Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with 64

I just want to play UNIRACERS!

Bageena — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:20:30 -0800

Argh. I've installed the drivers, I've searched high and low online, nothing is helping, so I'm coming to ya'll: how can I get my Xbox 360 wireless controller (connected to my PC via the charge and play kit via a USB port) to work on my computer? Specifically, I want to play ROMs with it. ZSNES and project 64 are the two emulators I'm trying to puzzle out right now. I've installed the 360 drivers (I'm running a 64 bit copy of Windows Vista Home Premium), it shows up in my Device Manager under 'Microsoft Common Controller for Windows Class' as 'Xbox 360 Wireless Controller via Play & Charge Kit' and says it's there and fine.
HOWEVER... under Control Panel - Game Controllers, there's nothing. I open it up, there's no controllers on the list. I click advanced, I go to choose my preferred device, again - nothing. Not on the list. When I plug the controller in, the computer makes a noise and the light on the charge part of the controller shows it's plugged in, but the controller doesn't turn on (not sure if it's supposed to actually) and it certainly doesn't seem to be working with my ROMs.

Help Mefi, help! Pretty please?

Extra RAM destroys my PSU!

edbyford — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 08:31:32 -0800

I installed new RAM, and blew my power supply. Now, after installing a better power supply, the same symptoms which led to the broken power supply are happening again. What is going on? I recently ordered a pair of these to upgrade my computer from 2GB RAM to 6GB, after installing Windows 7 64-bit. This is what Crucial told me is compatible with my Intel DG965RY motherboard.

After turning the computer back on, I noticed that Windows hung on startup. I shut it down and ran Memtest86+, but that ran very slowly (although didn't show any errors).

I then restarted, and after a couple of beeps from the mobo, the computer wouldn't turn on. SO I ordered a new, more powerful PSU.
For comparison, the model I had originally was this one. It is 430W and has a max current on 22A across the +3.3V rail (I think this is important if you want to add more RAM, right?)

The one I have now is this one. This is 600W and has 35A across the +3.3V rail.

Just to be safe, I sent the RAM back and bought exactly the same type again. I installed it, and then ran both Memtest86+ and Windows Memory Diagnostic before attempting to boot Windows. They both showed no errors. When I then tried to boot Windows my computer froze! Scared of blowing my PSU again, I shut it down and removed the RAM. It now seems to work fine.

What can I do? Surely my power supply is more than adequate for some RAM?

Thanks in advance

Building a uber powerful gaming pc, need your help

spinko — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:03:44 -0800

Building a uber powerful gaming pc, what parts to buy as I don't want to be a sucker. Need your help. Intel Core i7 I currently own a Mac (macbook pro 4gb) for business, even through it is fast in bootcamp. I want better for MMO's and FPS games. This is strictly a gaming machine, and needs to be future proof. I haven't built a computer in 2 years, so I have gone abit rusty.

My budget is £2000 (~$3500) just for the box. I already have a 30inch Cinema display, so I want to play games at the natural resolution (2560 x 1600) with a good 60+ fps.

Here is my list of what I want.

CPU:
Core i7 940 (2.93ghz quad + hyperthreading) ~£470
I want to overclock this cpu as much as I can. I have seen this processor get to 3.4ghz with no problems. I will need a good Motherboard or fan to do this.

The extreme version, is it worth it?

Should I wait for a faster processor coming out in a few months?

HDD:
Raptor 300gb (10k rpm)
or
SAS Hdd's (15k rpm) I dont know too much about this, is it worth it?

Is their any benefit of having a solid state hard drive for bootup OS?

Im not too bothered about size, I don't need 1tb as I only need it for games (300gb max)

PSU:
750, 1000 or 1500 watt? do I need more power for overclocking? or is it just money down the drain.

Video card/s:
The new cards confuse me

SLI cards x2: Does this actually improve gaming performance, or shall I keep with a single 1gb graphics card? Nvidia or ATI?

Others:
Need a good Motherboard, memory (to match the mb) and video card.

Motherboard needs to be good for overclocking.

Also, I may go with Vista 64bit dual boot with XP 32bit. I have heard about something better than software dual boot. Cannot remember what it was.

Memory is limited to 3gb on XP 32bit, however can handle more that 3gb on Vista 64bit. Is it worth going for 64bit Vista for gaming or stick to 32bit non dx10 XP? (I went over to Mac due to Vista, last year for business).

Memory will have to match the top FSB if possible. Unless you cannot see any difference.

Anything extra that will improve performance?

Instead of building my own, could you recommend a pre-built spec. I live in Spain but go to the UK frequently. I know Falcon NW will ship to Spain for $400, but the benefit is the warranty, negatives are the power supply. However building it myself each equipment piece has warranty.

Thanks if you can help.

Vista-filter: So I've got a Lenovo T61p that came with a Vista Home Basic 32... I have Lenovo's "Vista Business 64 recovery CDs" coming to me via UPS this week (don't ask why, it's complicated...) So my questions are:

Glendale — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:47:17 -0800

Vista-filter: So I've got a Lenovo T61p that came with a Vista Home Basic 32... I have Lenovo's "Vista Business 64 recovery CDs" coming to me via UPS this week (don't ask why, it's complicated...) So my questions are: 1 - When the discs arrive, assuming that they've got a full version of Vista Business 64 on them (there are 9 discs, so it's possible!) can I pop them in and just "upgrade" my 32 bit Home Basic, or am I gonna need to wipe and do a fresh install?

2 - Should I even mess with Business 64 at this point, or should I pick up a copy of Business 32 (or even stick with XP..) I'm worried less about driver support, and more about applications...

3 - How sweet is 1920x1200 resolution? (I already know the answer to this one ;)

I use the machine for everything from .NET programming to hardcore 3D gaming.

Sata RAID controller in V64?

notsnot — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:23:14 -0800

SATA card for Vista 64? I've recently gone to the dark side and upgraded to Vista 64 (from xp64...ugh!). My current mother board has the usual bank of SATA ports, and I've been RAIDing pairs of drives (mirrored) from those ports.

The motherboard is wonky - arrays break apart, the LAN ports wake up and die randomly, and identical BIOS settings have different results. I'm replacing it.

I'd like to get a dedicated hardware RAID controller. Mostly, for scratch space - I do a lot of photoshop, and would like to make a striped array for scratch. (the other drives will be boot, and storage that will be synctoy-backed up offsite.) However, I'm having a hell of a time finding cards (mostly looking at Newegg) at a reasonable price that are specifically Vista 64 compatible. Vista has been out for what, 1.5 years, so you'd think they got around to it by now.

My other thing is price. As evidenced by my use of existing SATA drives, it should be obvious that I'm kinda tight right now.

In short, I need a four-port, SATA, hardware raid controller that is *sure* to work in Vista 64, and won't break the bank.

Coop C64 Space Game?

wanderingmind — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:58:38 -0800

Cooperative C64 space adventure game - what was it? I can't remember the title of this game from my childhood, but the premise was that you were exploring space and occasionally running across alien artifacts of various kinds. The game was meant to be cooperative, and every player had their own "secret mission" card. When you came across an artifact floating in space, everyone would use various controls in tandem (keys/joystick) to try to match the thing's position, color, sound, and rotation (if I remember right), with each person responsible for a single axis. Is this ringing any bells with anyone?

AMD or Intel?

b1tr0t — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:40:48 -0800

To get the best performance per dollar, do I want an Intel Pentium D or an AMD Athlon 64 X2 for my new DB+Compute server? I am contemplating building a machine for a project that involves numerical computations on large data sets. The code is written in perl, the database is MySQL, and the whole thing runs on Linux. The current code isn't parallel aware, but it would be trivial to divide the data set in half, and run two compute processes (or more), so I think a dual core CPU will get me more cycles per dollar.

Nearly all of the benchmark sites are geared towards gamers, photoshop and video users. I don't care about any of these things, so the results don't help me much.

If I get an AMD, it would be the Athlon 4400+, which is the first X2 CPU that has dual 1MB cache. I can't tell if an Intel 840 EE is comparable to the 4400+, or an 820. Obviously, if the 840 EE is on par with the 4400+, then the AMD part is the best value. I'm tempted to get an Intel 820 or 830, but would prefer not to get locked into a series of much slower processors.

My code isn't 64-bit aware, nor do I need more than 4GB RAM, so Intel's allegedly poor implementation of AMD64 shouldn't be a problem, nor should AMD's superior instruction set be an advantage.

What should I upgrade?

gokart4xmas — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 19:17:23 -0800

My husband wants to play Battlefield 2, but his computer, an Athlon 64 3200+, seems to be kind of sluggish with the new demo. Given that there's only so much we want to spend to play video games, what's the best component to upgrade? The video card? The processor? The machine has a gig of ram and a Nvidea a6600gt 128 meg card. It runs Windows XP Home.