If you are having personal computer hardware/OS problems or need advice with personal computer hardware/OS/networking or core software for troubleshooting/benchmarking, you've come to the right forum! If you are having game-related issues or want to know if a particular game will run on your computer, please post in the appropriate game forum or in Help and Tips. There are many experienced forum members here that are willing to help. However, before you post, please read the recommended posting guidelines that are detailed below. Thanks!

The Hardware/OS section is for serious and helpful discussions regarding your computer hardware and Operating System questions. If your post contributes nothing to the discussion , DON'T POST IT.

If you have an issue with a manufacturer, keep it to facts. If you personally did something that voided the warranty, didn't get things installed properly, or had unforeseen circumstances, don't expect any sympathy here. This is not your blog!

Please post a thread title that tries to give us some indication of what your problem/question is. There is nothing worse than seeing a title that says Help!!!!! or WTF!!!!

Great deals come and go very quickly. Don't start threads to a short term deal since it generally doesn't benefit anybody and is considered spam for the rest of us. It is no different than receiving an email regarding the great deals of the day from a web site.

If you start a thread that contains this question, your thread will be deleted. Even though you may not feel it is advertising by asking for opinions, folks may personally take an interest in it. So in effect, it is considered advertising. There are a lot of Internet sites that deal with selling used computer components for you to get an idea of what the market may bear for pricing.

Integrated graphics processors generally provide very poor gaming performance. There is really nothing you can do to increase performance but lower all the video settings and hope for the best.

Please make sure you post all of your computer specs. There is nothing worse than asking a question about computer hardware and not giving the details regarding your existing hardware. Also let us know if it is an OEM (pre-built) computer. I recommend including all components and not just the ones that may be in question, for example:

Motherboard make and model
CPU
Video card
Monitor (primarily LCD/CRT, size, resolution and refresh rate)
RAM
Power Supply

Here is one of my systems:
ASUS P5W DH Deluxe
Intel QX6700
XFX 7900GT Extreme
Dell 2005FPW (20.1" LCD, 1680x1050, 60Hz)
Patriot 2x1GB DDR2-800 (PDC22G6400LLK)
PCP&C 850SSI

If you don't know what components you have, here is a great little utility for getting the info regarding motherboard, CPU and RAM:
CPU-Z[www.cpuid.com]
Here is a utility for getting your GPU info:
GPU-Z[www.techpowerup.com]
Also make sure to tell us if you are overclocking anything!!!!!!!!!

First, please tell us what Operating System you're running. Also, don't forget to check out the web site of the developer. There is usually very useful information there with possible solutions. For example:

http://support.microsoft.com/search/

http://www.linuxhelp.net/

Please don't post a question without at least doing a little bit of homework on support sites that may help you.

As noted above, post all of your existing computer's specs and tell us what components you want to upgrade. Also, if you have identified any new components you're thinking about, don't just post the links like this:

DVD drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827151133

Post them like this:
SAMSUNG Black 18X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 18X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2M Cache E-IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner - OEM[www.newegg.com]

Or this:
SAMSUNG Black 18X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 18X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2M Cache E-IDE/ATAPI DVD Burner - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827151133

That saves all of us time and will get quicker responses from other forum members.

Don't forget to tell us what components you can reuse from an older computer, how much you are willing to spend in your country's currency and what you primarily use the computer for!

Please provide us with as much information as possible regarding your network setup. This includes the network interface card make and model, router make and model (with firmware revision) and cable/DSL modem. Also include how many computers may be sharing this same network and what they are being used for.

The answer to this is generally, NO!

Please provide us with the room temperature, the number of case fans, the size of the fans, the location of the case fans, and which direction they're blowing (in or out of the case). Also be sure to include the type of HSF you are running on the component(s) in question.

While we understand your desire to know approximately what you can expect with your components, don't even post the question. We are closing all threads that ask this question! There are web sites that do reviews that will give you some indication of what to expect. Here are two:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/graphics-cards,1.html
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/178?vs=176

There is also this site that will tell you if your computer can run a specific game:

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

Try to answer the OP's question. While there are many opinions about why one company or OS may be better than another, keep the responses to facts. We will be monitoring this forum area closely going forward for posts that we feel are biased towards one company. If you post something like "AMD owns" or "Intel owns" or "Intel sucks" or "AMD sucks" or "Dell sucks" or "Alienware sucks" or any other derivative of this, you will receive an infraction for spam! Please think about what you post here before you post it with at least some factual statement(s) to back up your post. Cheers!

Try to answer the OP's question. If the video that you post doesn't do the above, you'll receive an infraction for spam. Also, don't post videos that include language that bypasses the word filter on this forum. Video content that has offensive language is inappropriate for this forum.


This has been posted as a sticky to help reduce the frequent questions that we have to pose to forum members that are seeking advice but don't always post all the pertinent information. Please feel free to provide additional thoughts/suggestions for this. Thanks!