[SharonMurray]

After a power supply burn-out last year and a virus infection in February, I have been having several intermittant problems with my PC - most of which I have now cleared. I'm just left with intermittant problems with the Sound Card (Creative SB PCI128 (Ensoniq ES5880) and CPU (AMD Athlon XP 1800) which seems to be running at 100% at lot of the time.

I'm hoping that upgrading these will fix my problems, and improve my PC at the same time.

My motherboard is an Abit KT7(A)/KT7(A)-RAID/KT7E (sorry about all these codes but I want to get it right), and while I'm at it I want to upgrade the system and video BIOS which are both over 2 years old.

Can anyone recommend the best soundcard and processor to go for - we listen to music a lot, but don't do much gaming.

Can anyone offer any advice on doing the BIOS upgrade? - eSupport offer an online BIOS upgrade - are these a reliable company?

Thanks everyone.
Sharon

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The best sound card out right now is the audigy 2 ZS which is about 100-150 depending on where you go. Could actually be cheaper since it's been out for a few years now. It is awesome, the new versions of teh audigy 2 ZS support for 5.1, 6.1 and even 7.1 sound. That is incredible Got my dad a nice set of 4.1 speakers for his office and they totally kick [bleep] with the audigy 2 ZS. I would definitely recommend that.

As for a processor, I suggest you take a look at this site and see what fits into your price range. I myself have a AMD XP chip myself and the only complain I have is that it runs really warm, which is most AMD chips I guess I suggest you get either a sempron or a Thunderbird (XP) processor that fits into your budget range.

Fenor

[Fenor]

The best sound card out right now is the audigy 2 ZS which is about 100-150 depending on where you go. Could actually be cheaper since it's been out for a few years now. It is awesome, the new versions of teh audigy 2 ZS support for 5.1, 6.1 and even 7.1 sound. That is incredible Got my dad a nice set of 4.1 speakers for his office and they totally kick [bleep] with the audigy 2 ZS. I would definitely recommend that.

As for a processor, I suggest you take a look at this site and see what fits into your price range. I myself have a AMD XP chip myself and the only complain I have is that it runs really warm, which is most AMD chips I guess I suggest you get either a sempron or a Thunderbird (XP) processor that fits into your budget range.

Fenor

[SharonMurray]

Thank you for that Fenor. Is there anything I need to do to check that the processor I choose is compatible with my motherboard?

Also have you any advice re the BIOS upgrade? Should I do this before or after the processor upgrade (or doesn't it matter?)

Thanks again,
Sharon

[Fenor]

Flashing the bios, aka upgrading the bios, is not something anyone should attempt. There are too many things that could go wrong and if you don't know exactly what you are doing then it isn't recommended that you do it. Unless there is a windows utlity that you can use for your motherboard to flash the bios, like Gigabytes @Bios, then I wouldn't recommend you do it.

As for whether or not the processor is compatible with your motherboard, check with the manufacturer and see what the maximum speed processor that the board will recognize is.

Fenor