Author Topic: Your next upgrade? (Read 107250 times)

opiesilver · « **Reply #100 on:** December 30, 2002, 10:19:28 AM »

And that is the only sane way to do it. You are bound to run into problem from the gaming. It's just the nature of the beast. The only way I'd combine the two is to either have a dual boot machine or have a removeable hard drive.

Boomslang · « **Reply #101 on:** December 30, 2002, 07:56:15 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by ZWarrior
First, it was spam. I hate spam regardless of the content.

Second, it's a Compaq so there is bound to be issues at upgrade time. Unless you do like Opie and use it only for work stuff and have another machine for gaming.

I thought spam was something you didn't what to receicve in the mail?. Just because you don't like compaq, I don't ether. But, it is a good deal.

ZWarrior · « **Reply #102 on:** December 30, 2002, 08:11:25 PM »

Not argueing that. Just saying that it was a message from TigerDirect that was blasted out. Unless you chose to be on their list, then it's not spam, just marketing drivel.

With regard to the Compaq thing. Like I said, I wouldn't want it for a gaming rig (remember trying to get Rob Carpenter's PC on the network?) but I would use it for work alone.

opiesilver · « **Reply #103 on:** December 31, 2002, 03:40:27 AM »

If you really want to hear about spam then click below.

SPAM

ZWarrior · « **Reply #104 on:** December 31, 2002, 03:00:19 PM »

There are 2 kinds of Spam that I like, and that was one of them. :rolling

Morpheus · « **Reply #105 on:** January 04, 2003, 11:55:04 AM »

This would be cool at a lan party.

Boomslang · « **Reply #106 on:** January 20, 2003, 06:57:09 PM »

next upgrade will be a WD 80 gig 8meg cache hardrive my IBM65 crashed and burned today. http://www.pc-beyond.com/ has overnight for $12
Was hopen to get a 9700 but have to wait a little longer now.

ZWarrior · « **Reply #107 on:** January 21, 2003, 11:28:56 AM »

Yeah, ya gotta have priorities, and having the system running again is pretty important.

Sorry to hear about your HD choking.

Boomslang · « **Reply #108 on:** January 21, 2003, 11:52:49 AM »

Just got it 28 hours after I ordered it fast service. UNLIKE BZBOYS

Morpheus · « **Reply #109 on:** January 22, 2003, 09:05:55 AM »

My next upgrade will be a new mb cpu and memory. I'm looking at the nForce2 chipset (SPP north bridge and MCP-T south bridge). I want it to have serial ata. So there are 3 possible mb's:

ABIT NF7-S $133
ASUS A7N8X deluxe $148
Chaintech 7NGS $178

I will probably go with the ABIT for price.

Memory I'm looking at 2 256mb PC-3200 (400 mhz) CAS2 sticks at about $100 a piece.

I'll upgrade my cpu too, but not much it'll depend on prices in a month or so once I get the money for the upgrade.

Wolverine of Ambush! · « **Reply #110 on:** January 22, 2003, 11:39:08 AM »

just a thought...

I have read that it is better to have 1 stick of 512mb then 2 sticks of 256mb.. Using 2 sticks slows down your ram.

Morpheus · « **Reply #111 on:** January 22, 2003, 12:51:20 PM »

I believe the nForce2 chipset with dualDDR memory architecture has to have 2 dimms to be full utilized.

nVidia Tech Brief

Also see Tom's review of 3 nForce2 boards

Specifically the ASUS board has 2 colors for the dimm sockets:

If you want to run double-channel mode, please insert at least two DIMMs into different banks - thanks to the different colors, this is pretty simple.

I have seen it stated that you definitely want cas2 memory, and that there won't be much difference between PC-3200 and PC-2700, but the difference in price between the 2 was about $7/stick last I checked.

You can see that the test setup used by Tom's in the above article also uses 2 dimms.

The memory system is I believe the primary reason that the nForce2 is the fastest AMD chipset available, so I certainly want to take advantage of it.

Thanks for spuring me into further research!

Morpheus · « **Reply #112 on:** January 22, 2003, 02:06:59 PM »

Also at xbit labs

In order to activate the dual-channel 128bit memory access in an nForce2 based system, you have to use two memory modules (it would be better if they were identical). When there is only one module, the system will work in the usual single-channel 64bit mode, which has been borrowed from the nForce2 predecessor.

n1c · « **Reply #113 on:** January 23, 2003, 12:26:34 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Wolverine of Ambush!
just a thought...

I have read that it is better to have 1 stick of 512mb then 2 sticks of 256mb.. Using 2 sticks slows down your ram.

I have read the Very Opposite… Actually I have seen data and charts on the matter and they prove that having two or more is faster and allows more bandwidth in the memory
As soon as I find the article I will post it ( I think it was on Toms or sharkys)…

ZWarrior · « **Reply #114 on:** January 23, 2003, 02:19:29 PM »

I believe that the speed of the RAM based on the number of sticks depends on the technology used.

I can see how having 2 sticks would reduce bottlenecks, as you now have 2 interfaces instead of 1, but I can also see where 1 stick would reduce addressing overhead.

Spade · « **Reply #115 on:** January 23, 2003, 04:21:06 PM »

I would have to agree that you need to know all the factors to decide. Sometimes we don't have all the specs we need like timings and such to know the pros and cons. It is nice when someone like Tom does the testing for us and can identify the best combo or application since he has all the resources to do such tests.

Boomslang · « **Reply #116 on:** January 23, 2003, 11:15:43 PM »

RAM Banks and performance
The advantage to having multiple banks on one DIMM is that each bank can have a row (or "page") active and waiting to spit out data. You'll remember from the previous edition that only one row at a time in an individual bank can be active, and that whenever you need data from a row other than the active one, 1) you've got to precharge the new row, 2) close out the active row, and then 3) open the new row for reading. All of this stuff that's involved in switching rows eats up valuable time, so it's best to keep a particular row active as long as possible. Plus, when a row is active, you can strobe column addresses to it without having to repeat the row address, which allows you to burst data from those columns onto the bus, one column after another. So the more rows of memory that a system can have open at once, the quicker the memory can get data to the CPU whenever it asks for it. And since only one row per bank can be active at a time, having more open rows means having more banks.

Another way to think about the need for multiple banks is to think of it all in terms of keeping the data bus full. If a 64-bit wide data bus is being run at 100MHz, then it has a lot of clock pulses flying by on it every second. Since two words of data can ride on a single clock pulse (one word on the rising edge and one word on the falling edge), the bus has a lot of potential clock pulses open every second that are available to carry pairs of 64-bit data chunks. So think of each clock pulse as having two empty slots that need to be filled, and think of the 100MHz bus as a conveyor that carries those pairs of slots by at a good clip. Now, if there were only one bank of memory, then there could be only one row open on each DIMM. If you had a system with only 1 DIMM then that one row would have to put out enough data every second to fill up all of those slots. Since memory accesses often move around from row to row, that's not likely to happen. That one bank would have to keep switching rows, and since switching rows takes time, a lot of those clock pulses would have to fly by empty-handed while the bank is doing its switching.

More banks gives you more rows open, so that each of those rows can do its part to fill up those clock pulses as they fly by. And if one bank needs to switch rows, another bank can (hopefully) pitch in with some data from its own active row and fill up those clock pulses itself so that none of the pulses get wasted while that other bank is taking care of its business. So you can see that having the ability to keep multiple banks, and thus multiple rows, open is essential to keeping a high-bandwidth data bus full. Note that regular PC133 SDRAM sports multiple banks per chip, but the higher bandwidth and double data rate of DDR DRAM makes the need for multiple banks even more critical.

On an added note, this discussion illustrates why two, 512MB DIMMs of SDRAM will outperform a single, 1GB DIMM. Since each DIMM can have up to four banks, regardless of its size, spreading your memory out among multiple DIMMs offers better performance because of the increased number of banks.

http://www.arstechnica.com/paedia/r/ram_guide/ram_guide.part3-1.html

Boomslang · « **Reply #117 on:** January 30, 2003, 07:24:33 AM »

More on R350 6:02 PM - Joe "Steejee" West - Hardware: ATI - (124)
[Spicy Story] Sounds like ATI has an Ace up their sleave: a top dog at ATI has told us that the R350 will debut in march, and as told before will be 10% faster than the FX, but the kicker will be that it's also $150 cheaper. The massive price difference is due to the fact the R350 will be a 10 layer PCB, while Nvidia's fastest will require 12 layers. Graphics wars are gonna be interesting in the coming months to say the least...

http://www.voodooextreme.com/Comments.aspx?ID=2309&contenttype=1

[Edited on 1-30-2003 by Boomslang]

ZWarrior · « **Reply #118 on:** January 30, 2003, 01:29:09 PM »

Didn't I just post a response to this here?

Morpheus · « **Reply #119 on:** January 31, 2003, 10:08:02 AM »

Interesting article on the corsair memory

Boomslang · « **Reply #120 on:** February 04, 2003, 07:22:24 AM »

Sapphire is offering a whole lot of card for the price, and the Radeon 9500 Atlantis Pro offers an impressive mix of price, performance and bundled extras. At a street price of under-$190, this compares to a name brand, retail GeForce4 Ti 4200-8X ($150-$160), GeForce4 Ti 4400 ($200-$210) and the GeForce4 Ti 4600 ($240+). Using this scenario, the Radeon 9500 Atlantis Pro is an excellent value, as the card equals the performance of a GeForce4 Ti 4600, yet can outperform it when anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering are brought into play, and is fully DirectX 9 compatible.

opiesilver · « **Reply #121 on:** February 04, 2003, 01:48:06 PM »

ohhhhh....the dreaded double post.

ZWarrior · « **Reply #122 on:** February 04, 2003, 05:26:08 PM »

Yeah, he did it TWICE too!

What should we do about this? Flog him with a wet noodle?

Boomslang · « **Reply #123 on:** February 04, 2003, 09:33:59 PM »

ATI’s R350 is In Mass Production Now!
Posted 2/04/03 at 10:08 am by Anton

We have already told you that ATI’s updated version of the R300 graphics processor will compete against the GeForce FX-based cards this Spring and it is estimated that ATI’s new code-named R350 VPU will be more powerful compared to NVIDIA’s GeForce FX 5800 Ultra. What we have not told you is that ATI’s R350 is now in production at TSMC, as revealed over here and was confirmed by a source among add-in-boards manufacturers.

Currently there are not a lot of facts known about the actual graphics cards to be based on the novelty. It is logical to assume that the products will be equipped with 128 or 256MB of memory, though, there is no precise information about type of memory utilised on the graphics cards: will it be DDR-II in DDR-II mode or DDR-II in DDR mode or simply optimized DDR SDRAM chips. What I know for sure is that the memory used on such graphics cards will not be clocked higher than with the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra because such chips are very expensive. The R350 powered products will be branded as RADEON 9900 and will be uncovered at CeBIT.

Expect more information to come soon. As for the rumoured specifications, turn to the following news-stories:

xbitlabs

Morpheus · « **Reply #124 on:** February 05, 2003, 10:18:32 AM »

Interesting thoughts by John Carmack on the ATI R300 vs the nVidia nv30. (John Carmack is the Technical Director at Id Software and Lead Programmer of Doom III)

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Author Topic: Your next upgrade? (Read 107250 times)