How to resurrect this slow comp?

[Random Person]

Hello all. I have an old PC which I'd like to use to help with the
number crunching I need in work. Also as a general purpose machine when
my main PC is busy.

What do you think needs to be fixed about it? What is the system's
bottleneck? I don't want to spend too much money on it; it is an old
comp. It looks like upgrading the RAM is what it needs, but RDRAM is
expensive and I'd have to throw away the 64MB sticks...


CPU
Intel Pentium 3 866MHz (Coppermine)

Motherboard
Manufacturer : Intel Corporation
Model : D820LP

Chipset 1
Model : Intel Corporation 82820 820 (Camino) Chipset Host Bridge (MCH)
(UP Only)
Front Side Bus Speed : 1x 133MHz (133MHz data rate)
Total Memory : 128MB RDRAM
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 354MHz (708MHz data rate)

Logical/Chipset 1 Memory Banks
Bank 0 : 64MB RDRAM 8/7
Bank 1 : 64MB RDRAM 8/7
Speed : 2x 354MHz (708MHz data rate)
Multiplier : 8/3x

 

[ElJerid]

Hello all. I have an old PC which I'd like to use to help with the
number crunching I need in work. Also as a general purpose machine when
my main PC is busy.

What do you think needs to be fixed about it? What is the system's
bottleneck? I don't want to spend too much money on it; it is an old
comp. It looks like upgrading the RAM is what it needs, but RDRAM is
expensive and I'd have to throw away the 64MB sticks...


CPU
Intel Pentium 3 866MHz (Coppermine)

Motherboard
Manufacturer : Intel Corporation
Model : D820LP

Chipset 1
Model : Intel Corporation 82820 820 (Camino) Chipset Host Bridge (MCH)
(UP Only)
Front Side Bus Speed : 1x 133MHz (133MHz data rate)
Total Memory : 128MB RDRAM
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 354MHz (708MHz data rate)

Logical/Chipset 1 Memory Banks
Bank 0 : 64MB RDRAM 8/7
Bank 1 : 64MB RDRAM 8/7
Speed : 2x 354MHz (708MHz data rate)
Multiplier : 8/3x

Based on your hardware, you could build a relatively performant PC. Add a
fast hard disk (7200 rpm) of +/- 80 GB (they're very cheap for the moment)
and, depending of the OS you will install, add alsoeventually some memory
(128 MB is ok for Win 98 SE or ME, 256 MB is minimum for W2k or XP, 512 MB
is better).
For office applications, you don't need a turbo graphics card and you will
find a lot at +/- 50 $ (based on FX5200 or ATI 7000 for example).
For better performance, you could also do some OS tweaking and delete a lot
of overhead.

 

[BruceM]

RDRAM ???????? is that right?

Based on your hardware, you could build a relatively performant PC. Add a
fast hard disk (7200 rpm) of +/- 80 GB (they're very cheap for the moment)
and, depending of the OS you will install, add alsoeventually some memory
(128 MB is ok for Win 98 SE or ME, 256 MB is minimum for W2k or XP, 512 MB
is better).
For office applications, you don't need a turbo graphics card and you will
find a lot at +/- 50 $ (based on FX5200 or ATI 7000 for example).
For better performance, you could also do some OS tweaking and delete a
lot of overhead.

 

[Random Person]

Hi ElJerid. I'm a bit hesitant to buy a new HDD. At the moment the comp
has all my old, tiny HDDs on it (1x 4GB and 2x 2GB drives). However
when I need the space, I just copy the files over to my primary PC,
which has loads of space.

My main problem as I see it is my RDRAM. It is very expensive compared
to SD/DDR RAM. Is there any way I can upgrade my RDRAM to SD/DDR RAM
without frying the motherboard?

I didn't bother mentioning my gfx processor, like you pointed out the
comp is mainly for work and not games. However, it is an NVIDIA RIVA
TNT2 Model 64 card.

By the way, is there a way for me to test my IDE controller on my
motherboard? I can never, ever burn defect-free CDs on my old comp and
I was hoping there would be some software I could d/l and test the IDE
controller.

Testing CD drives for defects AFAIK is harder...

 

[philo]

Hello all. I have an old PC which I'd like to use to help with the
number crunching I need in work. Also as a general purpose machine when
my main PC is busy.

What do you think needs to be fixed about it? What is the system's
bottleneck? I don't want to spend too much money on it; it is an old
comp. It looks like upgrading the RAM is what it needs, but RDRAM is
expensive and I'd have to throw away the 64MB sticks...

i was recently faced with a similar dilemma...
i got a new p-IV free...but it had no RAM.
and it took rdram!(yes, expensive)

however i got some on ebay at a pretty good price.

once you get the RAM upgraded...
just go back to ebay and sell your old stuff

 

[kony]

Hello all. I have an old PC which I'd like to use to help with the
number crunching I need in work. Also as a general purpose machine when
my main PC is busy.

Number crunching is mostly bottlenecked by the CPU. You
could research on the 'net whether your board might run a
Tualatin P3 or Celeron ~ 1.4GHz with an adapter. It's a bit
hard to justify rebuilding that system though because of the
RDRAM memory, unless you can find a good deal on some.

What do you think needs to be fixed about it? What is the system's
bottleneck? I don't want to spend too much money on it; it is an old
comp. It looks like upgrading the RAM is what it needs, but RDRAM is
expensive and I'd have to throw away the 64MB sticks...

Depends on how aggressively you want/need to use it. The
number-crunching (which is a vague description but "in
general") is mostly CPU and memory speed bound, would
benefit much if any from other (hard drive, video, etc)
upgrades. It may not benefit from a memory upgrade either
if the box isn't multitasking, just doing that one task...
which take it a few moments to swap things out to pagefile
now and again but once you had the apps running the data set
sizes would determine if more memory is useful.

CPU
Intel Pentium 3 866MHz (Coppermine)

Motherboard
Manufacturer : Intel Corporation
Model : D820LP

Chipset 1
Model : Intel Corporation 82820 820 (Camino) Chipset Host Bridge (MCH)
(UP Only)
Front Side Bus Speed : 1x 133MHz (133MHz data rate)
Total Memory : 128MB RDRAM
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 354MHz (708MHz data rate)

Logical/Chipset 1 Memory Banks
Bank 0 : 64MB RDRAM 8/7
Bank 1 : 64MB RDRAM 8/7
Speed : 2x 354MHz (708MHz data rate)
Multiplier : 8/3x

Overall I suggest you check for cheap memory and ways to
whittle-down your OS-of-choice so it uses least memory
possible. Beyond that any further upgrades would have
diminishing returns, you'd need replace board/memory/CPU
combination for the most benefit.

 

[ElJerid]

Hi ElJerid. I'm a bit hesitant to buy a new HDD. At the moment the comp
has all my old, tiny HDDs on it (1x 4GB and 2x 2GB drives). However
when I need the space, I just copy the files over to my primary PC,
which has loads of space.

My main problem as I see it is my RDRAM. It is very expensive compared
to SD/DDR RAM. Is there any way I can upgrade my RDRAM to SD/DDR RAM
without frying the motherboard?

I didn't bother mentioning my gfx processor, like you pointed out the
comp is mainly for work and not games. However, it is an NVIDIA RIVA
TNT2 Model 64 card.

By the way, is there a way for me to test my IDE controller on my
motherboard? I can never, ever burn defect-free CDs on my old comp and
I was hoping there would be some software I could d/l and test the IDE
controller.

Testing CD drives for defects AFAIK is harder...

You're right when you say your main problem is the RDRAM. Unfortunately, on
your motherboard, you can't replace it by SDRAM. There were some i820 based
boards (Asus) that were suitable for RDRAM as well as SDRAM, but there has
been a major problem with the MTH of the i820 southbridge and all those
boards have been (or should have been) returned to Intel.
Maybe you could find some RDRAM on eBay at a good price ?
The Nvidia TNT2 should be ok for office or lightl graphic work.
There is little chance there is a problem with your IDE controller. I guess
your CD writer is rather old (3 years or more), which means a lot of
potential problems, like out of alignment, dirty lens, aso. Try to find a
recent CD writer of a friend and test it in your PC. I'm sure it will work
correctly.