Desktop Computers

I can't see the BIOS at all. I never could when I first encountered this problem. Now I'm getting 1 long beep and 2 short beeps during boot up. I Googled it and it says video card failure. Great....

gogusrl_sl said:

The video card isn't dead if you can see the boot up sequence / bios. If it works in bios, try safe mode and/or a linux live cd/usb (ubuntu). If it doesn't, try to get another monitor / video card to figure out which one is broken.

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Not necessarily true, when driver isn't active the card does not utilize full power. Mine had that issue where it would only boot up if no driver is active.

Nola_sl said:

I can't see the BIOS at all. I never could when I first encountered this problem. Now I'm getting 1 long beep and 2 short beeps during boot up. I Googled it and it says video card failure. Great....

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It's dead Jim. You could try another pci-e slot but it sounds dead.

Hopefully you have a CPU that has built-in graphics, or an old graphics card you can swap in if you completely remove your current video card. If you can do that & get into windows, remove every instance of Nvidia drivers and try the card in the computer again. If still no dice, it's a goner.

joeboo_sl said:

Hopefully you have a CPU that has built-in graphics, or an old graphics card you can swap in if you completely remove your current video card. If you can do that & get into windows, remove every instance of Nvidia drivers and try the card in the computer again. If still no dice, it's a goner.

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Bingo!!! I found an old ATI card, popped it it, removed the Nvidia drivers, re-installed the card and drivers and my PC is working again. Thanks so much!!

Now just don't let it auto-update to that driver number again, lol.

So is anyone using a 3 monitor setup? And if so which monitors do you use?

picked up 3http://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraShar...keywords=u2410. I was considering 27s but reduces too much desk space.

Anyone recommend a 3D card for around $250-300? My GTX 560 Ti is dying on me and I need a new one. Thought it was my drivers but it's not.

Nvidia 660Ti or AMD 7950, just depends on whether you like Nvidia or AMD cards better. Both are roughly $300. Some games are a tad faster on one, some a tad faster on the other, but performance is pretty much a wash between the 2. I'd go with whichever one I could find cheaper, or whichever one came with a better game bundle at the time.

One of the first 4K monitors coming to market:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...0513621&type=1

The ASUS PQ321 True 4K UHD Monitor is a 31.5-inch LED-backlit 4K Ultra HD display. It has a 3840 x 2160 resolution IGZO display with a 16:9 aspect ratio

Lets hope they are affordable in a few years

X X E X X_sl said:

picked up 3http://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraShar...keywords=u2410. I was considering 27s but reduces too much desk space.

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Do you need any special programs to run games like that?

A lot of games anymore will support all sorts of multi-monitor resolutions just natively, but some games do still need certain video card driver options enabled to do it. Nvidia for example requires 3 monitors to enable their surround technology through their driver suite, it won't give you the option to do it with 2 monitors. So I guess the answer is that it just depends, some games support the multi-monitor resolutions natively, some games need your video card settings enabled to pull it off, but regardless, 99% of games don't need a 3rd party program or anything to do it, it's either done through the game, or through your video card drivers.

To use some recent games as an example, Bioshock Infinite needs the settings enabled in your video card drivers before it gives the options for multi-monitor resolutions, but Path of Exile can be played in a window that can then be stretched/pulled to cover any amount of desktop surface across multiple monitors, and it adjusts the resolution on the fly without doing anything to your video card driver settings.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-visi...echnology.html

you really want to think hard about doing eyefinity/3-monitor setup, it sounds cool but in practice its very distracting. I have like a dozen top monitors at home so tried it for a while, it was great for driving games (and I assume flight sims) but I just couldn't stand it for any other game, I was always twitching to the side screens even when I tried flipping them into portrait mode and the black edges in between each drove me nuts. I far, far prefer a really good big, main monitor, a side monitor for chrome/etc when gaming, and an attached 55"+ TV for movies/tv/console ports.

I just like having multiple monitors to have TV shows on Vent/Web etc. I've only ever ran 2 though and had to buy an expensive program to enable flipping the side monitor vertically.

My question is do you have to have 3 outputs on the card to do 3 monitors or is there another way?

Also, taking the bezel off reduces that area by a large margin which I planned on doing.

Like so (tried to embed but it's too big)http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...d/5x1club3.jpg

This is my next projecthttp://emerythacks.blogspot.ro/2013/...lcd-to-pc.html

I figure I should be able to find a photo frame to fit everything and make it look decent.

I need to remove the bezel on my 24's at some point, but currently its not bothering me alot. Especially since im not doing any gaming currently outside LoL.

I was planning to change from my old 5.1 to a newer 2.1 speaker setup, but i want something with s/pdif. In all likelihood il find a good wireless 5.1 speaker solution or just get another 5.1 logitech.

Haswell is out, I took the dive today and bought a Gigabyte Z87X-UD5H and a i7-4770. Yea no K, it's fucking bullshit they disable the visualization technology in the unlocked versions but I should be able to get a fairly decent overclock out of the none K version. I'm upgrading from a i7-930, so it should be quite the jump. I ended up going with with Gigabyte for the motherboard after reading/watching this:http://www.anandtech.com/show/7004/g...d-lineup-videoThe software they have for the board is quite impressive and really sold me on it.

Tripamang_sl said:

they disable the visualization technology

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Assume you mean virtualization, but it's just IOMMU support that is missing. Most users won't miss vt-D on the K line and can run VMs just fine.