Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: New PC (Read 18554 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

New PC

Reply #25 –
A salesman told me that if I put a single 512Mb DDR/400MHz stick on an Intel mainboard
supporting dual DDR, it will be detected as 266MHz... Is there any truth to this?
Wanna buy a monkey?

New PC

Reply #26 –
I think that salesman is on crack 
I guess he's assuming that a 533 MHz Intel CPU will access the two memory controllers (dual DDR) at 533/2 = 266. 533 (FSB) is the max from both controllers so you could have one stick at 533 or two sticks at 266 (at least in a theoretical world).  The preferred setting is to have two sticks since it will maximize your FSB (as i said before 466Mhz is the fastest DDR right now) as well as provide a lower latency (time to access the information - all the MHz are just clock cycles and not all clock cycles are used to transfer data hense the reason a 800Mhz bus theoretically should provide 6.4MB/s throughput wheras in fact you only get about 4.8MB/s (~75%))

If you are getting an intel dual-ddr then you want to get 2 sticks of at least 400 (PC3200) since intels benefit more from dual-ddr than my A7N8X (the difference between single DDR and dual DDR is not that great  ). But the PC3200 will let you be compatible with the P4 800MHz FSB as well if you get a 533 you can (usually) specify the timing manually in the BIOS. You should also get good memory (not generic) which is rated with fast timing. You'll see that they will list memory with CAS 2, 2.5, 3 - try to get 2 sticks of PC3200 with CAS 2, this will give you the fastest memory when used with a dual-ddr which will be compatible with the 533 & 800MHz FSB

@john33 - Very good point - hadn't thought about that one - it reminded me of a similar situation where i only had the drivers on CD and at the time i had only my SCSI plextor CDROM(what a great ripper    ) and i was trying everything to get DOS access to it - I think I eventually had to go to someone elses computer to transfer to floppy.
I'm assuming in 2k,XP during initial installation where it asks at the bottom (press F7 i think?) if you want to install 3rd party drivers? I will do that then - thanks. Just out of curiosity do you think you could access the driver CD if you popped out the win2k CD? or had another IDE CD-ROM?

Most people that want advise on building systems seem overtly preoccupied with wheter they should go with the next fastest CPU  and are not to woried about all the other components. I try to explain that computers are systems and each component will affect the overall speed of the computer. But I had one guy convinced that his upgrade to a P4 with his old PII 5400 rpm drive would be just as good as a 7200rpm because it had a "P4".
My main drive is a Quantum Atlas II 10k SCSI and compared to 7200rpms it is quite fast but of course you need the $$ controller card and you pay the premium on anything SCSI.
When I heard of the raptor coming out, (storagereview.com has been salivating for the last year for its debut) i guessed it would be a great drive, there was an initial disappointment when WD released a beta for testing without the 8MB cache activated  , but all the reviews so far have convinced me that it should be great for a workstation.
I didn't know that my MB has SATA raid - wow - so i guess if i got 2 raptors it would be a speed demon - do you know any reviews with that configuration? For the moment the bank says 1 raptor!
Yup talking workstations. I believe SCSIs are still top in server setups but the raptor was never meant to replace true SCSI server drives.
thanks for the info

New PC

Reply #27 –
@TwoJ: Yes, F6 for 3rd Party drivers, in Win2K at least. I didn't bother to try to pop in the driver CD because the message very specifically says 'A-drive', so I guess it wouldn't look elsewhere.

SATARaid is on the 'de-luxe ' board, I'm not certain about any other variety! I've only tried the single drive, but I would think it's very impressive when striped. I've not seen any reviews of that, though.

New PC

Reply #28 –
Quote
When I heard of the raptor coming out, (storagereview.com has been salivating for the last year for its debut) i guessed it would be a great drive, there was an initial disappointment when WD released a beta for testing without the 8MB cache activated  , but all the reviews so far have convinced me that it should be great for a workstation.
I didn't know that my MB has SATA raid - wow - so i guess if i got 2 raptors it would be a speed demon - do you know any reviews with that configuration? For the moment the bank says 1 raptor!

Tomshardware has a review of one raptor and they are quite enamored (or so it seems); I'll be waiting to see how stable it is, driving an IDE drive @10k can't be free of problems (given it's a first of a kind). Hopefully it'll be good and we'll have a great alternative to SCSI.

New PC

Reply #29 –
I just "built a pc" on the site of an online PC shop (just for experimenting),
choosing an AMD 2800+ XP, and the final price came out 300 euros less than
with a P4 3GHz, which is sweet! I'm starting to wonder if my obsession with
3GHz is pointless...
BTW, how does the Athlon 2800+ XP fare against the Intel P4 2,8GHz?
Can DDR/400MHz be used with AMD-based PCs?

I'm including these links:

Mgmanager

Cosmodata

Plaisio

These are links to Greek online shops, where one can make his own custom PC.
There is some Greek language, but it is easy to understand what is what.
I was wondering if anyone could fiddle around with the choices and perhaps
help me discover a different set-up for my PC. A second reason why I'm including
them is to give u an idea of what's available in Greece and what not.
Wanna buy a monkey?

New PC

Reply #30 –
The AMD 2800+ fares very well against the P4 2.8ghz. And yes, DDR/400mhz memory can be used with AMD processors. You will get better performance, though, if you run the memory / processor at the same bus speed, which in the case of the AMD 2400+ and above is 333mhz. Most motherboards allow you to run the memory at whatever speed you want though. I recommend that you buy some killer PC3200 / 3500 DDR and run it at the 333mhz bus speed (PC2700 effective,) but set all the memory options to their most aggressive settings.

By buying PC3500 memory, you almost guarantee yourself of stability at the fastest memory timings, but if you buy PC2700, you might have to pick more conservative settings. A good way to test how fast you can set your memory is using the MemTest86 program at www.memtest86.com [I know I have said this before, but it's a GREAT program - it was used to prove a memory corruption issue in the ECS K7S5A motherboard (I actually owned one, and always wondered why I got so many blue screen errors  )]

If you go to www.firingsquad.com/hardware , you can find great benchmarks of the P4 vs. AMD processors as well as the motherboards that run them. Have fun  B) .

New PC

Reply #31 –
IIRC, AMD says the 2800+ rating doesn't mean it compares to a P4 2.8GHz, it means it would compare to the non-XP Athlon if it were running at 2.8GHz.  Or at least I believe that was their explanation when they were just rolling out the new XPs with the + ratings.

New PC

Reply #32 –
_Shorty - You are correct, as I remember reading that statement made by AMD as well. An the other hand, the PR rating also compares pretty closely to that of the P4, no matter what AMD "intended" it to represent. Without a PR rating, grandma and grandpa at Best Buy would be picking 2.2ghz Celeron processors over the 2ghz AMD Athlons, even though the AMD part would be MUCH faster. And unlike PR ratings in the past, the PR ratings on the AMD processors do truthfully reflect their performance (except in Q3, which the P4 soundly beats the AMD processor. Damn SSE  )

New PC

Reply #33 –
Quote
IIRC, AMD says the 2800+ rating doesn't mean it compares to a P4 2.8GHz, it means it would compare to the non-XP Athlon if it were running at 2.8GHz.  Or at least I believe that was their explanation when they were just rolling out the new XPs with the + ratings.

In reality it means that it's equal to P4 2.8 or better (it's better).
I would prefer good nForce2 board with AMD AthlonXP over P4 definitly.

New PC

Reply #34 –
@yourtallness - You should decide whether you want to go intel or AMD - this choice affects what type of motherboard, memory, etc. You can then start building the system once you make that choice. right now if you want to get the 800 FSB then you'll have to get the intel, or if you want the 3.0GHz then intel also, but if you say its $300 euro more expensive then that of the AMD then you're the one spending the money - you make the call.

Intels are on the top for speed right now but as stated AMD has comparable CPUs for cheaper. Most of the people I know that insist on having intels are either still thinking that the incompatibilities of 6 years ago are still around, work in servers where other factors come into play, or unfortunately see bad press. like tom's video of an AMD burning when you remove the heatsink). Most of the people who I help build systems for (both for a company and privately) have no problems with AMDs. I haven't seen any figures but I would guess the majority of people who build their own systems choose AMD since when I see the performance and price differences between latest model CPUs from intel and AMD, i can't justify spending all that extra money for such minimal gain.

Maybe an idea is to calculate what you will be buying for your box, ie. what video card, 2 sticks of minimum 400Mhz CAS2 256MB, 512?, good power supply, what other components? - add these up and see how much money you will spend - maybe that might affect your descision on the CPU.

DDR 400 can be used - I have 2 256MB Corsair 3200 CAS2 on my A7N8X (dual-ddr)which when you run with an AMD chip (i suspect its true about intel also but I'm not sure) you should run it in sync mode if you are using a Dual-DDR motherboard.

New PC

Reply #35 –
Doesn't the FSB speed of the processor have something to do with the
max clock speed of the memory u can use? I mean the newest AMDs
have 333MHz FSBs, or not? So can they take full advantage of DDR/400MHz?
Wanna buy a monkey?

New PC

Reply #36 –
Quote
Doesn't the FSB speed of the processor have something to do with the
max clock speed of the memory u can use? I mean the newest AMDs
have 333MHz FSBs, or not? So can they take full advantage of DDR/400MHz?

Depends on the mobo/bios.

New PC

Reply #37 –
Quote
Doesn't the FSB speed of the processor have something to do with the
max clock speed of the memory u can use?


Not really - if you want you could stick PC2100 DDR(133Mhz i think?) into a P4 w/ 800Mhz FSB - you would only be running at 1/6 the capability but it should work.
On the other hand I have 2XPC3200 (400MHz) on a dual DDR with my AMD XP2400 w/ 266FSB - So in theory my memory could support up to 800Mhz but is limited by the FSB of the CPU (266Mhz).

So really you can use any combination of CPU (FSB) with any type of memory but obviously you buy fast enough memory to equal or surpass the FSB of your processor. You can also sometimes, through the BIOS, increase the FSB speed to get more throughput, ex -my CPU is rated at 266 but I have it overclocked at ~290 MHz. I bought the 400Mhz as a bit of overkill about 1 year ago but I wanted to make sure that I could use them down the line - so 1 year later they are good for the P4 w/ 800 FSB and they will still be excellent for the next AMD w/ 400FSB (including some overclocking).

Quote
I mean the newest AMDs
have 333MHz FSBs, or not? So can they take full advantage of DDR/400MHz?

The top of the line AMDs now are 333FSB and probably in 1-2 months the 400MHz FSB are suppose to come out, which will cause another cut in price. When I heard this it was a factor in why i got a 2400+ w/266 since buying a 333 was going to be a fairly short-lived product.
if you have a current AMD with fsb333 then a DDR400 will fill up that 333FSB, but if you do get AMD (or intel) you should get a dual-DDR MB (IMHO) since it will give you a little speed boost from the lower latency. At which point on AMD with a FSB of 400MHz would mean 2XPC2700 (333MHz), on dual ddr = 666 FSB throughput would be great. Just make sure that you get good RAM (not generic) with a CAS 2 rating. The RAM modules have an ID code on them which tells the BIOS which are the best settings for them (like auto-identification) but you should be able to manually set the timing for something more aggressive. I belive my BIOS has 3 choices, standard, aggressive, and manual. The aggressive is good if you don't want to fool around with the timing, and manual is good if you want to try squeezing all the juice out of your memory. Mine is set (i think) 2-2-2-4 which is about the fastest timing you can get - on aggressive it was 2-3-3-5 and on standard was 3-3-4-6.

Again this might be a consideration depending on what the price difference is between PC2700 and PC3200.

New PC

Reply #38 –
don't forget that Athlons are much slower when you run the FSB and memory bus at different speeds (asynchronously) because of increased latencies.  To get the best performance you should be running them at the same speeds.

New PC

Reply #39 –
On most nForce2 boards you can easily set the cpu-multiplier; no hardware changes needed. I built one with an AthlonXP 2500+ (1,83GHz, 333MHz FSB) and set it to 1,8GHz, 400MHz FSB. This way you can take full advantage of PC3200 RAM.

New PC

Reply #40 –
Arstechnica maintains a "hot rod" system which represents the current 'sweet spot' for performance/price here: http://arstechnica.com/guide/system/hotrod.html

Currently the most popular solution locally is to get one of 3 special lots of Tbred-B (1700+, 1800+ and 2100+) which can be overclocked like mad. Throw in a decent NForce2 board and you have a sweet cheap systen.

New PC

Reply #41 –
Have you heard about the upcoming P4 Hyperthreading CPUs at lower speeds?

In this review of the P4 2.4 HT, they managed to overclock it... behold... to a stable 3.3 GHz, with stock voltage and stock cooling! In this review, they managed to do the same, it became unstable only at 3.5 GHz. There might be a new overclocking champ on the horizon here, like those Celeron 300's back in the days...

New PC

Reply #42 –
I would go for the lower end of the spectrum.. a fast Celeron or AMD, cheap Gforce 4 with 128 MB, good but not uber-expensive memory, 120 gig 7200 RPM dive (prolly Maxtor DiamondMax Plus)
saves a lot of money, it will be a pile of junk in 3 years anyway, your 3 GHz P4 wont help much there

New PC

Reply #43 –
Question: Since I'll be installing Win XP on my new PC, is there a way to back up all the Windows updates I've
downloaded, so that I won't need to do it all over again?
Wanna buy a monkey?

New PC

Reply #44 –
Not sure I understand what you mean by "Windows updates"? are you talking about updates to your current OS (windows ??) - If this is the case then WinXP has its own updates you can't just exchange an update for Win98 and have it work on XP.
Anyhow if you are talking about XP retail then you just have to connect to the internet and do updates for the next few hours depending on your connection speed (I think they also might offer some major SP on CD - check the microsoft webpage - windows update page).
I was working with 2k and tried XP and finally got too fustrated with it that i went back to 2k. the XP interface i found too fancy - the 2k gui is simple and functional, XP i had to spend too much time turning off all the animated crap and silly nonsence like telling me the C:\program files is a protected folder so i don't disturb it. I found XP assumes everyone is an idiot and until you spend days turning off all these idiot-guards it looks pretty much like 2k. The main point was their activation policy - their exists a check in WinXP that when you change a certain amount of hardware (ie like the CPU or motherboard) it shut down on me and would not allow me to re-activate it. - That kind of stupidity i can do without. Maybe its better with the retail version but I wouldn't support a product like that when there is 2k or linux.

If you are talking about updates to your software then it depends - you would have to re-install the software on your XP machine and then apply the updates. If the software has something to do with hardware, ie a device driver, then their might be different updates depending on which OS you have. Most updates will let you know when you try to install them if they are not compatible with the OS you try to install them on.

New PC

Reply #45 –
Ok, my question wasn't so clear...

I have Windows XP Professional on my current PC, and I've downloaded more than 50 megs
of updates from windowsupdate.com. What I wanna know is whether I can back-up these
updates on CD so as to spare me from downloading them all over again, when I install Windows
on my new PC.
Wanna buy a monkey?

New PC

Reply #46 –
Quote
Ok, my question wasn't so clear...

I have Windows XP Professional on my current PC, and I've downloaded more than 50 megs
of updates from windowsupdate.com. What I wanna know is whether I can back-up these
updates on CD so as to spare me from downloading them all over again, when I install Windows
on my new PC.

It's the same with Win2k, etc. Apart from the SPs, the rest of the updates do not exist as separate files, AFAIK. If someone knows better, I'd be intested to hear because I get fed up with downloading about 50Mb each time I reload Windows.

TwoJ raises a valid point though. Be sure to check the situation regarding re-activation of XP on your new system before you trash the old one!!

New PC

Reply #47 –
Good question - I'm afraid I don't a real answer for you. You can certainly burn the windows updates folder onto CD and then you can try running any exe or msi files you find in there. That might reduce any updates you need to download. If you have downloaded the SP1a (network install) then you should be ok with upgrading that without any extra downloads. But i suspect that you might need to re-download at least some updates over the internet.

You might consider as an alternative doing a image backup of the HD (with something like Ghost) to transfer to the new computer. This will preserve your OS pretty much as identically as you have it now. The plus is that it can be faster then re-installing everything and you have the same setup as now. The negative is that sometimes it is better to do a fresh install to wipe out a lot of the old junk in your system, and also for XP this is sure to trip the product activation security which means for retail you would have to re-contact MS for them to re-activate your XP on the new machine.

New PC

Reply #48 –
download the updates from the corporate site this time instead, and then *next* time you won't have to download them all over. I'm looking for the url now, as I've forgotten where they (MS) keep that stuff at the moment.

<edit> Here ya go. [url=http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/catalog][a href="http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/catalog" target="_blank"][a href="http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/catalog" target="_blank"]http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/catalog[/url][/a][/a]

New PC

Reply #49 –
Quote
download the updates from the corporate site this time instead, and then *next* time you won't have to download them all over. I'm looking for the url now, as I've forgotten where they (MS) keep that stuff at the moment.

<edit> Here ya go. <a href='http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/catalog' target='_blank'>http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/catalog</a>

Cheers!! Why didn't I think of that!!