Is this a good computer? i have questions!

[Alec]

I also have a bad image of PCChips, cause a friend of mine had a few problems with one of their boards... he had a (not integrated) TNT2, also - which may kick G200´s butt in 3D speed but looks like crap, even in 2D. Anyway, it performed badly even after the problems were resolved. He has a 433 Celeron like me, but my system is noticeably faster. We tried Colin Mcrae 2 and my system was clearly faster with my old 8Mb Mystique G200. That´s all I can say of PCChips.

Anyway, if I were you, I´d kill myself (just kidding), I would wait, try it, maybe a few benchmarks for reference, compare them - if it´s stable and performs fairly well - why should you worry?

[This message has been edited by Alec (edited 10 May 2001).]

[Novdid]

0$

Looks like a hell of a bargain, if it´s stable that is.

[nehalmistry]

all you guys are saying its crap, it's not stable.... can you please give me some examples of what effects it has... eg.. does it suddenly freeze? i need some actual feedback... what is ur definition of not stable... what does it specifically do wrong,...

[Liquid Snake]

Well, I have a fried PCChips M598...

Well, you could give it a try. As Steve said, once in a while, they do release a somewhat stable board.

[This message has been edited by Liquid Snake (edited 10 May 2001).]

[Nuno]

Rags, I know it, and for some reason I didn´t kept the board, right? My personal opinion is that, generally speaking, you are better served with brand-name motherboards, specially when support is concerned.

What I find very interesting is that in ANY message board remotely related with hardware you can´t even mention "pcchips" name, people just start saying the worst things.

Now:
- It´s a value OEM brand
- Their products are not targeted to hardware entusiasts
- They must have a high RMA rate, but then again so has ABIT
- There must be millions of pcchips motherboards around the world
- I don´t think anybody manufactured defective hardware on purpose
- I don´t belive every single one of it is defective, giving trouble or failing, because I think they would have gone out of business by now
- Yes I heard about the fake cache chips story.

[Nuno]

Rags, I know it, and for some reason I didn´t kept the board, right? My personal opinion is that, generally speaking, you are better served with brand-name motherboards, specially when support is concerned.

What I find very interesting is that in ANY message board remotely related with hardware you can´t even mention "pcchips" name, people just start saying the worst things.

Now:
- It´s a value OEM brand
- Their products are not targeted to hardware entusiasts
- They must have a high RMA rate, but then again so has ABIT
- There must be millions of pcchips motherboards around the world
- I don´t think anybody manufactured defective hardware on purpose
- I don´t belive every single one of it is defective, giving trouble or failing, because I think they would have gone out of business by now
- Yes I heard about the fake cache chips story.

[Le Bodge]

Hee Hee.

I hate it when you guys sit on the fence!

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[This message has been edited by Le Bodge (edited 10 May 2001).]

[xortam]

V

[DentyCracker]

Ok speaking from personal very recent experience with pcchips mobos. Within the last month I installed 3 pcchips mobos, I 756, and two 754s. The 756 is a better board in my opinion. Runs WinMe with no problems at all, with a 666 Celeron (ok 667). The two 754s have been problematic to say the least, one more so than the other. They both have Celeron 700s in them and one of them I only got it stable by ghosting a drive with 98se and then upgrading it to Me. It is more or less stable now with Me but genome renders it unstable. The other one is a basket case and likes to run hot at > 40deg. C even after the removal of the crappy thermal pad and application of arctic silver. It runs stable if I turn the AC to max so it is a definite problem. It may be that the HSF is not tight to the socket, it which case I figure it is the mobo's fault, as the HSF is the retail Intel hsf. Unstable as to be unusable in win95, win98, win98se, winMe, and win2kpro, when not under heavy AC with ambient T of < 20 deg C.

PCChips makes a few good boards, the 754 is not one of them.


Addendum
That "TNT2" is a poor implementation, or the fact that it is using system memory hurts its performance. It is nothing like a real TNT2, nowhere near as fast as my G400, or my G200 for that matter (in Fifa2000 at least). Try it out but I'm pretty sure you will be disappointed. BTW, I rate ALi lower than VIA any day. The 756 is a lower performing board in my opinion but far stabler. Those comments by people using PCCHips mobos are spot on. The TXProII was a good board to put a Pentium 233 MMX in, (M571), I have just set up our own with win2k Server to basically be the dedicated server on our home network

PS I've ordered a PAL6035 for it.

[This message has been edited by DentyCracker (edited 11 May 2001).]

[nehalmistry]

I GOT IT QUESTIONS QUESTIONS QUESTIONS

you guys said it would either be low stability or low performance... this one is stable as hell.... but slow...

and boy was i dissapointed... can you guys help me.... when the tnt2 is spitting out at 1024 at high refresh rate..... the screen is noticeable fuzzy....

and in gaming... the speed is crap... its very constant.... but still not that great.... max is 34 fps... then it can suddenly drop to 17fps, then sometimes 13fps... but NEVER in between.. this is in half-life 640x480 opengl. u guys are MU's but if someone can help me out.. that would be nice... also.. the default drivers from nvidia didnt work and i had to use these speciality drivers... should i try getting the nvidia one's working?...

barely better than my old specs... boy you guys were right.....

should i try putting it to 100 FSB... its at 66 right now....? will it fry chip?

PS.. its a celeron II copermine128



[This message has been edited by nehalmistry (edited 15 May 2001).]

[az]

You're running your monitor at 70 KHz refresh rate, with VSynic=On (actually it's more like 68 or 69 KHz, divided by two that's 34.x, divided by four it's 17.x, and divided by five it's 13.x KHz). This behaviour is normal since the framerates are synced to your video signals, so if you WOULD be getting 33 FPS with VSync=Off, you only get the nearest divisor of your refresh rate, which to me would seem to be 69/3=23. When you complain about the overall slowness, that's due to your video chip using part of the system memory, so both won't get the whole speed of the RAM. Image quality is also an issue since this is a low-cost solution, sorry to tell you that. IF you happen to have an AGP slot and some money left, buy a seperate AGP card, even a TNT2 would be faster than yours now, though TNT2's aren't really known for their great picture quality (in fact, the opposite is the case), so thinking about buying a matrox card (or even a newer nVidia or 3DFx card) would certainly help both performance and image quality. And I mean overall performance (will likely rise a little bit, but don't expect too much), not only game performance (will rise depending on the video card you buy).

AZ

P.S.: I'm not too sure with VSync here, can someone please come and confirm I don't kno §h|te?

[rugger]

> Now:
> - It´s a value OEM brand

Only OEM's are prepared to do basic QA for PCCHIPS. They must return them by the dozen. I guess that is why they are so cheap.

> - Their products are not targeted to hardware entusiasts

Neither are matrox's apparently, but matrox does make high quality products. Aopen caters to OEMs as well, but they also do high quality boards.

> - They must have a high RMA rate, but then again so has ABIT

But ABIT at least can design a board that is fast.

> - There must be millions of pcchips motherboards around the world

There are also millions of really crappy, fragile, useless kitchen utilities out there too, so what is your point. They somehow sell, so there is no suprise PCCHIPS manages to sell some boards.

> - I don´t think anybody manufactured defective hardware on purpose

They don't have to want to make defective hardware on purpose, they simply put no effort into QA (quality assurance), which is very bad for your reputation, and results in very bad products.

> - I don´t belive every single one of it is defective, giving trouble or failing, because I think they would have gone out of business by now

Neither are all those realtek network cards. Doesn't mean they are any good (I have a few, they work but are still fairly crappy)
Just very cheap.

> - Yes I heard about the fake cache chips story.

Another case of absoutely rediculous Quality Assurance.

Designing and creating computer hardware is not a simple buisness. People who do so simply MUST do a lot of work, esspecially in refining the quality and performance of the products they make. Slapping something together is not enough.

[Alec]

Don´t buy a TNT 2! It´s a terrible card... try a Geforce MX or something, if you can afford it.

[rugger]

I Know the realtek cards can work ok, but the design of them is not to the same level as Intel cards and tulip cards.

I actually have realtek 3 cards (8029) at home here, and used dozens more without problem. They are cheap, have BNC connectors (for my co-axail network) and are PCI. They work fine, don't chew CPU much (only 10mbs).

I know the realtek example was not bery giid, but finding an example that reaches the deplorable depths of pcchips is really hard :-)

[xortam]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by az:
... I'm not too sure with VSync here, can someone please come and confirm I don't kno §h|te? </font>

Yes, I can confirm that you don't know §h|te.