All Computer Talk NOW!

[Andrew Pratt]

aka ACT..hey trevors got his TTP us geeks can have A.C.T. Now! Our own geek speak thread!

[Andrew Pratt]

I figured i'd start a thread here just for PC talk. I recently OC's my Celeron 667 to 1 gig and am looking into better cooling. anywho I came across this test on silver paste vs regular silicon. http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/r...parison_1.html

[Andrew Pratt]

Bing's kick ass athlon

[Andrew Pratt]

My 1 gig Celeron

[Kevin P]

Am I allowed to post here with my meager P3/800, or do I have to overclock it, stuff it full of RAM, and put the latest $400 mega-souped up video card that makes windows pop up .003% faster first?




Official Computer Geek and Techno-Wiz Guru of HTGuide - Visit Tower of Power
My HT Site

[Bing Fung]

Hey way cool Andrew! Great Idea!

It will be funny to look at this thread 1 year from now

Andrew, I would have to say you have the crown for highest OC' percentage.

Your about 48% OC'ed.

I'm at about 14% OC'ed

You have it bang for buck buddie

The article looks like a good read..

Gotta lay down, I'll be back!




Bing

[Andrew Pratt]

Nah post away Kevin but you know we can get the 800 a bit faster then that

Acording to http://www.overclockers.com/ you should be able to get at least 980 Mhz!

[Bing Fung]

Kev, so long as you are looking for that .008 nano second performance gain, you are a technogeek

Of course you can post here, unless that was retorical sarcasim




Bing

[Andrew Pratt]

Bing yeah the celeron's produce some great chips every now and then. The 300A got quite the repuation and the 667 is quickly becoming a hot comodity given its willingness to hit the magical 1 gig mark. The Celeron 600 does very well too but doens't hit 1G as easily. Still I'd rather have gone AMD but logistically Wintel was easier for me

[Kevin P]

Kev, so long as you are looking for that .008 nano second performance gain, you are a technogeek

Heck, I can get a 200% performance gain without even touching the hardware, just by dumping Windoze and installing Linux!

Or by simply replacing IE with a simpler browser like Opera. I might actually try that sometime.

KJP




Official Computer Geek and Techno-Wiz Guru of HTGuide - Visit Tower of Power
My HT Site

[P-Dub]

Yeah, those 300A's are legendary. In fact I've got one of those and had it clocked to 450. So that's a nice 50% increase. My fan's on the fritz so I've toned it back down to 300. There's really nothing that I run that needs that kind of power.




Paul

There are three kinds of people in this world; those that can count, and those that can't.

[Bing Fung]

Never heard of Opera...

Anybody try Mozilla?




Bing

[Andrew Pratt]

Bing here's my Sandra results

[Andrew Pratt]

looks like I'm running on par with a real PIII 1 GHz which is surprising I didn't think it would match it but they are similar chips if you ignor the cache.

[Bing Fung]

That's impressive Andrew... Good Job!

One point to remember is Sandra is a synthetic bench and thus is only another tool used to gauge system performance. I think Sysmark 2001 is a more favored test, but hey, it's all for fun, right

Still best bank for buck outside of a Duron, I believe.




Bing

[Jehan]

You guys are making my P3 1Ghz cry ;(

[Bing Fung]

Jehan, look at the value of the P3 1Ghz, it's still up there and in real world bench marks would post better results

Besides, OC'ing that sucker would be fun, all you need do is crank the FSB to say 122 Mhz Trust me, You would notice a difference




Bing

[Andrew Pratt]

Yeah benchmarks are fun to play with and given that I'm not a gamer all the extra power isn't been used very effectivly...still thats not why we do it is it

[Kevin P]

I'm thinking now that my new-job present to myself (that is, *IF* I get the job, still no call!), instead of the MD deck I was looking at, will be a laptop!

What you guys think of Toshiba (or as they say here in New England, "Toshiber") laptops? They seem like decent machines and not too expensive. Best Buy has a 700 MHz one w/DVD for around $1500, I'll have to check it out again to get the vital stats.

Ideally, I'd like something along the lines of:[*]700 Mhz minimum PIII or Athlon (avoiding Celery if possible) [*]800x600 minimum resolution active matrix (size matters not)[*]128 MB or better RAM[*]10 GB or better HD, preferably swappable/upgradable[*]DVD-ROM & floppy drives built-in[*]Li-Ion battery with decent life[*]10/100 Ethernet port[*]Not too bulky or heavy, but not too itty bitty either[*]Not a Compaq!! [*]No more than $2K if possible

Any thoughts?

KJP




Official Computer Geek and Techno-Wiz Guru of HTGuide - Visit Tower of Power
My HT Site

[Bing Fung]

Looks decent Kevin.

We use to have Toshibas in the department a while back and I don't think IS ever complained about them. I didn't use them much myself.

I Do like our new IBM's

Have you looked at the Dell's? Paul Wu has one and seems happy about it




Bing

[Andrew Pratt]

We use IBM's at work and the guys seem to like them a lot. The ones I've used were ok but I wasn't a big fan of their stubby mouse but it works when you need it.

[Andrew Pratt]

I got to tweaking a bit last night and realized that even though my memory is running at 133 its a bottle neck since in the BIOS I can't set it faster then "normal" 8 ns and "faster" both hang the system so maybe I should opt for some quality 133 ram (currently PC100). NICX or what ever that site is that Bing posted has some decent PC133 ram for cheap $129 per 256 megs that looks appealing...

[P-Dub]

For something to do with all that power, you can try one of the distributed computing projects. The one's that I'm familiar with are Distributed.net and Seti@home. You basically load a small program that receives workunits from the main server, your little pc crunches them and sends back the complete workunit. You can see how fast your system is by how fast you complete each unit. I've been running the Distributed.net client for over 2 years now. It's pretty cool and it really runs your processor at 100%. The neat thing is it uses idle cpu time. So if you're working or gaming, the client knows to throttle back. Of course this affects your keyrate.

Got my system up and running with 256 Meg of ram now, with a new heatsinkfan. So far I'm stable, OC to 450. Ah, I see now that my dnet client is starting to hum, 100% cpu utilization! My keyrate has moved up to 1 Mkeys/sec, at 300 I did about 800 Kkeys/sec. At a full 450 I should be hitting 1.2 Mkeys/sec.

I'll leave my pc running overnight, heck I leave it running all the time.

Kev, it'll turn up. You'll get that call, and you'll have a stupid grin on your face for the next few weeks, ask Joey. :B

Laptops: I looked at Toshiba's at the time, and for the price, they were a bit more than what I got on my Dell. Plus we hadn't really decided if we like the eraser pointer or pad, and the Dell came with both. The pad is winning out. The Dell Inspiron 800 would the model to look for, stay with the 14" monitor and you should be able to be under $2k easy. The Dell is a bit on the hefty side, more of a desktop replacement, than a real traveller.

My laptop specs were:

Celeron 600
1400x1200 14" active matrix display
125MB Ram, on one SOdimm
5 GB HD,
DVD-Rom & floppy built-in
Li-Ion actual running time is 2hrs with a dvd playing.
10/100 built in with a 56K modem on a mini PCI
ATI Rage128 video card with 32M video ram
Will output Svideo, composite and coax digital out via a special dongle
2 USB, 1 1394, 2 PC carslots
Weight: 7.8lbs but more like 8+ and after a long day, more like 10
Oh and the fan is a bit noisy, but it only comes on everyso often. The other thing I've noticed is that it gets quite warm under the laptop.

Andrew: I was just looking at those prices today, thinking man that is so cheap! Then I stopped by Costco and pickedup 256 PC133 for 129! The ram at NCI is Micron, so those should be 'better' but I don't think it would make a diff on my system. Plus I didn't have to drive all the way out to Burnaby to pickup more ram.

At the moment I'm just using my one stick of 256. I've still got my original 64M stick around, it's PC100. Should I load it into my second slot?




Paul

There are three kinds of people in this world; those that can count, and those that can't.

[Andrew Pratt]

Paul I'm already running Seti (800 units!) as part of the HTF team.

As for that extra RAM if you install it it will slow down the speed of the new RAM to PC100 standards and there's a lot of debate about how well windows can utilize more the 256 megs anyway so I'd say leave it out and sell it on ebay etc.

[JonMarsh]

Paul,

The system bus speed will determine what the RAM runs at; and these days, there's almost no cost differential between PC100 and PC133; I buy PC133 regardless just because it will have better margines, and be more stable.

By all means, use the extra RAM; processor speed above 600-750 MHz doesn't count nearly as much as adequate RAM; I'd rate 128MB as minimum for good performance, but 256 is better; that's what I use in any system doing gaming, DTP, CAD, or presentations. I have a box at work with a "lowly" PIII 733E that's underclocked to 550 MHz in a CUBX board (100MHz FSB), with 384 MB of RAM, and everyone wonders why PowerPoint and Quark Xpress run so well on it. A Geforce MX doesn't hurt, compared with the CRAP video boards that come in the Dells the company buys, but the key is the RAM. The more you can stay away from having to use and manage virtual memory, the better your system runs. It's not just what the program uses, but how much buffers and cache space is available to Windows.

BTW, a real RAM pig is the new Microprose/Hasbro "B17" game- ton's of high res texture and data- even an upgrade from 256 to 384 MB made a difference! The last Ultima game from Origin was the same way- would NOT run in 64 MB past the opening few minutes, staggered and lurched with 128 MB, started smoothing out with 256 MB, and really purrs with 384MB. There was a reason Origin used a 512MB RAM machine to demo it at the E3 show where it debuted.

Regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Kevin P]

I looked at laptops at Best Buy today, and also looked on Dell's web site, and came up with the following (I stuck with 700 MHz PIIIs for now):

Toshiba: Pros: Seem like decent machines, not too expensive, well equipped. Cons: I hate pencil eraser mice.

Sony VAIO (PCG-FX120,140): Pros: thin and light, wonderful screen. Cons: Pricier, didn't strike me as being very durable--both display machines had DVD-ROM drawers that wouldn't stay closed.

Dell Inspiron 4000: Pros: Customizable, durable, and much cheaper than equivalent Sonys. Cons: Can't play with one in the store to see how I like it before deciding.

At this point, I'm leaning toward the Inspiron 4000. With the specials going on now, I can get the following for $1623 + shipping: 14.1" TFT screen, P3/700, 128 MB RAM, 10 GB hard drive, DVD-ROM, internal 56K modem + 10/100 NIC, 53 WHr LiIon battery, Windows ME, Works Suite 2001 (who cares?), and Norton AntiVirus 2001.

Thoughts?

KJP




Official Computer Geek and Techno-Wiz Guru of HTGuide - Visit Tower of Power
My HT Site

[P-Dub]

John: I seem to recall an article about how Win98 manages memory and once you go over a certain amount it will actually perform slower. So that's why I didn't automatically leave the old stick in. I'd like to also get a GeForce MX2 card down the road. Interestingly enought, my home cpu is running the old TNT card and I've got a Matrox G450 at work. Also work is a PIII450 with 256 Megs as well. So far, I still think my home machine is a bit faster.

Kevin: I looked at the Toshiba's early on last year, but decided against because of the eraser pointer, plus it was pricier. The Sony's look cool, but I don't know about durability. Trev's got one and he's not too fond of it. I think I just priced out the same Dell you did, but I didnot know how they compared to the others. Here's a review from Sharky Extreme: http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardwar...op/dell_i4000/ I'd say go for the Dell. I've been pretty happy with ours. Oh, one annoying bit on our Dell, the when typing, the cursor sometimes jumps so you lose your spot. Don't know if it has something to do with the touchpad settings, or if it's a hardware issue. I've already set the sensitivity to the lowest, but not sure if it has made much of a diff. Again, I don't use the laptop much. I don't think it would be a deal breaker though.




Paul

There are three kinds of people in this world; those that can count, and those that can't.

[Bing Fung]

The eraser mouse is not that bad once you have used it a bit. I find it's second nature now and actually like it due to the minimal hand movements.

If I had to buy my own LT, I would tend towards a Dell because I couldn't afford my company IBM as much as I like it

I thing the biggest thing I like about the IBM's is the thin profile that is relatively flat on the desk and the 15.5" screen.




Bing

[Andrew Pratt]

Bing THANK YOU for giving me that link to NetLink I ordered the parts yesterday morning and they shipped by days end and were waiting for me when I walked into work this morning! Now thats service They also called to confirm it was me they were sending it to since the shipped address didn't match the billing address which I was grateful for...at least they are checking. Anyway after I installed another fan last night I managed to get the PC stable enough that it didn't crash once last night after I left it crunching SETI for 8 hours at 100 percent CPU load. So I think I'm stable now but the new fan and mircon RAM should let me tweak it a bit more and get that last little bit out of that chip...I'm pretty sure I can get at least 1050 out of it maybe more