Ask A Geek

Q: I have an alienware monitor which is brand new. I was using windows vista and everything was great. I just updated to windows 7 and Now my Screen is too small for my monitor. I tried the resolution settings but they don’t make the screen any bigger. I spent good money on this monitor and I’d like to be using all of it. Any suggestions?

Q: Can you recommend me a new motherboard?

My current computer hardware specs are:
Graphics card:
ATI Radeon HD 4870

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, Kentsfied core, Socket 775, 2.4 GHz, 8mb cache

Sound card: Creative soundblaster X-Fi

PSU: Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 650W

Cooling: Zerotherm Nirvana NV-120 Quiet CPU cooler.

RAM: OCZ PC2-8500 Reaper HPC Edition 2 x 2gb.

Previous Mobo: Asus P5K Premium Wifi-AP, Intel P35 Chipset, LGA775 CPU support.

Those are my hardware specs, if any more details are necessary I can provide, I need a new mobo compatible with this hardware, any help would be appreciated.

Q: I have an Asus Eee Box B202, 80 gig hard drive, 2 gig of ram running Windows XP Home. The hard drive is 5400rpm and I am wondering if changing the hard drive to a solid state would my computer run a lot faster?

Q: I have an old P4 desktop that had 256MB DDR PC2100 ram. Can I mix it with 512MB DDR PC2700 ram or will it cause a problem? It runs on Windows XP.

Q: My computer is about 5 years old. It has a 1.2GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, and a 38 GB hard drive that shows as half full. How do I improve its speed?

A: Everyone wants to tweak their computers to get the best speed out of them, especially computers that are a few years old. The biggest questions becomes, is the cost of upgrading and the improvement in speed worth the money or would the money be better spent on a new computer.

In your case, since you only have 512 MB of RAM, there is a chance that spending $30.00 or so to upgrade to 1 GB of RAM would improve your speed. It is hard to tell if it would improve it enough to make you happy though. I would opt for trying the RAM if I had a friend with some extra RAM lying around but I don’t think I would opt for the RAM option in your case if it cost money. The reason for this is that a 1.2 GHz processor is between 1/3 to 1/2 the speed of most the processors you will find in the $400.00 desktops that are flooding the market. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: My computer is about 5 years old. It has a 1.2GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM and a 38.2GB hard drive that shows half full. How do I improve Speed?

Q: I want to upgrade my old PC by adding more RAM (256 or 521). The problem is that I’m new at hardware and stuff. I know there are many types of RAMs DDR, DDR2 and what not so which type should I buy?

Also I currently have single chip with 512MB. If I insert lets say 256 next to it will it work, or does it has to be 512MB like the first one?

This is my system report.

Q: Will 2GB of RAM sufficiently speed up a Windows XP computer?

A: Increasing your RAM will help you with general home computing tasks like editing and creating documents, e-mail, and web browsing. An upgrade to 2GB of RAM for a computer you’ve had for 2-3 years will give you a nice performance boost for a very low price. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: Can I replace my graphics card in my Toshiba Satellite® L505-S6959 laptop (with a NVidia G-Force 9800)?

Q: I have a six year old desktop with an AMD Athalon(tm) xp 2000+and 2 256MB DDR RAM. It’s begun giving me problems like loose RAM, Heat sink and fan knocking off.

Should I just junk it and buy a new one or try and upgrade? My only usage is email, web browsing, online games and a little bit of MS office at times.