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Hi,
I hope it's alright to post my question here - I was going to post this in the Hardware forum but it doesn't seem to get anywhere near the same amount of attention as the lounge.
My dad has a Sony Vaio PCV 2236 desktop machine.
It's about 5 years old at this point.
He wants to buy Empire : Total War but his current graphics card isn't good enough to run the game.
Play.com indicates that a '256MB DirectX 9.0c compatible Graphics Card with Shader Model 2.0 support' card is required.
I've never had to worry about graphics cards before so I was wondering if anyone can suggest where I might begin to look for a suitable one?
Specs for his machine can be found here[^].
Thanks,
David
modified on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 7:08 AM
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That looks good. I'll check it out. Thanks very much.
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dlarkin77 wrote: I was going to post this in the Hardware forum but it doesn't seem to get anywhere near the same amount of attention as the lounge
Not using a forum isn't the best way to improve its value.
Thread moved.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Depending on the game an AGP 3850 may be faster than a 4650; the cards are approximately the same in performance but have different bottleneck points. These two cards are the fastest available for AGP. ATI hasn't done an AGP card based on the 5xxx series GPUs; nVidia abandoned AGP several generations back. Somewhat broadly speaking old high end GPUs tend to outperform newer midrange GPUs on older games and fall behind on newer ones. That said the ATI 9200 is a old very low end card; so either would be a major upgrade.
Toms hardware has decent benchmark tables you can use to compare performance on various games. I had to fall back to older charts to get the 3850. The 4650 doesn't appear to be on any of Tom's benchmark collections but it should be about 20% slower than the 4670.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/gaming-graphics-cards-charts-2009-q4-mainstream-quality-update-3/benchmarks,69.html[^]
3x12=36
2x12=24
1x12=12
0x12=18
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Hi,
I need to purchase a new server soon and want to install SBS 2008 Premium. But I'm not sure what server spec is needed or the best setup for it!
We need SQL Server installed and I've been reading that its best to split the main Domain Server from any SQL Server.
Do I get a more high spec Server and run Hyper-V for SQL or have two smaller spec servers?
As usually in a small company, we have no money to spend and so we need the best solution for us...!!
This is a relatively new company, and I need to setup the whole infrastructure from the ground up! We have nothing... except old desktop PC's and an aging server that all need replacing 
Any tips would be greatly appreciated as I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure this out on my own...
 developer
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What is the perfect setup for a development PC: virtual machines or dual boot OS?
I’ve recently started a new job and have a fab new PC to go with it. But what would be the ideal setup?
I’m thinking about installing VirtualBox to run a number of OSes, as I’d like to keep the base PC clean:
Base machine OS is Win 7 Pro
1 – Win 7 pro for actual development with VS 2010
2 – Server 2008 R2 for SQL Server 2008 (as a development server)
3 - Win 7 basic - Test Environment
4 – Win XP - Test Environment
Over the years of trying out new software, un/installing, updating etc my PC usually gets a little slow over time… but setting up a number of VMs could help…
I'm not sure how a dual boot PC would really help... Your suggestions please 
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Using Windows XP SP3 I've seen this happen twice. Once while trying to recover a dodgy drive using a USB external carrier, and again tonight using a known good external DVD/CD-RW drive. In both cases, I plugged the drive in to the USB port, Windows did its thing detecting and installing the device (correctly identifying each), but no drive shows up in Explorer. In the first case, the drive was from a laptop that died of untimely drowning; it wasn't unexpected to find the device dead. But the second was a nearly new Sony external USB DVD/CD-RW writer that was moved from one computer to another, and it works perfectly in the original computer. Both systems are running WinXP SP3 and are regularly updated. Sony's website says that no drivers are required, as WinXP will autodetect the drive, and the only software that shipped with it was Nero.
What could cause this behavior?
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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The most common reason in my experience is that the next available drive letter is used by a network drive.
Next time go to disk management and check if the drive has been assigned a drive letter.
"When did ignorance become a point of view" - Dilbert
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I did that, and Disk Management does not show any new drive. All I get is the usual USB popup informing that new hardware has been found and installed. The range of drive letters is wide open, too, from H: upwards.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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I was afraid you'd answer that.
Anything useful in the System Event Log?
"When did ignorance become a point of view" - Dilbert
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It says "No audio output device is installed" when I put mouse on the speaker icon on the task bar. Does anyone know this problem? Thanks.
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1. Open control panel
2. Open device manager
3. Open the audio driver property dialog
4. Click "Update Driver" button
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I have a terminal program that allows user authentication by barcode scanner or keyboard input. Need to disable keyboard input functionality. But scanner is keyboard wedged, so it also stopped working when keyboard is disabled.
Suggest any way or code to do it.
Thanking you all. - Ravi
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Hi, you could try this:
1. keep the keyboard enabled
2. teach your scanner to prefix and append specific constant string delimiters (say "<<<" and ">>>")
3. upon data input reject everything that isn't inside said delimiters.
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Thanks Luc,
But I don't have the source-codes of existing program, and also the program is one of the terminal module of ERP system. So i cant modify the existing application. I have to write a new program that simulates with the existing program, But I am not getting any idea to implement it.
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you might still be able to apply ny idea from outside the app by installing a global keyboard hook (see some articles on CP). I suggest you make a little utility to do so, and keep it accessible in the system tray, so you can re-enable keyboard processing when things would go wrong.
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Thanks again.
I think it will completely disable the keyboard, but in my case user have to do some entries in the program after getting logged in by scanner. So how could I synchronize my external application with the existing application, so that it will enable the keyboard after scanner scanned the barcode and authorize the user. And also how could I disable the keyboard again when user finished his work and logged out (Log out is based on Y/N confirmation message).
Is any way to do it.
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I used to work on those things in a retail store, and I doubt that there's a way to do it with your current setup. The wedge is simply a term used in the industry that means "we wired two serial devices in parallel so we wouldn't need a separate jack." That's literally how they're wired! The computer (or terminal) has no way to tell which device is sending data. The only suggestion I can make is to select a special character to insert in your authentication barcode which the scanner can produce, but the keyboard can't.
For instance, very few people remember that ctrl-G was used to ring the bell on a remote teletype, and DOS-based PCs kept it to beep the internal speaker. But nothing in Windows uses it, and there's no reason you can't make a scanner read it, if you have a barcode format selected that allows the full ASCII character set. You might use it as a delimiter between the username and password, for instance. Nobody would think of trying to manually type that today.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Thanks Mr. Wright, but then how could I merge this logic with my existing application, because I don't have source-codes. Or I create separate program that detects every input, of the system, then distinguish scanner and keyboard inputs on the basis of special characters. Is it possible.
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Yes, it is possible, but I'm not a good enough programmer to tell you how to do it. Maybe someday...
Since you can't change the existing program, you need to create a keyboard hook that intercepts inputs from the keyboard port before your existing program gets them, process the data, then pass it on to the usual handler. I believe there are articles on CodeProject that describe how to do that, but I'm not smart enough yet to help. The method I suggested may not be the best way to do it, but my point was that Windows does not have a way to tell where the input is coming from; you need to provide some distinguishing feature that you can grab and process. Whatever you can do to make the scanner input look different from a regular keyboard input will do the job. All you need to do is catch it and process it.
Search the articles here, and I think you'll find an answer. I look forward to reading the article you write about the solution one day soon. And, by the way, I'm Roger to my friends, not Mr. Wright, and I consider all my associates at CodeProject friends. Welcome to the neighborhood, Ravi. 
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Thanks Roger, I will definitely try this, and let you know.
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You're welcome, and be sure to check Dan Neely's response below. H provided two excellent references.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Good references, Dan!
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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