Dell Zombies are stupid

Hcomplyr · 05-28-2005, 12:56 PM

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportfor...sage.id=234557

I post a question on dell's own forum for info and looks like they can't help at all. The trained monkeys they have running the forum obveously don't know a damn thing about computers.

maxxell · 05-28-2005, 01:12 PM

Dell is useless. Sell it. Use the $$ for an upgradeable machine.

Pudge · 05-28-2005, 01:16 PM

I've got HL2 running on an athlon xp 2100+ with a geforce 4 ti4200, sounds like it's a motherboard issue.

edit:More Specs

ABIT NF7-S2G Motherboard
512 MB DDR
120 GB Hard drive

Hcomplyr · 05-28-2005, 01:19 PM

thats what i thought, they were so quick to point out the video card.
"oh no someone noticed our motherboards suck, cover it up!"

i got HL2 to run on a 16 meg TNT2 so i know thats just a cop out answer

Question · 05-28-2005, 02:22 PM

16mb? yeesh...

Hcomplyr · 05-28-2005, 03:09 PM

it was a bet, i won

rushnrockt · 05-29-2005, 08:51 AM

The link they gave indeed is useless, instead they should of given you link to the review of the particular videocard where it gets dusted by Geforce4 TI 4200. It does better with DX9, but coupled with Celeron, that is in no way a "killer" combo. You might have been better off staying with P4. The video card explains your older games sucking, since this card has bad DX7/DX8 implementation, and Celeron can be blamed for HL2 suckage, the processor is utterly useless for games and HL2 is a relatively processor demanding program.
From my experience with Dell, they are better at replacing parts than saying what exactly is wrong, so for that kind of info you might want to look elsewhere. Mobo doesn't seem to be the problem here however.

HybridFox · 05-30-2005, 05:38 PM

amd +1600(1.4Ghz 400Mhz fsb(?))
256Mb ram
Geforce MX420 64Mb

this is what my brother runs HL2 on, barly lags at all. settings at low
your comp should handle it fine

Hcomplyr · 05-31-2005, 10:18 AM

thats what i'm saying, even though its a celeron it still can run the game, considering on raw clock speed alone its about 4 times faster than the minimum requirement. Don't give me this CELERON SUCKS FOR GAMES, comparativly to say an athlon 64, or Pentium 4 HT yes it does but it will run almost all games just fine. just because the chip has less L2 cache (but the same instruction set) than its brother doesn't mean that it will automatically have 1/4 the frame rate. trust me the 1.5 GHz P4 wasn't running all that hot anyway, the chipset on the dell motherboard seems to be seriously crippled.

But dell sucks for support anyway i can't believe so many people swear by them

rushnrockt · 05-31-2005, 04:47 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Hcomplyr

But dell sucks for support anyway i can't believe so many people swear by them

Consider that Dell is the largest PC seller in the world. Also consider that mostly the people that are "wronged" are the ones that speak louder than others. I've been a Dell customer for 5 years now, bought several systems, had very few problems and whatever problems I did have, they were all resolved in a timely fashion.

As I said before, I believe you have a not so good combination of CPU/video card. I am not sure why you are having trouble with the HL2, since it's a DX9 game, but the older games should indeed run crappily, since the card in your setup runs worse than GeForce 4 4200 in those (up to 50% worse).

If mobo chipset was in fact as bad as you claim it is, it would have been caught by now by other people. May be besides blaming Dell forums for being dumb (which half the time they are), you should investigate other reasons of why it is not working properly.

Hcomplyr · 05-31-2005, 09:03 PM

i've eliminated every possibility, the only thing i didn't change was the motherboard and i know that particular system configuration should be able to handle a game from 1999 let alone HL2 enough to be playable.The fact its a direct X9 game means nothing if I try to play it in DX7 mode and it still runs at an unplayable speed I couldn't even begin to turn it up to DX8 or 9 until I found it playable in DX7. I have an FX5200 i bought for $15 that runs the game with all the options on smoothly on an athlon 2000+ so i know what its capable of.

I'm going to post the before and after pictures of the testing results after the motherboard swap to show you i'm not kidding when i mean this is the last possibility everything will remain the same except for the motherboard.

rushnrockt · 05-31-2005, 10:46 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Hcomplyr

i've eliminated every possibility, the only thing i didn't change was the motherboard and i know that particular system configuration should be able to handle a game from 1999 let alone HL2 enough to be playable.The fact its a direct X9 game means nothing if I try to play it in DX7 mode and it still runs at an unplayable speed I couldn't even begin to turn it up to DX8 or 9 until I found it playable in DX7. I have an FX5200 i bought for $15 that runs the game with all the options on smoothly on an athlon 2000+ so i know what its capable of.

I'm going to post the before and after pictures of the testing results after the motherboard swap to show you i'm not kidding when i mean this is the last possibility everything will remain the same except for the motherboard.

http://www.digital-daily.com/video/nvidia-nv31/

I am suspecting you really didn't read my post. This particular card does better at DX9 than the older stuff. Which is the reason I think there is something else messed up besides mobo, like a combination of the mobo/cpu/video/god knows what. For motherboard alone to account for such drastic speed decrease without you having heard of some sort of recall issue is something I've never heard of, especially with Dell/Intel since Dell's stuff is basically straight from the horse's... fab.
Either way, good luck figuring it out.

Rafster · 05-31-2005, 11:49 PM

Something that I don't beleive was covered either here or in the DelL forum:

Make sure that the FX card is compatable (No known compatability issues) with the motherboard and/or chipset. Sometimes (Especially Intel chipsets, in my usage), have some problems with Nvidia cards, especially old chipsets w/ new cards. Install the MSI Liveupdate and make sure there are no Firmware/BIOS updates for the video card, and see if you can find which Intel Chipset/Motherboard dell used and see if there are any updates. This usually solves most problem that I have.

Hope this helps

Peace,

Rafster

Hcomplyr · 06-01-2005, 05:29 PM

...interesting

xBrady · 06-01-2005, 05:52 PM

Good pointers. It obviously has nothing to do with HL2 seeing the benchmark results. Best way of knowing for sure is swapping out parts one by one if you have spare parts.

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