Karaoke Forums

I want to add the ability to do PC karaoke through my old Dell desktop. Wifey takes my laptop in the house all the time to play games online. I'm tired of having to bring it all back out to my shop to do karaoke. Plus, it's wearing out the USB ports on the laptop with all the unplugging and pluggng in!

I'm currently running a PCI video card, but I have an open AGP slot on the motherboard. I need a good dual SVGA out video card so I can extend to my lyrics monitor, and I really probably need to upgrade to a later sound card. It's an older Dell with a PENTIUM 4 2.4 ghz processor, and 512 MB RAM. Yes, I'm still at 512 MB ram, this Dimension 8200 has the flippin EXPENSIVE ram sticks! It cost too much to go to a gig! Bound for me to end up with the model that has the expensive ram sticks!

Any recommendations will be appreciated. I much prefer to use a destop PC when it comes to being able to repair/upgrade hardware issues. The portability of the laptop is nice, but I cant work on that sucker!

Thanks, Jim.

Havnt worked a Dell for a long time. With a properly tuned system 512 ram is enough.  An agp dual card will probably replace your on board video (dell dummy now) A pci slot dual video will give you 3 displays.   If you do use a pci and and a pci audio assign the audio (closer to the middle of the Mbrd) a higher priority IRQ. Right now Im just using an old ATI 7000 for dual video.


For gigs I would consider something like the delta44 for a sound card. It depends upon your channel requirements I use 2 for karaoke and the other 2 channels for DJ.. Matt or others here can give you recommondations on usb audio..

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Not an on board video configuration like some of the newer ones(which I'm kinda glad of )...it's just that I've had 2 AGP cards go in the past 3 years...so all I had laying around was a PCI card when the last AGP went out. It's open archet. board. I can go with AGP or PCI ..I guess...?? Just as long as I can SVGA out to 2 monitors.

On the soundcard, no gigging...just for home use. The sound card in it now works, it's just that when I ordered the system, I got what was then suppose to be an enhanced sound system. Harmon Kardon's with a 3rd subwoofer.....and the card has more holes in it than just an average sound card. Makes it kinda confusing if your not using the speaker system that came with it. I'm only using headphones on it now to hear playbacks of songs or recordings. It has an annoying reverb/sustain effect that I cannot figure out how to adjust or get rid of! I'll do a search on the one you are suggesting though.

Thanks,
Jim

Yea Jim Ive used both with equal success It seems Ive had a lot of dual video brds go out too Some have a god awful heat sink on the LSI chip I really think its a heat problem. A second  fan in the tower would probably help..The video brd is not usually in the air current path also..

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I went on the amazingtechs forum The brd rec. is nvidia gforce fx5500 256mb ddr

It does have a fan on it.

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there are excellent PCI dual or triple video cards as well...