Upgrading my PC and need suggestions, advice and some help.

[Juggernaut]

Okay after looking at that toms chart I feel good with the xfx hd 5670.

Now on to sound cards. What would make a good choice ? I have the the tv hooked up to my 5.1 surround sound system.

 

[Yami]

Integrated motherboard sound cards are nowadays usually on par with ~$50 sound cards, and will output 7.1. Unless you're after sound perfection I recommend that you don't get a peripheral sound card.

 

[Juggernaut]

The acer has a Audio Integrated*nVidia MCP61 with AC97, ALC888 codec supporting 16 bit PCM format for 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio*codecs with UAA (Universal Audio Architecture) in it for intergraded sound.

Will i be able to hook up my vid card in hdmi and have sound coming out of it from intergraded sound card?

 

[MindoverMaster]

That's what HDMI is... To produce video and sound.

 

[Juggernaut]

I know hdmi runs sound and vid. I just didn't understand how it worked because it's been a while i upgrades pc's. Last when I was into it there wasnt any hdmi vid cards.

I just need to get back into it again so I know how everything works.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Google is your friend, man. Your Graphic card has a built in sound device that will produce sound. It mimicks off your system sound, i believe.

 

[Yami]

My GTX260 has an SPDIF connector that goes from the motherboard to the GPU. I imagine these things work similarly on more current GPUs?

 

[Juggernaut]

Well so far I got the xfx hd 5670 vid card and the corsair 430cx psu. Friend of mine gave me some nice gskill ram 4 gigs.

So my next buy this weekend will be the Lg 10x blu ray drive CH10LS20. It's on sale this week at the comPisa store for $69.99. Says $75 on the website but it's $70 in the store. Any thoughts on this drive?

 

[Juggernaut]

Well installed the Corsair 430CX PSU and the XFX ATI Redeon HD 5670 graphic card. Everything went well as far as the install. Using Catalyst Controll center Version 11.3.

Now having two issues. When I reboot or start up the PC during the start the hard drive turns on then off 13 times, then after that the DVD drive light comes on and the PC boots up with no problems. Second issue is the PC seems to be using about 1 Gig of ram constantly. Without even having any program running. The hard drive spins alot without doing anything. Any thoughts on why this is going on?

Oh and in the Catalysy Control Center under Info>Hardware for the memory it says 1791 MB. I know its a 1 Gig card but is it also sharing the mainboards ram? In CPU-Z its only showing 1024 MB under memory>size.

Here are the specs as of now.
OS: Windows Vista 32 Bit (Home Basic) Service Pack 2.
Mainboard: Acer EM61SM/EM61PM
Processor: AMD Athlon 64x2 Dual Core Processor 4000+
Memory: G.SKILL 4GB DDR2 F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ (Upgraded)
Expansion Slots: 1 PCI-Express x16 slot, 2 PCI v2.3 slots.
PSU: Corsair 430CX (Upgraded)
Audio: Integrated nVidia MCP61 with AC97.
Video: XFX ATI Redeon HD 5670. (Upgraded)
Storage: 120Gig Hard drive. (Soon to be 1TB)
CD Drive: DVD/CD-RW Combo (One bay open.) (Going to swap out to Blu-Ray Drive soon)
Networking: Integrated Marvell 88E8056 Gigabit (RJ-45 LAN connector)

 

[Trotter]

Regarding your video card's drivers, did you uninstall the Nvidia graphics drivers? If not you need to do so... BUT ONLY THE GRAPHICS DRIVERS AND NOT THE CHIPSET DRIVERS. You also need to uninstall the Catalyst driver. Then boot into safe mode and use Driver Sweeper to make sure there are no remnants. Boot back into your desktop and re-install catalyst.

This may also cure the hard drive stutter.