G2 with these boards?

Cheers,
Tariq.

[DBeach]

Tariq,

No results yet, but I've got one of those boards on order and should be able to post my results next week.

My expectation is to stay with my 32MB TNT2 AGP card, but I'll give it a try without.

Stay tuned.

David

[pattern]

Tariq,
As you may or may not know, boards utilizing the Intel 815E chipset have both video and audio built in. However, the bios allows you to completely disable both and run aftermarket video and sound cards. I'm using the Abit SA6R mobo with a Hercules Prophet II Pro GeForce II 64mb AGP video card and an old Diamond MX300 sound card. Works great with fantastic graphics at high resolutions. Only problem I've experienced is that I lose throttle on my MS Sidewinder USB if I use any of the upgrades that came out since the 120.191 upgrade but I had the same problem on my previous BX chipset board. With the 120.191 upgrade, everything works great. I highly recommend both the mobo and video card!!!!

[DBeach]

Tariq,

I got my 815E board setup last night, but G2 is a waste of time with the integrated video. I don't know if it's a lack of video memory or what, but all I could see was a faint airplane with a few surrounding shadows.

However, with a "recommended" AGP card, it really flies! I got the IOMagic TNT2 AGP card with 32MB of video memory.