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5126

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 10, 2006, 04:34 AM »

Oh well new system up and running ... what a nightmare it has been ...

The mobo temperature sensors are really bizarre. Yesterday it said my CP was 29C - pretty good - but my mobo board temperature was 52C !! I was really worried about that until I tool the cover off and touched the heatsinks on all the chips and none were even warm!!! It was 27C during POST after being unplugged all night in an unheated room. Obviously the sensor isn't working properly.

I was particularly worried because I installed a fresh copy of windows and it kept freezing and behaving oddly. Suspecting memory I ran MEMTEST86+ and it came up with no problems. It seems to be partly that GEFORCE cards don't like running in VGA mode without drivers combined with the chipset not liking the drivers for my WiFi interface.

Having removed the WiFi card (and plugged into the router with a LAN cable) and installed all the latest nVidia drivers for the motherboard and video everything seems to be stable now so I will prbably trash the installation and start again with a fresh install with the latest drivers and leave installing the WiFi card until the end and after I get a full installation backup.

One oddity - I installed the nVidia WDM drivers and most of the devices associated fired up without problem but the "WDM capture" device says it can't start. Anyone encountered this and know how to fix it?

I send back the Graphics card I ordered because the fan was absoultely massive and took up one of 3 PCI slots - instead I have bought two BFG GeForce 7300 GT OC which I am running in SLi mode. Haven't really done much to test them yet but they look good. Strange thing though the nVidia drivers I downloaded from the website installed without problem but the ones that came on their own driver CD wouldn't install - they just kept saying 'can't find and compatible hardware' !!! Strange - not a problem though as I would have updated to the latest drivers anyway. Another odd thing is that SLI on these cards doesn't require the SLi bridge connector (this took a phone call to the US to establish) as there are no edge connectors on the board. It is definitely running in SLi mode though as it instantly recognised the cards and asked me to enable SLi when the computer started up.

Final setup (without all the usual USB nonsense that I have reinstalled yet) ...

Antec NeoHE 550W Modular ATX2.0 PSU
Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi X16 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard - Deluxe
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego (Socket 939)
Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2
Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache
2 x WD Caviar PATA 160 Gb
Seagate 400Gb USB drive
Plextor DVD+-R/RW
Pioneer DVD+-R/RW(DL)
2 x BFG GeForce 7300 GT OC 256MB (PCI-Express)
Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1100 Freeview TV Tuner
Creative Audigy ZS 2 Pro
? Netgear Wifi ? Bummer if I can't get this to work!

5127

Living Room / Re: What's better: modern built-in motherboard sound chip or old sound card?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 07, 2006, 09:30 AM »

My next system will most likely be core2duo based, with intel HD audio - and it would be nice knowing if I can scrap my Audigy card and use onboard, or if I'll just do as usual and disable onboard audio.

-f0dder (November 07, 2006, 08:56 AM)

You can always use both and have 14.2 surround sound

5128

General Software Discussion / Re: SCRIBUS - Open Source Desktop Publishing

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 07, 2006, 04:28 AM »

We will also be offering a lower-priced version for students at school and at university or college for the duration of their studies.

-Darwin (October 25, 2006, 09:12 AM)

Don't you just love that wording - and it is getting more common to find this restriction.

In other words you license expires when you cease to be a student so you then need to buy a full version.

I have even found software titles that have a subscription format for students so that software ceases to function unless you prove student status periodically (and you have to pay for the privilege). For example the full version of Google Sketchup !

5129

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 06, 2006, 05:58 PM »

by the time you might want to add a SLI card, a card identical to the one you bought might be hard to find.

-f0dder (November 06, 2006, 05:17 PM)

I realise that - one of the reasons I bought a relatively economic model - if I want dual SLi I will buy a matched pair when the time comes!

Btw, no reason for SLI just to run dual monitors, get a graphics card with two (DVI) outputs. Works like a charm.

Yep - I know. I also like the idea of the Matrox breakout box I mentioned above which allows you to treat 3 LCD screens as a single large widescreen monitor with any graphics card.

5130

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 06, 2006, 02:24 PM »

What you say makes sense - but at the back of mind I really don't want to be using all new absolutely latest gear - I'd rather have a set of components that have been used (at least for a while). When I built my current machine I bought everything at the 'bleeding edge' - even though it now looks pretty feeble - but there were lots of issues with hardware incompatibilities - esp. DDR memory modules - I don't want to be going down that line again. I notice that you can't even buy AM2 heatsinks and fans yet (according to overclockers) unless you buy a retail pack which comes with an AMD HS/Fan included.

Realistically I am not be going to spend loads upgrading CPUs, memory etc. as I have spent more than I can afford so it will have to do now until I build a new machine in 3 or 4 years time - by which time AM2 sockets and DDR2 will be old hat so it probably won't make much difference to me in the long run. I have no intention of upgrading to VISTA or XP 64 so 2Gb of RAM is probably more than enough for my needs and can't be usefully expanded much further under 32-bit Windows anyway.

The hefty power supply was for two reasons - I liked the modular build (and reasonable price for what you get) and I wanted something that was future proofed (if I add more Drives, another SLi graphic adapter etc) - plus power consumption generally seems to go up with new gear and I had problems in the past with a PSU struggling with all the crap I throw at it!

Basically I am going to have a much nicer and faster machine than the one I have now and if I upgrade at all it will probably be to buy a matched pair of SLi graphics cards and dual LCD monitors (which would make the biggest practical difference to me).

5131

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 06, 2006, 08:28 AM »

I recently got an Antec Neo HE550EC - quiet and neat, and I love that it's modular. The voltage readings in the BIOS are still not what they should optimally be, though, so I'm guessing the BIOS just can't do readings properly (my system is stable, probably wouldn't be if the voltages were wrong). And after switching to the Antec, they don't really fluctuate anymore.

Hm, you got yourself a socket 939 - that is being phased out in favour of their new AM2 socket, so it might be difficult to find a CPU if you want to upgrade later on. Since you got s939 and not AM2, that also means your ram is DDR and not DDR2.

-f0dder (November 06, 2006, 08:04 AM)

Yes that's what I thought - but there still seems to be a lot of 939 stuff out there - and in a couple of months it probably won't worth upgrading anyway as by then everything will be 256 bit and octupal CPUs

That being said, the system is probably pretty good bang for the buck. I had a 3500+ before ugprading to a 4400+, and that was a fine machine. But I've become addicted to dualcore and the overall better system responsitivity. Of course price wasn't an issue when I bought that CPU (ouch).

That's why I went for it. The mobo looks good and seems to have solid reviews. From my point of view it allowed a certain amount of backward compatability with hard discs etc. that I have and has 3 PCI cards which allows me to plugin the things I need - I might even try it for a while with the onboard surround sound ....

I am still wondering whether to ring up and go for the X2 processor - but can I really justify nearly £100 extra - probably not.

So: pretty decent box, probably very good performance/price ratio, but don't have illusions that it will be easy to upgrade (when is that ever the case, though? >_<)

Quite that is prceisely why I have ended up buying a new system effectively - not that it will look any different from the outside  but I couldn't justify new monitors, keyboard, case etc.

Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

Seems like a good choice. The WD disks are pretty silent and performant, from what I can tell. Just, as with all harddisks, remember to keep them cool. I made a mistake in choosing a mini-atx casing for the fileserver I built for the museum, which lead to heat problems... and one of the two WD320 disks dropping dead within a month. Good thing I ran raid mirror.

My current system could probably last some years, but I hope to set enough money aside that I can get a core2duo by March or April; the greatly reduced power consumption would be nice, main reason is that my brothers need a new box. They can't afford a brand new one, so I want to sell them this one cheaply.

I have 4 WD Caviar drives in my box now and I have been very please with them - a good reason to stick with WD but obviously this will be my first foray into SATA. The two biggest discs will stay in the box and the smaller pair (120Gb each) will be used for external storage.

My system is now going to have to last for at least 3-4 years now! The current one has served me well for the last 5 years so it doesn't really owe me anything.

One extra goodie I have bought is a Netgear network storage unit. I have a couple of WD Caviar drives which won't fit in the new box (without PATA->SATA adapters) so I thought I would share them on my network for backup and data storage - possibly music/video too. The Netgear box takes two IDE drives of any size and plugs into the router so with the new Netgear 11n wireless network I have just installed they could prove pretty useful

5132

General Software Discussion / Re: IE7 Rant

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 06, 2006, 08:04 AM »

However, due to minor annoyances and the lack of Roboform support, I have had to switch.

-Josh (November 06, 2006, 06:04 AM)

I also gave up on Opera solely becuase of the lack of Roboform support, as have countless thousands of potential users, judging by the number of forum threads you come across pleading for Roboform support in Opera. On the one hand I can understand why the Opera people don't want to allow extension support. On the other hand, it severely limits their market. Last time I tried Wand, it came a very poor second to Roboform.

-johnk (November 06, 2006, 07:57 AM)

Ditto - and is a major reason why Firefox has jumped to the front of the queue as an alternative to IE.

5133

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 06, 2006, 06:46 AM »

OK Been and gone and done it ....  .... anyone want to buy a tired old body to help finance it 

This is what I have ordered ...

Antec NeoHE 550W Modular ATX2.0 PSU - looks kind of neat and quiet

Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi X16 (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard - Deluxe version really because it came with all the cables and brackets - and has more external connectors.

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego (Socket 939) - Retail (I was tempted by an X2 4600 but couldn't really justify doubling the price of the CPU - I can always upgrade later when the prices drop ...)

Corsair 2GB DDR XMS3200C2PT TwinX (2x1GB) CAS2 (mainly because this is what Overclockers recommended for this board)

To take advantage of the SATA2 interface ... (wasn't expensive - and I still have 4 PATA device connections so I can still use my old Caviar Drives)

Western Digital Caviar SE16 320GB 3200KS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

Not the greatest and latest but looks good enough for someone who only occasionally plays games ...

OcUK GeForce 7300 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

I like to watch TV while I am working and so this will give me the options of Digital or Analogue TV signals ...

Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1100 Freeview TV Tuner

What do people think ...

All a bit scary now that I have done it! I was planning to go skiing but that has fallen through so I can use the money set aside for that!

5134

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 05, 2006, 07:32 PM »

Spent most of the weekend looking at goodies ... I have come up with two solutions:

1) Bite the bullet, dig out the credit card and go for it!

2) Patch up the existing system with minimal outlay (as far as I can see I could probably just replace the mobo and CPU and continue to use everything else - I have found a number of solutions from ASROCK and MSI that allow me to stick with AGP and PATA for the time being)

Trouble is that buying new gear that is on the edge of being dropped by the manufacturers doesn't feel right - whatever I buy I will probably be stuck with the for the next few years so I think I am coming to the conclusion that (1) is the way to go!

I'll post my shopping list to see what people think when my head stops spinning!

5135

Living Room / Re: LangaList is merging with Windows Secrets

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 03, 2006, 02:10 PM »

According to Fred Langa he was finding it too difficult to keep up with the workload (being a one man band) and he wanted to make use of WindowsSecrets distribution and office staff.

Since I already subscribed to both for premium content I think it is a win-win situation. The only danger I see is that either newsletters will become too long or content will be reduced to allow for the fact that they now have three heavies writing for it.

I found it strange that Woody stopped writing his own Woody's Watch (many of those are now written by others) but I thought that was after the Boxing Day Tsunami (Woody lives in Thailand) - but it is strange he hasn't really returned fully to his own fold but rather combined with Brian and Fred.

5136

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 03, 2006, 05:03 AM »

Oh, and for chipsets: there's only really two choices, intel and nvidia nforce. Stay away from everything else

-f0dder (November 03, 2006, 03:00 AM)

What is wrong with VIA chipsets these days? Presumably the ATI chipsets are useful if you plan to use Radeon graphics - or is ATI suffering from its usual crap driver problem?

So are you suggesting AMD cpu + NVIDIA chipset + GEFORCE graphics is a better compbination these days than the Radeon cards. I haven't any experience with recent graphics cards - and my needs aren't great as I am not really into games, but I got the impression that ATI stuff was the leading graphics engine now?

5137

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 03, 2006, 02:27 AM »

Any suggestions as to where to find these PCIe cards in the UK ?

Radeon AIW PCIe cards used to exist but I can't find anyone that sells them now and I haven't seen any PCIe cards other than graphics cards ???

5138

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 04:32 PM »

I need a minimum of 3 PCI slots (wireless card, sound card and TV card if I have to replace my AGP graphics) preferably more!

5139

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 02:48 PM »

Found one on eBay - not too sure about risking eBay for this sort of thing though!

The ASUS board is a bit limiting - only 2 PCI cards ...

5140

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 02:32 PM »

Just browsing around anyone seen this:

http://www.matrox.co...ducts/th2go/home.php

looks kind of neat

(not relevant for my needs but you know the way it is easy to get distracted)

5141

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 02:09 PM »

DX10 doesn't really interest me as you will need VISTA and I have no intention of upgrading to VISTA (even if they give me a free copy).

Unfortunately Overclockers have sold out of that ASRock mobo and looking at other sites it appears to be discontinued !

5142

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 11:14 AM »

As for 32- vs 64-bit XP, I haven't yet seen any reason to install 64bit even though I have an AMD64x2 4400+. It's very little software that can take advantage of the additional address space, and the extra & wider registers don't help that much for much software. So unless you have some software you know can take advantage of 64bit, it isn't worth it yet imho.

-f0dder (November 02, 2006, 09:36 AM)

I was very disappointed to note that on my box which dual boots 32bit and 64bit XP that the 7zip internal benchmark ran faster under 32bit XP than under 64bit. In hindsight I should also have tested a 32bit exe running under 64bit XP, might do so later.

I never looked into this further, though it would be interesting to check out some other programs.

-Eóin (November 02, 2006, 09:45 AM)

Maybe you need an extra 5Gb of memory to make XP64 do something interesting

5143

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 11:13 AM »

mouser: each IDE interface can handle 2 drives - and most motherboards still come with two IDE interfaces. Mine has 2 IDE and 8 SATA, I think

Onboard networking is quite fine for just about all purposes.

Onboard sound is okay quality, but there can be problems with noise because of all the EMI inside a computer box - if you hook up digital out to an external amp, that won't be a problem though

-f0dder (November 02, 2006, 09:36 AM)

A lot of modern boards I have been looking at only seem to come with one PATA/IDE connector - presumably aimed at optical drives.

The tip from dk10 about PATA -> SATA converters looks good though and could make a stop gap solution.

Having said that though I may simply buy a network storage device (Netgear do a nice looking one and its cheaper than multiple converters) that accepts 2 PATA drives and plug it into my new fast Wireless router and use that for data. Then use a single internal SATA drive for speed critical jobs. The other PATA drives could be either used in a second system/frankenbox or put into USB2 bays which are getting cheap now as external storage for backups etc..

I'd stay away from a dual AGP/PCI-e motherboard; don't have any experiences with them, but the idea of two different and power-hungry buses (that are quite different) on one board feels a bit icky.

I thought AGP was basically part of the PCI bus (which is going to be there anyway) but presumably you can BIOS disable what you aren't using. I take your point though - but if I don't have an AGP interface I have to buy a PCIe graphics card (and/or TV card if I want to retain functionality) which is going to be even more expense.

Btw. as for RAID on on-board controllers - this is a big can of worms, even if you move to a new board with the same controller. Some of them will not accept that you already have an array if it doesn't know about it (ie., hasn't been configed in that machine), and thus won't "rebuild" the array but will insist on wiping your disks and creating a new array.

Yes I know this a big drawback of onboard RAID - but as I described above I only really use mine for scratch discs and temporary storage. Most of the stuff can be wiped without any tears - and the stuff that can't be wiped can be quickly backed up.

As already mentioned, it's probably not worth "upgrading" your old box, so turning it into a "frankenbox" could be smarter. I understand budget is a problem, but if you don't go for the latest & greatest (oh sweet core2duo goodness!), you should still be able to get a decent box without selling your kidneys.

The square 4 pin connector was introduced with pentium4 machines, iirc. Dunno if it's extra juice for the AGP/PCI-e slot or if it's for the CPU - but it's one of those I think. Additionally, modern motherboards have moved from 20- to 24-pin main connectors. I've seen some convertors, which might work, but I wouldn't do that unless the graphics card is a relatively low-end ones. Also note that even some 24-pin PSUs aren't much better than the 20->24 convertor scheme.

As for 32- vs 64-bit XP, I haven't yet seen any reason to install 64bit even though I have an AMD64x2 4400+. It's very little software that can take advantage of the additional address space, and the extra & wider registers don't help that much for much software. So unless you have some software you know can take advantage of 64bit, it isn't worth it yet imho.

No I guessed 64-bit Windows was probably a waste of time and money - but it looks like a new PSU ...

So I seem to have two options ...

(1) Buy a second hand 5 year old compatible mobo and survive until that packs up too

(2) Dig out the credit card and add some grief ... minimum purchase ... mobo, cpu, graphics card and probably memory too + whatever is necessary to keep my current WD Caviars running!

All probably because a capacitor is dying!! 50 cents worth of kit and five minutes with a soldering iron!

5144

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 07:12 AM »

Quick question re. PSUs ...

The PSU I have has a 20 pin connector but also has a 4 pin connector which I never found a use for. Does that mean that this PSU is compatible with modern boards?

5145

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 07:10 AM »

Probably true - actually the capacitors on this board probably date back to when there were massive problems with duff capacitors with many manufacturers. I guess I have been lucky so far.

Now then I wonder if I can replace the capacitors (I know which ones were susceptible!)

5146

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 06:26 AM »

Probably - I was just thinking if I can replace the dying chip it will be cheap, cheerful and won't entail reinstalling everything!

5147

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 06:00 AM »

i don't think you mentioned which msi board it is, Carol, but you could take the ebay cheap fix approach.

http://search.ebay.c...erboard_W0QQfromZR40

for the price they are, i'm sure it will be the cheapest solution - you could even get a second replacement board just in case the first one dies.

-nudone (November 02, 2006, 03:58 AM)

Good idea - it is the MSI K7T266 Pro 2-RU

There are non listed on eBay at the moment but there are a few basic models without the RU part - which means no RAID or USB 2 interface.

I'm wondering how easy it would be to buy one of these cheap and move the VIA chips (Northbridge and Southbridge) to my existing board? They both appear to be socketed so I would probably need to source a proper extraction and insertion tool.

I could always buy two to experiment - then if the extraction and replacement goes badly I still have a basic board to fall back on and adding a USB 2 card is not exactly going to break the bank!

5148

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 03:39 AM »

if you have an expensive AGP card, then that will narrow down your search to agp motherboards which are few are far between now.

the ide drives are something you need to think about.
sata interface is NOT compatible with ide drives.  if you have 4 ide drives that you want to mount inside your pc you need to look for a motherboard with 4 ide interfaces, which is not common these days, but you may be able to find one with sata and 4 ides, which would be ideal.  alternatively you could get new sata drives and use your ides in an external drive racks for backup purposes.

onboard sound is reasonable these days.

onboard video is less so; if you want to run graphics heavy stuff like games, youll want a graphics card.

im guessing you will need to buy new memory.

question: do you already have a secondary pc? if not, my advice might be to build a new machine, and just do the minor stuff to make this current one a frankenstein secondary machine.

-mouser (November 01, 2006, 06:41 PM)

I have seen these boards which look like they would go some way to doing what I want:

DABS at £30

MSI

but both need a new CPU (not too much of a prob) and presumably both will need a new PSU.

The main problem I have with these is that the one on DABS doesn't seem to be on the MSI site and I can't find the one on the MSI site for sale anywhere!

OK these are not exciting options but building a whole system from scratch is really not an option as I simply can't afford it and I am not a game player so it doesn't have to be totally 'state of the art' - just reasonably quick and it works!

A suggestion, stayed at the site you linked to:

http://www.overclock...___Foxconn__174.html at bottom there is a strange motherboard which supports both AGP and PCI-E video card.

Does not seem to require newer power supply with 24 pin connector - see specs at Asrock site, 20+4.

-dk70 (November 01, 2006, 09:20 PM)

Link for this is http://www.asrock.co...ct/939Dual-SATA2.htm and actually looks like it could be a good interim compromise. Problem is I would probably have to ditch my memory because it only supports DDR400 (I think mine are DDR333).

Thanks - I'll read you comment properly later but I have to go out now.

5149

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 02, 2006, 03:25 AM »

There's quite a lot of stuff to consider there, but one thing jumped out at me: you have a RAID-0 setup using the onboard controller. It's pretty likely that, if you plug those drives into another RAID controller, you won't be able to access your files. Even with the same RAID controller chip, I don't think there's any guarantee that it will work.

-NeilS (November 01, 2006, 07:21 PM)

Thanks for reminding me but I am aware of that - consequently my array is mainly used for temporary storage of one form or another - my pagefile is on there and I do a lot of graphics/video type stuff so it is used heavily as a fast scratch disc for editing and storing temporary CD/DVD images prior to burning etc. so there is little of value that would be lost precisely for the reasons you described. Having said that I can run the 'RAID' drives from the 'RAID' interface as two separate IDE drives so it might be worth me considering that route now

5150

Living Room / Re: Mobo dying .... suggestions please on upgrading my system ...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on November 01, 2006, 06:05 PM »

Thanks

Actually I am looking at websites now and getting really confused over all the new things that have appeared since my last build ...

PCIe
SATA
Dual Core CPUs
etc.

it all makes me wonder if I can use any of my existing kit!

I have been looking at www.overclockers.co.uk and I can't find any mobos that explicitly have AGP interfaces ? Am I missing something as new AGP cards seem to be appearing ?

If I have to do a major upgrade is it worth going for a mobo that combines graphic adapter and onboard sound (there seem to be some MSI and ASUS models that have Audigy 7.1 surround onboard - not sure about built in graphics). I haven't considered these boards in the past as they look like they are aimed at OEM builders but some look as though they have come on a long way and would be a cheap way to get reasonable graphics and sound ?