"James Bald" said:
Paul wrote in message ...
One reason I'm a great admirer of yours is the generous and valuable
tech infos you provide.. I do more than my part of research because
I know how wicked the salesman around here can be.... One tries to
sell me a P4P800 SE telling me it was virtually the same as de -E
deluxe, but Firewire added.. I soon noticed the SE was limited to
ATA100 (means different controler), also noticed it had digital
6channel instead of my now 8 channel ready.. I made tons of research
for Linux compatibility too, and Windows98 for that matter since I'm
still a Linux+ Win98 dual boot guy.
Yeah, before you enter the store, know exactly what you want to buy
and stick with your choice. The store only wants to sell their
existing stock. Like my local store didn't have the PS I wanted,
and via the Internet, in 24hr, I had the one I wanted. That was
from NCIX. (Don't shop there at Christmas, if you are on a
deadline
I went back to all 2003 great posts in this forum to read infos,
and realized how delicate it was to pick a good DDR... Stuff like
CH5 chips Winbond are not available anymore, so the later slower
CAS3 RAM eventually made sense to me as a good pick.
The good stuff was BH-5, where the 5 means 5ns, inverted this is
200MHz or DDR400. Mushkin is currently selling some modules with
BH-6 chips, which is 166MHz or DDR333, and they select the ones
that run at DDR400, because they are really the same chips, just
speed dropouts from the BH-5. Takes a good bit of voltage applied
to the DIMM to get it to work properly, but it does 2-2-2-5 when
it works. The Winbond CH5 wasn't nearly as good a product - they
"broke the mold" so to speak, and are no longer in the DRAM business
I hear.
I'm an older engineer, remembering the great stability of a
Pentium on a BX440 chipset, but it's past history.. Yet even back
then, I could Burn a CDR, download stuff and record music 44Khz
stereo, while playing a DvD on a DXR4 **all at once**; While
without problem. Young computer salesman think only XP a P4 can
do this right. Later VIA chipset would give me pain, as it would
glitch the recording AUDIO as soon as I used a simple USB modem...
I found workarounds but upgrading is never an easy thing if you
want to do it right.... The quality of people here reflect the
quality of the technology ASUS is providing, as long as we stick
to the 'better models of course.'
Well, people aren't completely fair when it comes to reputations,
as some of the less respected boards, do actually work. But you
would need the courage of your convictions to buy one. Once a
chipset company ruins its reputation, by shipping crap, it is
impossible to get that reputation back, at least in a short time.
I've been shopping like mad to upgrade my trusty old Celeron900Mhz
ASUS CUVL somth'n.. This machine can still do everything... But
is a pain for DvD editing and I'm going there.
For the PSU, I plan on having lots of devices, and read about people
who would not post using 420Watts ANTEC, while a 480Watts
Thermaltake would do the job.. I did a full research but your
single post earlier made it all clear to me. Thanks again.
I do read french.. Here is the link to this issue.
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/18608/?o=20
Those people are in need of a guru. Some of the symptoms they are
seeing, point to other things. You have to remember how the
"System failed CPU test" message is generated - it is a simple
hardware timer, that if the BIOS code doesn't execute a certain
section of code in a specified time, the message will be delivered
by the Voice POST. Because it is a timer, and is not based on the
processor actually running, there are a number of things that can
cause the message to be generated. In a sense, the message is a
waste of time, in terms of diagnostic value.
As for the power supply thing, there are two cases to consider.
For some of those people, they could have a highly rated supply,
that has just become "tired". If the caps are failing inside
the PSU, the PSU might no longer be capable of meeting its
specs. That is one reason for a failure. In other cases, there
are outright frauds, or PSUs that, while having high total
outputs, lack balance between outputs. One company used to
make a 500+ watt supply, with a 12V@10A output, which is useless
for a P4 system.
Since I just bought a 480W supply for a new system, and I did a
few measurements (I'm not finished yet), I didn't find the power
requirements to be as high as I expected. While sitting in the
BIOS, for example, the power drawn by the processor is higher
than sitting idle in Windows, but is a bit less than running 100%
load as well. Under those conditions, it is quite likely that a
well designed 350W could get the system to POST, so there has to
be more to the problems stated in that thread than meets the eye.
I was going to go with the Powercolor Radeon 9600Pro following
many reviews and awards, but then the 9800Pro made more sense to
me for the little extra. Current support for Win98 is a joy for
me at this time as I'm still using nifty old tools. All in all,
this card is hot... OpenGL 2.0 support... DirectX9 also works
fine under Win98. Even Catalyst 4.1.
http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/atiradeon9800pro.shtml
http://www.opendrivers.com/company/120/ATI-Technology.html
My only comment about the card, is that the idle power consumption
is higher than I expected. I thought when the card isn't doing
3D acceleration, the power wasted should be quite small, but that
turned out not to be the case. The good news, is the 9800Pro draws
[email protected] and
[email protected] or so, when doing 3DMark, and that is less than
estimates I've been giving to people in the past, as advice.
If you buy one of these cards, feel the two inductors in the center
of the card, near the top edge of the card. Run 3DMark or a game, and
feel them. They get hot. I've placed a fan blowing on the card for
now, until I can think of something else to do for those inductors.
I expected to follow some of the experts in the Overclocking area
for the RAM, but stuff like this is no longer available.
http://jackpote2.free.fr/Informatique/Hardware.fr/OC P4C/rekap_mem.htm
300KB table.
This is obsolete as I understand now for their RAM is now only matched
by Crucial Black 2-2-2-5 expensive model.
Have you seen this item ?
http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.html?i=22254
Corsair has a 2-2-2-5 PC3200 memory (TwinX1024-3200XL), that can also
do 2.5-3-3-7 at PC4000. I'd wait for some people to test it first, as
"cherry picked" ram used for reviews is not necessarily the best
indicator of value.
As for technique, if you need a system with four DIMMs in it,
then using the 5:4 divider, and expecting a limit of around DDR440
before the ram bus runs out of steam, is reasonable. If you can live
with two sticks of memory, using 1:1 divider and running at DDR500
(PC4000) is the way to go, because it takes a lot of small tweaks to
catch up with the 25% clock rate improvement. It is a tough choice
to have to make, and which way you go depends on the application for
the machine. For Photoshop, I would want the four sticks.
My P4 2.8C is a D1 core stepping.. SL6WT... So I read if it was
stable enough for a little overclocking..
http://processorfinder.intel.com/scripts/details.asp?sSpec=SL6WT
http://forum.hardware.fr/hardwarefr/Hardware/sujet-617054-1.htm (French)
I found some with no problems with this stepping, so I cross my
fingers hoping for a rock solid 3Ghz.
I skipped de P4 with 1MB cache even though it's only a few bucks
more It's not that much better in tests, and it's extremely hot...
With almost double transistors. If you cam't read french, you still
can check the bencharks.. But everything in this article is excellent
and even english speaking only people can figure what it's all about.
http://www.materiel.be/cpu/2004cpu/page1.php
For raw overclocking data, try here:
http://www.cpudatabase.com/CPUdb/
I've only tried once with my new system, and had to clear CMOS to
recover, so for now I'll be leaving the overclocking alone
Don't be deceived by the BIOS claiming a "corrupted checksum",
as too high an overclock simply causes corruption while reading
the flash chip. Clearing the CMOS (with the power plug pulled
from the computer) will fix it - ignore the screen when it asks
to reflash the BIOS, as reflashing is NOT needed.
So I do not only upgrade my puter.. I upgrade my understanding of
recent tech with the help of fine people like in this forum and
more.. You are just a genius accoding to my standards Paul. I must
tell you that at least once in my lifetime... Bless you !
I'm just a guy with time on his hands. (Unemployed)
//////////////////////////////////
There is STILL one thing worrying me about my ASUS Mobo..
ASUS P4P800-E deluxe rev 1.2 .. Now I thought I was stuck with
older hardware since I'm not living in the states.. I'm used to
see shops offering 1 y/o tech compared to the US.
On the other hand, the great reviews of this board also dates
back to my revision number.. And I confirmed at least a few
happy customers with a rev 1.2. Using PAP and all..
Yet.. I wonder what's the difference with a rev 2.0.
Can you enlighten me.. Still paranoid a bit.
You can use the search engine on this forum. Here is a sample
thread.
http://abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60801&highlight=p4p800+rev2.0
One thing to be aware of, on the P4P800 in general, is there can
be video artifacts, if doing 1:1 overclock with PC4000 type memory.
The same doesn't happen with P4C800, or with very early P4P800 boards
either (as it is believed the early P4P800 boards had chips that
were good enough to have been 875's). Some overclockers shop by date
code on Ebay, to try to find those early boards. So the latest
revision is not alway the most treasured revision - it all depends
on what you plan on doing with the board. No problem with P4P800 with
stock settings, or overclocking at 5:4 ratio.
I finally got two sticks of these... One ANTEC Purepower 480 and
one of these Chinese copy of ANTEC design casing at half the ANTEC
price. (Best choice 6A series) PO: 4A015... I strongly recommend it.
Looks like it pays to shop around and take the time to learn about
the hardware before. Soon I'll be posting a short review... Cross my
fingers it'll work fine.
Thanks anyway Paul and all great forumers here.
Ben
"akh tI akh gAyi ka:h."
- One plus one make eleven. In unity there is strength.
- Two heads we better than one.
http://www.iils.org/pdf/DictionaryProverbs.pdf
Have fun,
Paul
