~$100 graphics card deals for right now- Geforce GTX 460 (768MB) or Radeon HD 5830 (1GB)?

It's windows Vista 32 bit, and I'm using an hdmi cable. I've tried plugging the speakers into the monitor and listening from there, and plugging into the desktop, but I get the exact same problem. It happens if I have a lot of tabs open in my browser, or if I do something like navigate a browser while listening it glitches out and sounds like it's lagging and skips a lot.

Were you previously using your on-board (on motherboard) sound card? It could be that you need to disable/uninstall any previous drivers hardware if it's conflicting. Or possibly you need to reinstall the NVidia sound and graphics drivers.

How was the sound getting to the monitor before? Was it going over the HDMI cable from the old video card?

I kind of fixed it. I switched from an hdmi to a dvi cable, and disabled the nvidia sound stuff completely. If I restart everything gets reset, including my screen resolution, but I can just keep changing it back everytime I boot up. Annoying, but I guess I can deal with it.

My GTX 460 (768MB) has been installed for about a week (yes, that WAS the problem, thank god) and as far as I can tell (from the few benchmarks I remember from my old card, mostly WoW) it has been outperforming my old GTX 285. Great to have my computer back!

I bought my 460 last year for much more. Glad to hear the card is still a solid choice though sometimes I wish I had the 1GB version when running games at 1920x1080.

I restarted my computer today, and now my audio problem is back with a vengeance, and I can't figure out how to stop it. Disabling does nothing, and uninstalling does nothing because Vista reinstalls them after every restart, so there's no way to get rid of them. I used Driver Sweeper in safe mode, and tried to remove everything NVidia, and it did, but then ONLY the audio one's reinstalled and my video ones stayed gone. I've done system restores to try to get back to a point where these terrible cursed awful annoying piece of sh*t Audio drivers didn't ruin my audio, but they still install after every restart. I honestly want to smash this card to bits and buy something that doesn't ruin my computer, but instead I decided to see if anyone here has some suggestions as to how I can put a permanent fix on this.

Backup your Steamapps folder elsewhere and do a clean install.

If you have the money I highly suggest moving up to Windows 7. It's worth it. I didn't hate Vista, but I had so many strange issues with things I was glad I moved to Windows 7. It's got better drivers overall, imho.

garion333 wrote:

Backup your Steamapps folder elsewhere and do a clean install.

If you have the money I highly suggest moving up to Windows 7. It's worth it. I didn't hate Vista, but I had so many strange issues with things I was glad I moved to Windows 7. It's got better drivers overall, imho.

Yeh. It might be time for Windows 7.

Ooh, and you get to graduate to 64-bit. Do it.

You can get the student priced versions, right? I don't know where to get such things, but I know Office is priced super cheap for students. Try your school bookstore? You'd know better than I.

garion333 wrote:

Ooh, and you get to graduate to 64-bit. Do it.

You can get the student priced versions, right? I don't know where to get such things, but I know Office is priced super cheap for students. Try your school bookstore? You'd know better than I.

Yeh I'm downloading a free copy now from one of those student programs. I'll let y'all know how it turns out.

Wow, free? Free is a very good price.

Win7 64-bit is outstanding. Windows 8 looks interesting, but Win7 is so good that I'm a little worried about switching.

Malor wrote:

Wow, free? Free is a very good price.

Win7 64-bit is outstanding. Windows 8 looks interesting, but Win7 is so good that I'm a little worried about switching.

I downloaded it, but it said it's not compatible with the current version of Windows I'm running. Is there a way to override that?

Malor wrote:

Wow, free? Free is a very good price.

Win7 64-bit is outstanding. Windows 8 looks interesting, but Win7 is so good that I'm a little worried about switching.

I was in a meeting the other day and we were talking about mobile trends and whatnot (including ipads and laptops). They basically were saying that W8 is Microsoft's push to have a presence in the tablet market. I don't know if it'll be worth updating unless you will use it for that back and forth transfer stuff. But I'm not well versed in this, it was just a meeting with a bunch of VPs who know a lot more than I do (I was there to represent Gen Y) and that's what I extrapolated.

Sorry, SB I don't know the answer to your question.

casual_alcoholic wrote:
Malor wrote:

Wow, free? Free is a very good price.

Win7 64-bit is outstanding. Windows 8 looks interesting, but Win7 is so good that I'm a little worried about switching.

I downloaded it, but it said it's not compatible with the current version of Windows I'm running. Is there a way to override that?

Yeah clean instal, back everything you need up and do it from scratch. Is your version an update or a full copy? I think even if it is an update there are ways to install it clean without having to do vista.

Gaald wrote:
casual_alcoholic wrote:
Malor wrote:

Wow, free? Free is a very good price.

Win7 64-bit is outstanding. Windows 8 looks interesting, but Win7 is so good that I'm a little worried about switching.

I downloaded it, but it said it's not compatible with the current version of Windows I'm running. Is there a way to override that?

Yeah clean instal, back everything you need up and do it from scratch. Is your version an update or a full copy? I think even if it is an update there are ways to install it clean without having to do vista.

I'm not sure, I think it's a full version. I just have to find a way to get my downloaded copy onto something external to do the install. My external hard drive wasn't able to do it for some reason. I was really hoping I could boot from that and save some time.

If you have a card reader or USB key that's 4G or bigger, Microsoft has a tool to make it into a bootable Win7 installation disk. For some reason, though, I'm spacing on the name, and it's not coming up quickly in Google. Anyone remember what it's called?

garion333 wrote:

Backup your Steamapps folder elsewhere and do a clean install.

How does this work exactly? If you drop the archived steamapps folder back into C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\ after a drive wipe and fresh install, will Steam automatically recognize all your games? It seems like you might need to deactivate any games that have limited activations before wiping things out (for games with ugly DRM).

I've been fiddling with Steam's backup feature, but the way it archives multiple games is kludgey.

Yes, you'll need to deal with any 3rd party activations external to steam, also any save games that are buried away in obscure locations.

hannibals wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Backup your Steamapps folder elsewhere and do a clean install.

How does this work exactly? If you drop the archived steamapps folder back into C:Program Files (x86)Steam after a drive wipe and fresh install, will Steam automatically recognize all your games? It seems like you might need to deactivate any games that have limited activations before wiping things out (for games with ugly DRM).

I've been fiddling with Steam's backup feature, but the way it archives multiple games is kludgey.

Yup. You may have to delete the ClientRegistry.blob file though (it's in your Steam folder).

And yeah, backing up your save files is a good idea. A pain in the ass, but a good idea.

Yes, backing up save files can be a huge chore. It would be much easier if they were all stored in the same directory, but they can be found all over your hard drive, especially in hidden folders like Appdata and Roaming.

Game Save Manager is a lifesaver for saved games.

Also, when copying the steamapps folder the games will show as uninstalled. They will need to be run once while connected to verify that you own them. This also doesn't seem to work for all games, but exceptions are rare.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Game Save Manager is a lifesaver for saved games.

Also, when copying the steamapps folder the games will show as uninstalled. They will need to be run once while connected to verify that you own them. This also doesn't seem to work for all games, but exceptions are rare.

I've never had this happen, though I tend to go the route in which I just leave the Steam.exe in the folder and let it reinstall itself, so perhaps it recognizes the games then.

Me neither, but I recall a couple of people having it happen. It seems to be pretty rare.

Steam seems to base whether a game is installed or not based on the presence of the .gcf or .ncf files in the steamapps folder. For non-gcf games (99% of 3rd party and pretty much all valve games after orange box), it's a pair of the ncf file and the install within the common folder. having the ncf will tell it that there should be a corresponding install in steamapps\common, but just dumping the install in the common folder won't tell steam that it's there and you need to install and let it check the files.

The last time I needed to do a transfer, it didn't work at all. (this was a couple years ago, so people didn't understand it as well, and it's possible that Steam itself didn't work as well back then.) The solution I ended up reaching was to do a fresh Steam install, to start downloading the games I wanted, pause the downloads, quit Steam, copy the files into steamapps manually, restart Steam, and resume the downloads. With most of the games, they were immediately complete. IIRC, TF2 didn't "take", requiring a full re-download, but everything else did.

I wish they'd get the backup system in Steam working. It's always been sh*t.