PC Upgrading Questions

[Sava]

My one hard-drive: 30 Gig Western Digital 7200, is where I have Windows XP and most of my games. I have a 20 gig that I use for pr0n, mp3, and movie storage and a 10 Gig I use for backups. The other two (the 20 gig and 10 gig) are 5400, although the 20 gig might be 7200, I'm not sure. I am sure of the 30 gig as I bought that when I put this PC together. Is there a way to check to see if my RAM is pc2100? I'm pretty sure it is, but would like to be absolutely sure.

I am familiar with my BIOS (I'm not a total nub ) and will try setting the FSB to 133 as I have it at 100 now.

UR: yeah, that's what I was thinking. I'll try to adjust the clock speed, then see how my comp performs.

[Provost Harrison]

100 to 133 is one hell of a jump in overclocking terms...quite often you can nudge a few percent out but nothing like that - not without liquid nitrogen

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Well.. UR. All except for those HD's... they are screaming "Upgrade me", seemingly, and even games (map load times, etc) will be significantly improved in the process.

The HDD's can well be 7200rpm with 2MB cache ones. They were quite wide spread for awhile. At any rate, it's the transfer rate that counts, not how fast the buggers span.

Even though, for standardised 3 1/2 HDD's, rotation speed is positively correlated to data transfer speed.

[Sava]

PH: my only BIOS settings are 100 and 133

[Provost Harrison]

Well if the motherboard is designed to run at 133 then that will be fine, but you may have to reduce the multiplier of the processor otherwise it will just not work...

[Sava]

k, I'm gonna try changing some settings now... I'm praying to god my processor doesn't die on me. I got a monster processor fan, so I think I should be fine.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


The HDD's can well be 7200rpm with 2MB cache ones. They were quite wide spread for awhile. At any rate, it's the transfer rate that counts, not how fast the buggers span.

Even though, for standardised 3 1/2 HDD's, rotation speed is positively correlated to data transfer speed.

A 5400RPM drive has an inherent disadvantage over a 7200RPM drive. Number of heads makes up for it somewhat, but I don't believe I've seen any recent 5400RPM disk outperform any 7200RPM disk.

And that new 10k WD SATA drive is king of the workstation drives... the 8mb cache on a 10k unit is a very big deal indeed.

Sava> if you already have a recent HD, then... I wouldn't touch anything until you find you need to. If you're intent on getting more Frames per sec... a gfx card upgrade would work, but nothing out now is radically quicker than what you have at regular game resolutions.

[Sava]

okay, I was wrong... my BIOS does have incremental settings for my FSB... not just 100 or 133. I tried 133, it didn't like it. So I did 110, which seems to be running fine. But my clock speed (at system startup) still said 1100 MhZ... is there a way to test it in windows? maybe that thing was wrong. Strangely, when I set it at 133, it named my processor Athlon XP 1700+ at startup... it usually says 1100MhZ processor.

thanks for the input guys, I think I'm going to hold off buying anything new for the time being. I am going to tweak my stuff some more though. There were some other settings I wasn't familiar with in my "Advanced Hardware Monitor" settings in the BIOS. Let me find out what I don't know, and could someone please explain them to my dumb ass.

One other weird thing happened, however. I remember I made a thread a while ago about my brightness being all ****ed up. Well, when I adjusted the FSB to 110, my brightness seemed to be back to normal (it was super bright when I came into windows because I had turned up the settings to compensate for the darkness I had when my FSB was 100). Does that sound strange? Why would my vid card be so affected by a small increase in FSB settings?

Thanks again you guys... you are all being very helpful to me. I am learning much from your superior intellects.

[Sava]

okay, Control Panel > System says my processor is still 1.10 GhZ... how come this didn't change when I set the FSB to 110?

another thing, my processor temperature was 55 degrees Celsius when I set the FSB to 133. That seemed high, is it? At 100, it's usually 50 degrees Celsius. I assume the temperature was too high, causing my system to not like the FSB set at 133.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Sava
okay, Control Panel > System says my processor is still 1.10 GhZ... how come this didn't change when I set the FSB to 110?

another thing, my processor temperature was 55 degrees Celsius when I set the FSB to 133. That seemed high, is it? At 100, it's usually 50 degrees Celsius. I assume the temperature was too high, causing my system to not like the FSB set at 133.

Up to 60-65 is fine.

75 or 80 is high.

It starts to be a serious problem at 90.

[optimus2861]

Originally posted by Sava
Another question... if I do format a HD and reinstall the OS, will Windows XP give me **** about the activation? It's a legal copy, but I heard you can't activate it more than like 3 times... and this is would be the third.

It'll prompt you to reactivate again, yes, but there's no limit on how many times you can activate it. At worst, you'll have to phone up Microsoft and rattle off a string of characters, then have a string of characters read back to you. All MS really gives a fig about is that you don't run it on more than one PC at a time (though they've got no way to know that if you don't tell them).

Activation .

[Cruddy]

Well Sava. I kind of doubt it's the graphics card...

Because I'm using a TI 64MB and it runs just fine...

My processor is an XP2600 with 333 DDR Ram... Gives about 2GHz of raw speed.

Mind you, I haven't tried half life 2 yet.

I just don't think it's your GFX card.

[Sava]

Originally posted by MrBaggins


Up to 60-65 is fine.

75 or 80 is high.

It starts to be a serious problem at 90.

grrrr then why the **** did it not like the FSB at 133?

[Sava]

Originally posted by optimus2861

It'll prompt you to reactivate again, yes, but there's no limit on how many times you can activate it. At worst, you'll have to phone up Microsoft and rattle off a string of characters, then have a string of characters read back to you. All MS really gives a fig about is that you don't run it on more than one PC at a time (though they've got no way to know that if you don't tell them).

Activation .

this same copy is being run on two computers in my house... I'm sure as hell not going to buy two copies of winXP

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Sava
this same copy is being run on two computers in my house... I'm sure as hell not going to buy two copies of winXP

I haven't even considered upgrading at the price. 98SE does me just fine.