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Here's the info on my motherboard. There was a suggestion in the Everest report to upgrade that video card BIOS as well as the system BIOS. Think I'll skip the card BIOS upgrade since I want to get a new card anyway.

NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420(64 MB) is what I have now. Looking to go a lot better. I haven't a clue if this card is PCI or AGP. The guys forgot to check that out when we were testing the memory sticks and slots. If it's a PCI, will I need to do a BIOS upgrade before using an AGP card?

Went looking for an upgrade on MSI, but I'm not really sure where I am supposed to get the upgrade from . . . MSI, AMI or . . .????

Motherboard: CPU Type AMD Athlon XP, 1400 MHz (10.5 x 133) 1600+
Motherboard Name MSI KT3 Ultra (MS-6380E) (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 CNR, 3 DIMM, Audio)
Motherboard Chipset VIA VT8367 Apollo KT333
System Memory 384 MB (DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type AMI (05/24/02)
Communications Port (COM1)
Communications Port (COM2)
Printer Port (LPT1)


Thanks once more for everyone's help!! You guys are the best!
:-) :-)
NeenahDee

:smiley: Hey Neenah,

The hardware gurus are not online right now, I am just checking my mail. I am sure you will have some information soon.

Just ask your son, we love you guys, LOL, glad we are able to help.

Type at you soon.

LGW

Morning, LGW! Or Evening, as the case may be . . .!

It's wonderful to be loved! It's wonderful to know this place exists! Gives us courage to venture where we've never ventured before. I've spent so much time looking into the workings of my machine, I'm behind in my writing projects!

Oh, well . . . the thing is running better; I've tried the trial version of PerfectDisk and like it better than Diskeeper and will probably switch at the end of the trial. So may toys . . . so little time . . .

Neenah

Hi NeenahDee,

I'd also like to welcome you to our wonderful site.

Is your PC still crashing or has that problem gone away?

If you can get your hands on one new I'd recommend a Geforce FX 5200 (128MB), mine works beautifully and it would be a good match for your system specs. It's not very expensive either. I had an ATI FireGL Pro (64MB) that did the same thing in my friends computer...I haven't been able to test it in my machine yet so I can't say much more on that.

As for the AGP/PCI tenundrum (ooh i used a big word lol), if you've actually seen the inside of your machine yourself you should notice a short, dark brown slot in the highest position (where all the cards are), that's the AGP slot. Below that you should have 5 longer white slots, those are your PCI slots, if you haven't seen the inside of your machine then I guess this doesn't answer anything. However if you are confident you can take a look (don't if your PC is under warranty though) by removing a couple of screws and sliding one of the panels off. Keep in mind that you shouldn't do this if you are not very confident...hopefuly you have someone (ie your son) who you can trust to open that up and show you what's what (I find this kind of thing is WAAAAAY easier in person).

As far as the defragmentation programs, I've never tried PerfectDisk so please let me know how it is, I also recommend O&O defrag, I like that a lot more than diskeeper...and i really liked Diskeeper.

Hi There!

Thanks for the welcome!

No crashing so far. But I won't say it too loud!

I actually joined Diskeeper's affiliate program. PerfectDisk is pretty cool. I'm happy! I'll have to look at O&O.

Yep, we've looked under the hood of a lot of computers lately, mine included. The boys fixed my niece's computer just a day ago with help from the friendly PCHF people. I think they also helped her with her other computer. She's been thrilled with how much better her pc is working.

I don't have to worry about warranty anymore. The guy who built my original computer in 1999 died a year later, his assistant honored everything. There's nothing in it now from the original build, though, except the case. That assistant became our computer saviour from then on, but over the summer he moved while our phone was out, and we haven't been able to locate him. I'll have to one day do a better search for him, but just now we're actually having a good time doing it ourselves with the support from everyone here.

Anyway, can't recall if I saw a shorter brown slot. If the cards we have are AGP, we should be okay plugging in to the same slots . . . hopefully!? So, you wouldn't recommend a higher card than the 5200 128? We were considering the 5500 256. For my system, I even looked higher, up to the Diamond Stealth Radeon 9200 256, I think, or something like that, anyway.

I may not run games here, but my other two boys do. I let them . . . occasionally . . . if they've cleaned the kitchen or done some other good deed for the day for me . . . Besides watching TV and DVDs on this thing, I run a lot of graphics programs at once along with Word 2002, CoffeeCup HTML editer, plus IE and three other browsers when updating my websites or creating graphics for eBook covers and such.
Just thought I'd go as best as I could at the time if my board can support that. If not, then I'll go with my original dream of the 5500 256. PJ's card sucks as well, but his motherboard is not as good as mine (even with the bad memory slot). I know he has his specs around here someplace!

I guess we'll open the machines up again shortly, and look for the slot you mentioned. I'm itching to order cards right away, so it'd be good to know what to get first. I've decided that my immediate needs are a graphics card, more and faster memory, and a new tower. So I'm opting for the silver version of my son's tower minus the clear side --saving $$$ I will use for a stick of Kingston 1024 333mhz ram and one of those graphics cards mentioned above. That should make things good for me while I save for a newer board and better processor.

Thanks for your help, double_a_ron! This helps me a bunch!

Neenah

Forgot to inquire . . . what's a CNR slot?

If you want to spend the money on the card it's no problem at all. Every little bit helps, I was just thinking that the FX 5200 would be a good match for your current hardware. A super powerful videocard can't hurt, I put my Geforce in my old Pentium 3 and it seemed like overkill then i upgraded and i was glad to have it. Again the judgement call is all up to you. But if you're on a tight budget PC-wise. The 5200 is a decent card, but not spectacular, I'm thinkng of upgrading to match my 3000+ athlon personally.

I simply recommended it since it's worked great for me and I've never had any issues with it, when i got it, it was 150$CDN and now i think it's less than 80$CDN.

If you're saving up for a better mainboard and CPU then I definitely withdraw my recommendation. Go with the bigger cards. And as for the Ram...more ram always helps just be sure it's compatible with your board.

Always remember, building a new PC can be great fun and in reality it's no more complicated than those puzzles with the little red knobs sticking out of the pieces. Once you've done it it will boost your confidence greatly. If you have the opportunity to see someone else do it just ask them to show you what they're doing. The nice thing about computer parts now is that they are all colour coded, which is really handy.

By The Way, I'm not sure what a CNR Slot is...I've heard of it but my memory isn't that great, I'll look for that hopefully one of our geniuses will field that one but if not I'll be back!

EDIT: Here's a good info site on the CNR slot. to my understanding it's a Communications/Network Riser.