AMD to Intel????

[mbt]

jun,

hehe wala nang iBook ngayon, MacBook at MacBook Pro na

[Jun aka Pekto]

hmm, i've just switched from Sygate to ZoneAlarm firewall, and my AV is Avast. is there anyone here with the same AV-Firewall combo?

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.

[Jun aka Pekto]

jun,

hehe wala nang iBook ngayon, MacBook at MacBook Pro na

OT
Oh gee, excuse me. You can tell I'm an old timer. Ok, MacBook it is. Anyway, Our G3 iBook 800's really starting to look slow.

[number001]

i am now thinking that it's u******* with ZoneAlarm that is causing the problem. i have been using u******* for a long time and haven't experienced freezing. until only recently, when i switched to ZoneAlarm that the freezing occured. ZoneAlarm and Avast together doesn't freeze the PC, as have been observed that past couple of hours.

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.

[Alpha_One]

OT
If it's just sound quality, I don't have good-enough ears to tell the difference between it and my Audigy 2 Value. As far as causing any instability or other problems. Mine has none to speak of except occasionally doing the "skipping record" thing on BF2's main menu. That's the sole reason why I have an Audigy 2 Value installed. That was under Win XP. That problem's not present with BF2 under Vista RC1 which is why the Creative card is disabled in Vista RC1. The Realtek's doing just fine.

Via on the other hand, has had a track record of unstable and quirky motherboards especially with the KT266 and KT266A series. I lost an Abit and a Soyo KT266A boards after 2-3 years while an older AMD760 board outlasted both and still works great in my wife's pc. The Abit simply died for no reason. The Soyo (Dragon+) lasted 3 years. So long as no cards were installed except an agp video card, it was great. But put anything on the last 3 pci slots and that board becomes very unstable. Granted, that quirkiness may not apply to other Via-based components like the Envy soundcard or the Firewire chip of my current pc. But, I learned to take the name Via with caution.

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.

[Jun aka Pekto]

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.

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.

[mikmik316]

That's why reading net reviews are a must before deciding on which platform you would invest your money in...

[Jun aka Pekto]

That's why reading net reviews are a must before deciding on which platform you would invest your money in...

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.