Results 41 to 48 of 48
-
-
February 26th, 2007 05:30 AM #42
I used to have ZoneAlarm (free) on my wife's pc. But, my wife got sick of the too frequent "nags" by ZoneAlarm. So, I switched everything (antivirus, antispyware, firewall, etc) to Cox Cable's Internet Security Suite which are all full-featured and came free with my cable broadband subscription. No complaint from her since.
-
February 26th, 2007 05:45 AM #43
-
February 26th, 2007 08:54 AM #44
Come to think of it, I started using Zone Alarm and Spybot only after I shifted to AMD. I wonder if its a coincidence. As for p2p, I use emule and azereus.
But still I find the boot up slow, even after a clean installation w/ none of the P2Ps installed yet.
Funny thing also, Zonealarm has a penchant to update its antivirus and antispyware definitions from the internet during startup. This exacerbates the "freeze" problem.
-
February 26th, 2007 09:09 AM #45
The VIA based chipsets are one thing, their Envy sound chipsets are another. Audiophiles love those cards - and they're cheap. The only thing they lack compared to the Creative cards are the hardware 3D stuff.
As for the Realtek, it's not really during the casual browing the net while listening to music where I'm having problems. It's during gaming. Certain games just have issues with the Realtek (clicks, pops, "underwater" sound, etc.), forcing me to turn off 3D audio or turn on software sound emulation or whatever. But then again I can live with that, because I hardly have the time to game much anymore.
-
February 26th, 2007 07:33 PM #46
You're correct, of course. But sometimes, the level of frustration with a particular brand was such that any mention of that brand brings back a lot of bad memories.
I'm happy to say, the Via firewire chip on my nForce4 Ultra mobo (MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum/AMD X2 4200+) has also been flawless. It's just the KT266/266A mobo chipsets that bring back a lot of bad blood. Then again, I have an MSI motherboard with the Via Apollo Pro 133 chipset on our old P3-733 pc and it's been working flawlessly since 1999.
-
February 26th, 2007 08:54 PM #47
That's why reading net reviews are a must before deciding on which platform you would invest your money in...
-
February 26th, 2007 10:44 PM #48
That's true. But sometimes, they don't help. The Soyo Dragon+ KT266A mobo I used to have had good reviews. It wasn't some time later when users started wondering why many Dragon+ boards tended to crash if anything but the last pci slot was used. I mean it was a wonderful board so long as the only expansion card installed was a video card plus one more card at the last pci slot.
The MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum I have now also had excellent reviews. Of course, it's been mostly problem-free since July 2005. The only issue was the board not initially recognizing the second core of my X2 4200+.
I've had issues with some Intel i810 chipset P3 mobos too which prompted me to go with Athlon XP's in the first place back in 2001. So, it wasn't AMD boards only that had given me problems. But, I should've switched to nForce mobos at the earliest possible time instead of sticking it out with Via boards.Last edited by Jun aka Pekto; February 26th, 2007 at 10:54 PM.