Quote:
Originally Posted by ssampier  Blu-Ray DVD Combo Drive $130.00
Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 1 GB 256bit HDCP $240.00
(all prices from newegg 12/30/08)
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Total $370.00
Not a bad price all things considered.
I appreciate the advice. |
Do note that with most Sapphire 48xx cards in stock - you will need to flash the BIOS on the card in order to allow it to work with most older (and some newer) games properly.
The flash.bat is easy to run on a Vista 32 machine....if you can somehow boot your machine into plain vanilla DOS.
If you have never tried to boot a modern computer into plain vanilla DOS, you may not appreciate how hard that task has now become. You will need:
- a PS/2 style keyboard or at least a dongle for your usb connection that allows you to connect it to the PS/2 port on your mobo. Because after your machine boots to plain vanilla DOS you won't be able to type in the word "flash" at the prompt without this as a pure USB keyboard won't work
- for most boot disk images, an IDE CD Rom. Trying it with a SATA DVD is not going to work. Hell, trying it with an IDE DVD usually won't work either...
- preferably have a 3.5 floppy (and a 3.5" disk!) around
OR
or a bootable Flash drive. (Those aren't easy to make work either!)
- And even if you have a floppy drive around - your mobo will need to support a connection to it. That's a rare mobo these days. Most newer ones do not.
Blah blah blah... end result:
total pain in the ass.
There is a workaround for this under XP. A community util called WinFlash exists for use under XP that allows you to use it when running XP to flash the BIOS on a 48xx card. I recommend going that route. Even just grabbing an older hard drive with XP installed on it from another system just connected to a Vista machine long enough to boot it - and run the WinFlash util is all you need. It takes 3 seconds to do and you never have to do it again - but if you have an older BIOS on the 48xx card, it is a vital step you will have to do once.
If you don't have Vista installed - well - then running WinFlash won't be a problem for you
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