PC Tips and General Advice

Liam · May 16, 2006

Just began a course on hardware and software more affectionatley know as the A+ Course and will be doing an MCP in Windows XP afterwards.

So I am going to pass on all the little tips and things I come across which you can do to eek out every little last drop of performance from your PC but WITHOUT OVERCLOCKING!

So here is the first one and apologies for the more PC literate readers who know this already!

OK, Paging File - The computer uses this when it gets to the end of the physical ram you have in your system, the size of the file should be 1.5 times your physical ram i.e. for me it would be 1.5 x 1024MB (or 1Gb!) which is 1536MB now this can be found here (This is in XP BTW) START>RIGHT-CLICK MY COPMUTER>PROPERTIES>ADVACNCED TAB>PERFORMANCE SETTINGS and down the bottom so check the size and if you have more than one HDD change the location of the file to the hard drive that DOESN'T run the operating system and you should get a little extra!

Liam

Liam · May 16, 2006

Another post just to break up the monotomy (sp?)

If your PC is not turning on as normal and you know your BIOS manufactured then you can pinpoint the problem using charts found here: -

http://www.bioscentral.com/beepcodes/awardbeep.htm

Top left has other charts for the various manufacturers so give this a try before taking your porn infested PC to PC World!

Liam

Stu DemonD · May 16, 2006

I run 2Gb of mem, and I do indeed have a 3Gb PF - and this PF is sitting on my RAID drive array, well away from my C drive with Windows on

Liam · May 16, 2006

Cool, I am looking into the idea of modifying an Athlon XP CPU to run like an Athlon MP cos there are both the same and you can eek out more perfromance from the XP be scraping a small section of the chip away!

I have learned the difference now that why a newer 3.0GHz CPU can beat an older 3.6GHZ chip with the same neighbouring components which is cool! So my GF's 2.7 Celery! is no match really for my 2.5 Athlon!

Liam

Trancendental · May 16, 2006

Bus Speeds and Achitecture etc???

Luke · May 16, 2006

Trancendental said:
Bus Speeds and Achitecture etc???

Increase in Level 2 cache makes large amounts of difference too

Seraph · May 16, 2006

RISC IS GOOD
why mac's used to run shed loads faster... all about the architecture baby.

Jai · May 16, 2006

oi! you lot pack it in! it has been agreed that english, plain and simple will be the language of the forum, not your geekboy nerdy techno vinegar strokings....

SkinzCinqSporting · May 17, 2006

Yeah same Turboned, I do A level ICT and I'm struggling to understand. Ive used PCs all my life and like to think I know a lot about them, but this is going way over my head.

philbo · May 17, 2006

im a database administrator who works on hardware too. all this is going to make how much difference? nanoseconds? still, being a geek, its quite interesting what you can meddle with.

just dont tell the wife. she'll go nuts! anything goes wrong with our pc and its my fault..even if im out of the country.

wozza · May 17, 2006

Did 2 years of a degree in games tech year of normal computing etc most of this is how my system is set up already.

Im such a geek i could tell you the reasons why different CPU's run faster than others etc.

Liam · May 17, 2006

Trancendental said:
Bus Speeds and Achitecture etc???

That and the L2 Cache yes so the "my processor is XGhz" only really wins down the pub if you examine them in great detail.

There is also different types of ram which aren't popular or mainstream but wipe the floor with DIMM, DDR etc.

Liam

Jai · May 17, 2006

bloomfieldliam said:
That and the L2 Cache yes so the "my processor is XGhz" only really wins down the pub if you examine them in great detail.

There is also different types of ram which aren't popular or mainstream but wipe the floor with DIMM, DDR etc.

Liam

you go down the pub with your processor.......

mate i know a coupla ladies that would make you forget all that

DIMM,DDR? you got the vinegar strokes again havent you?!

arc · May 17, 2006

it all depends on how much 'work' per cylce the CPU does. Generally AMD's have done more than Intel chips, hence AMD chips running lower speed and still beating the higher mhz rated Intel chips. Joe public didn't understand this, that is why AMD brought in PR (Performence Ratings) speeds for their chips. Selling them as an XP2500, not as a 2.2ghz XP (i guessed the speeds there.. prolly wrong).

Re ram types, there's been loads. Current best is DDR2 isn't it. Is RAMBUS still around?

Re 2.7 celery vs 2.5 Athlon. The celery is a budget chip, even if it were a full P4, i'd expect the 2.5 Athlon to beat it.

Bus speed is very important, most people don't know that though. My P4 system runs an FSB of 286mhz, which of course because the P4 uses QDR that is an effective 1144mhz. Which is quite quick for an old system!

Optimizing stuff like memory latency settings in the BIOS can help things to. For example, running memory at CAS2 over CAS3 can be up to a 1/3 quicker. (although last i remeber, DDR was running CAS2.5 most of the time, and decent stuff was CAS2 - but i dont know, its been a long time since i've looked into any of this!)

Finally.. what is wrong with overclocking?

My 3.0ghz P4 has been running at 3.5ghz happily for, i dunno - 3 years now i think. It's also very handy having an engineering sample CPU (it says "Intel Confidential" on it, and nothing else!) because it means i can lower the multiplier and up the FSB to get more out of the memory etc.

Kurt · May 17, 2006

fook me-I've got brain ache

Stu DemonD · May 17, 2006

I overclock my 2.8 P4 HT - it is a Northwood, so currently up to just over 3Ghz only. I did lay my hands on a 3.0Ghz Prescott, but my S478 mobo wouldn't take it

that would have been ideal for overclocking, albeit with a lot of cooling.....

I also match up my FSB across the range - an 800FSB CPU, in an 800FSB mobo, with 3200DDR RAM

custard · May 17, 2006

of course there more to that processor story,isnt there stu?

Stu DemonD · May 17, 2006

custard boy said:
of course there more to that processor story,isnt there stu?

Indeed there is - still, cost me now't to sort out

custard · May 17, 2006

thefishdude · May 17, 2006

Stuart DemonD said:
I overclock my 2.8 P4 HT - it is a Northwood, so currently up to just over 3Ghz only. I did lay my hands on a 3.0Ghz Prescott, but my S478 mobo wouldn't take it that would have been ideal for overclocking, albeit with a lot of cooling.....

I also match up my FSB across the range - an 800FSB CPU, in an 800FSB mobo, with 3200DDR RAM

now if you into over clokcing then this lil baby is what you need, take a read well worth it am thinking about doing it.
pentium 4 805d 2.6ghz easily overclocks to 4.1ghz and is completly stable just need water cooling.

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2006/05/10/dual_41_ghz_cores_uk/

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