29-11-2012, 06:01 AM
Agree that building a PC is not for the faint of heart - you do really need to know your stuff and often it is actually more expensive than buying a Dell/HP/whatever as you can get manufacturers warranty for that but its only "owner-warranty" on self-build.
I build my own PCs, but tend to recommend everyone else to get a Dell etc. as no-one needs the pain & suffering that a bust computer can bring.
Agreed also that the "bleeding edge" is to be avoided for 99% of users; for low-end graphics any decent card will do.
To answer Mark, the SiS chipset Col has is really only XGA-capable, i.e. 1024 x 768 x 32bits, and was only intended as a stopgap - almost everyone put in a graphics card and disabled the on-board video in the BIOS - the Award modular BIOS V6 rev 1005 should disable the on-board video automatically if an AGP video card is detected.
Also, the aspect ratio not being 1:1 is a red herring - all graphics packages take into account screen aspect ratios when rendering primitives such as curves & lines and adjust accordingly, so when you ask to draw a circle, its rendered as a circle, not an ellipse.
Col - if you stick with your current machine, do upgrade the memory to the max your MB will take (2Gb) and just use a decent graphics card. That will solve your immediate problems - remember, the "extra" 512Mb of RAM is actually close to a 50% improvement in available memory - not 30% as you might think - this is because a large chuck of your memory is taken up with basic fixed overheads and the video buffer memory needed because you are using the on board graphics - if you use an add-on graphics card it has its own memory on the card and thus frees up a chunk of your limited main memory. I am also certain that the modem was not important and would not have cause the issues you were seeing.
A seemingly fairly shagged older PC can often be given a dramatic new lease of life by doing the clean-up operations I listed above, adding a bit more memory, and offloading extra work to a video card etc.
As this is an older PC, I would STRONGLY recommend getting your hoover or compressed air gun (if you have one) with a soft 1 inch paint brush and cleaning out the PSU and CPU fans and heatsinks - gentle brushing to loosen dust whilst hoovering/blasting air - do it outside - if using compressed air you'll be amazed at how much cruft comes out of your computer. Do also clean all the case vents, round disk drives (they can get very hot and do need good cooling), through the power supply and other fans. Make sure that all the fans rotate cleanly & easily - if one is sticking at all, REPLACE IT. If the CPU over-heats it can and will die, or at the very least, become very erratic; disk life can also be heavily shortened - Always keep vents, heatsinks & fans clean.
Out of the 3-400 machines I'm responsible for, we used to get one or so a year that would seriously over-heat and, once, one that caught fire due to dust blocking vents & fans. One of the things I now insist on is every year, each machine that's not in a controlled environment (e.g. controlled machine room environment) gets a thorough de-dusting ! You'd be astonished at the amount of dust that can build up in a machine in just one year...
I build my own PCs, but tend to recommend everyone else to get a Dell etc. as no-one needs the pain & suffering that a bust computer can bring.
Agreed also that the "bleeding edge" is to be avoided for 99% of users; for low-end graphics any decent card will do.
To answer Mark, the SiS chipset Col has is really only XGA-capable, i.e. 1024 x 768 x 32bits, and was only intended as a stopgap - almost everyone put in a graphics card and disabled the on-board video in the BIOS - the Award modular BIOS V6 rev 1005 should disable the on-board video automatically if an AGP video card is detected.
Also, the aspect ratio not being 1:1 is a red herring - all graphics packages take into account screen aspect ratios when rendering primitives such as curves & lines and adjust accordingly, so when you ask to draw a circle, its rendered as a circle, not an ellipse.
Col - if you stick with your current machine, do upgrade the memory to the max your MB will take (2Gb) and just use a decent graphics card. That will solve your immediate problems - remember, the "extra" 512Mb of RAM is actually close to a 50% improvement in available memory - not 30% as you might think - this is because a large chuck of your memory is taken up with basic fixed overheads and the video buffer memory needed because you are using the on board graphics - if you use an add-on graphics card it has its own memory on the card and thus frees up a chunk of your limited main memory. I am also certain that the modem was not important and would not have cause the issues you were seeing.
A seemingly fairly shagged older PC can often be given a dramatic new lease of life by doing the clean-up operations I listed above, adding a bit more memory, and offloading extra work to a video card etc.
As this is an older PC, I would STRONGLY recommend getting your hoover or compressed air gun (if you have one) with a soft 1 inch paint brush and cleaning out the PSU and CPU fans and heatsinks - gentle brushing to loosen dust whilst hoovering/blasting air - do it outside - if using compressed air you'll be amazed at how much cruft comes out of your computer. Do also clean all the case vents, round disk drives (they can get very hot and do need good cooling), through the power supply and other fans. Make sure that all the fans rotate cleanly & easily - if one is sticking at all, REPLACE IT. If the CPU over-heats it can and will die, or at the very least, become very erratic; disk life can also be heavily shortened - Always keep vents, heatsinks & fans clean.
Out of the 3-400 machines I'm responsible for, we used to get one or so a year that would seriously over-heat and, once, one that caught fire due to dust blocking vents & fans. One of the things I now insist on is every year, each machine that's not in a controlled environment (e.g. controlled machine room environment) gets a thorough de-dusting ! You'd be astonished at the amount of dust that can build up in a machine in just one year...
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