XP ... is it worth it?

Koopa

haha, guess what card i replaced my geforce with?

yup, another geforce (ddr this time, but its the same card, creative labs, etc, exact same board layout.. and the exact same ****ty fan)

i dunno, ati drivers seem ****e for older games (which is what i play mostly), visual artifacts etc. , and i heard bad things about kyro 2 performance regarding some old games (quakeworld), although these are both only driver issues, im not naive enough to think that they will 'soon be resolved' anytime during my lifetime, so, once again, nvidia seems to be the only option for me, since i didnt want to risk getting a kyro 2 and finding out it was really ****e in old games (qw)

Shinji

Heat or no heat, Geforce cards are the only ones worth buying right now - although the new drivers for the Radeon 8500 are pretty decent, they're still not as good as they should be.

Just get a decent NVIDIA card (in other words, not a Creative one - Creative graphics cards these days are REALLY skimpy on cooling gear) and you're sorted really. They're hot, but not dangerously hot as long as they're well built.

Sceptre - graphics cards only really heat up when you're doing stuff with them, leaving a machine on over the weekend is unlikely to cause any problems...

_CreeD_

If you want a Geforce with heat protection get an ASUS. They have 'SmartDoctor' which can be set to automatically throttle the core speed if it overheats or to set off an alarm at whatever temp you specify. Also you can quickly view the card's heat at any time (Very handy for diagnosing problems when overclocking). Also they come with a great heatsink that covers the RAM aswell. The fan is the usual tiny thingy but is easily replaced (I have a decent 40mm replacing mine on an 8200 deluxe and it runs perfectly at 260core/560Ram)

On the Athlon side, I'm now on cpu number 3, no - not because of anything bad. Since the first edition I've found them to be excellent and stable performers, and since they;re so cheap it's always tempting to upgrade early. As for heatsink mechanisms being untrustworthy - I use a copper SK6 Heatsink (Weighs about twice as much as the average sink) with a 2 inch 80-60mm plastic duct leading to an 80mm fan, lots of weight and lots of leverage increasing the force, and it's fine (has been for about 8 months, not so much as a wobble).
Athlons and their motherboards are aimed at more tech savvy folks (no offense but intel are OEM and mom/pop first, hence the mandatory throttling and fk all features in their motherboards). They run hot and rely on you to protect your system adequately, using decent monitoring tools/Heat Sinks and plain common sense. What you get in return is unrivalled bang for the buck and a CPU that doesn't think it has the right to slow down just because it doesn't like the heat in the kitchen.

Supercell

Originally posted by Shinji
Caveat: it doesn't like ABIT boards with onboard Highpoint RAID controllers.

Not entirely true, running XP on a KG7-RAID, booting off a couple of IBM deskstars in a raid 0 config. XP installed clean .

That said perhaps the next board revision(the one with the A ) is slightly different.

Fact is scsi and raid boards have needed the f6 treatment for a long while on NT based os's, and perhaps this is needed on the newest ABIT boards, but not at least on the KG7-RAID.

But i wouldnt go as far as to say it "doesnt like" them, just needs installing properly.

MiCr0

is it just be or is this thread gone waaaaaay OT?

Shinji

But i wouldnt go as far as to say it "doesnt like" them, just needs installing properly.

Given that MS' official documentation describes the KT7A (and KG7A, I think) as "unsupported", it seems fair to say that it doesn't like these boards

True enough though - it's possible to sort it out, it's just not immediately apparent what the problem is and can leave you REALLY stumped when installing. The main problem is the nature of the error - it's not in any way obvious that "IRQ is less or greater than zero" means your RAID controller is having a spaz attack

Gerry

OT it may be, but jesus I wish we had topics like this on the tech board. A hell of a lot more interesting than most of the threads on it.

Ok, where to start throwing cents

Shinji, you are absolutely right about the athlon, as far as speed and heat go. However you are completely wrong about the p4.

The p4 clock throttling is all done on chip, it does not need the motherboard to tell it when to slow down.

Same as the p3, it doesn't matter what board you put a p3 into, it will still automatically stop running without damage if it goes over its max temperature.

The p4 only throttles if it is outside of its maximum safe operating temp, which is far higher than 50 degrees, I dunno where you pulled that 75% duty cycle bull**** from.

The clock throttling issue was debated for a number of months, but nobody seemed to have any evidence of p4's slowing down, except vans hardware. And van eventually shut up when nobody else could find any evidence of it. Most p4's will be running around 50 degrees as standard, since most pc manufacturers skimp on cooling. Yes, it will put out at least as much heat as an athlon on full load, but it won't throttle.

I do have personal experience of this. I had to replace the psu fan on a gateway p4, before replacement there was a lot of heat building up in the case. I'd say the cpu was running around 60 or 70 degrees, the heatsink would burn your fingers if you gave it long enough. The machine still ran fine, the psu was in far more danger of failing than the cpu.

On toms hardware, well shinji if you read the site extensively, you will see that tom usually takes a fairly tough line against intel, purely based on price based on performance. He is right to lambast them for this, now I don't agree with him all the time, since he has a tendency to exaggerate. ie say an amd wins by a hair in a benchmark, he will say "The amd trounces the intel in this benchmark". If the intel wins by a hair "The chips are about level here".

But, he turns around and rightly lambasts amd for their lack of thermal protection on PRODUCTION motherboards, and everybody starts attacking him.

Incidentally, you will also discover on extensive reading, that yes he really does know his stuff, and he's not just another wannabee hardware journalist. He has explained at length that he is not a doctor of anything computer related, does this mean he can't use the title?

Creed, you do have a point that intel systems are more "mom and pop". What does that have to do with tweakers? No hardware enthusiast buys an intel manufactured motherboard. An abit manufactured, intel based motherboard is just as tweakable as an abit amd motherboard. You don't really have a point here. To get the most out of either system requires common sense, and technical knowledge. To get the intel system working requires less work, and less care. Big ****ing deal.

And I've already dealt with the perhaps throwaway comment in the last line of your post, which is based on utter bull****.

As for the geforce, well the geforce1 is an extremely hot running chip, the geforce2 is not as bad but still pretty hot. I had a creative geforce ddr, and I replaced the ****e cooling with a decent socket7 heatsink, with an 80mm fan blowing over it. I have a similar setup on my geforce2 gts. I was at a lan over the weekend, and I had one of my fans on too low a voltage to start. And so the geforce got no airflow, and heated up to 70 or 80 degrees. After that, whenever I was playing a 3d game on the projector screen, there was a tiny amount of interference. This thankfully does not appear on my monitor!

_CreeD_

Originally posted by Gerry
The clock throttling issue was debated for a number of months, but nobody seemed to have any evidence of p4's slowing down, except vans hardware. And van eventually shut up when nobody else could find any evidence of it.
Most p4's will be running around 50 degrees as standard, since most pc manufacturers skimp on cooling. Yes, it will put out at least as much heat as an athlon on full load, but it won't throttle

<snip> I'd say the cpu was running around 60 or 70 degrees, <snip> The machine still ran fine...


Creed, you do have a point that intel systems are more "mom and pop". What does that have to do with tweakers? No hardware enthusiast buys an intel manufactured motherboard. An abit manufactured, intel based motherboard is just as tweakable as an abit amd motherboard. You don't really have a point here. To get the most out of either system requires common sense, and technical knowledge. To get the intel system working requires less work, and less care. Big ****ing deal.

And I've already dealt with the perhaps throwaway comment in the last line of your post, which is based on utter bull****.

Hmmmm.
So you accept that throttling is a part of the CPU makeup, also point out that at least one site DID prove it. And then say that to think a P4 will slowdown when overheating is 'Bull****', you're only 'proof' being that more people haven't seen it, and the wonderfully vague performance benchmark of 'It ran fine'.
Very good Gerry, impressive logic.
Maybe you could also try being a little less abusive and just express an opinion once'n a while? Oh, and without contradicting yourself would be good too.

As for the mom and pop comment. I'll stand by my claim that the majority of AMD owners are more technically skilled. Intel owns the OEM market, most folks thinking of buying a new PC dont have a clue what an Athlon is. Whereas those that do buy AMD are most likely tol do so because of the research they have done on forums like these, or tech sites like Anandtech. Anyone who can check the benchmarks, feature sets and is not fooled by a misleading clock rating will go for an Athlon based on price/performance alone.
Hold a poll here, and I gaurantee you the vast majority of folks who have built their own PCs will have Athlons.

corkey

:rolleyes: Hi All

new to computers just got one for home has xp on it last night it changed all desk top items now have a white arrow on the icons i know its silly but i tought this would be the place to find out how to remove them and dont give out im only new to this

thanks

corkey

Gerry

Ok, I didn't exactly make a very clear point. My point is, the chip will throttle when it overheats. This point is not reached when the room gets a little bit hot, as you suggest. When I pointed out that the gateway machine was running 60 or 70 degrees, I should have pointed out that the cpu was still not outside its specified maximum operating temperature, and so could not be said to be overheating. It will keep running with 100% duty cycle until it heats up to 80 or 90 degrees, whatever it is. Then it will throttle. Under all other circumstances, such as crappy oem cooling, it will work fine.

As for one site DID prove it, I wasn't very clear here either. Vans Hardware has a rather obvious anti-intel bias, moreso than toms hardware. However, when it became apparent that no-one else had any apparent throttling with their p4's, van was forced to re-evaluate the issue. I think this sums it up nicely, in his own words:

"I believe the Pentium 4 that displayed apparent throttling behavior under Quake III was a part that slipped through a hole in Intel's validation process. This is a manufacturing issue, not a design issue and is therefore correctible through more exhaustive validation cycles. This is a very common occurrence that rarely is cause for alarm unless a large percentage of chips are impacted, which I do not believe to be the case here. "


I did actually run quake3 benchmarks, it was a 1.4ghz p4 with a geforce2 gts, and it convincingly beat my own machine, I can't remember the exact numbers, I think it was around 250 fps in a benchmark where my own machine would get around 170-180. If it was throttling I don't think it would have been able to do that.

Apologies if I seemed abusive, I get a little worked up about these things. You know a great deal about athlons, but are prepared to make ill-informed assumptions about the pentium 4, I'm just trying to give both sides of the story.

I fully agree that the majority of amd owners would be more technically knowledgeable, but where did I say otherwise?

A poll would indeed show that the majority of people build athlons. Indeed the majority of machines I have built in the last year would be athlons. The price to performance ratio cannot be argued with.

Shinji

Er, you're making one unsafe assumption - the belief that all P4 cores are born equal. I'm not saying that all P4s throttle at silly speeds, but some of them most certainly do - I returned one to Scan on behalf of a mate on the basis that it was quite clearly throttling at just over 60 degrees, which obviously isn't acceptable. Obviously this isn't normal behaviour, but it DOES happen.

marauder

P4 Speed Throttling kicks in around 75C. This is the temp of the Processor Casing. The heat sink and fan should prevent the processor case from getting near to this.

Shinji, maybe your mates heatsink wasn't seated properly or there were bubbles in the thermal paste. Applying that paste is not as straightforward as most people think....
Did the fan/heatsink come pre-installed or did he do it himself?

Typedef

Was anyone else surprised how easy it was to work around the activation with the attached zip? Haven't Microsoft any clue how useless the entire activation scheme becomes once the corporate patch that negates the hardware activation becomes available on the internet?

I mean why even bother making the activation key a requisite if you are just going to release a patch like below for it? A patch that is so easily implemented, ie a couple of dos commands and a link file?

www.boards.ie/members/Typedef/Windows_XP_Final_build_2600_English_Patch.zip

MarcusGarvey

Typedef have you ever supported the average windows user ? They're not going to go to all that bother (which is sfa ) to run this patch. Its hard enough to get them to double click on a shortcut on their desktop that updates their AV software.

In a corporate environment you'll have some sort of support person that will install the patch as it will make his/her/its life a good bit easier when they decide to upgrade the hardware on every computer.

Kairo

I found no problem installing XP with my Abit board...although it is one of the newer models (KR7A-Raid) and I'm not using raid atm.

Anyway, XP..looks nice, seems like every other OS if you ask me. I can't see any real noticible features. It's not as stable as it should be, I've been running it only a week now and I've had my fair few crashs.

I also don't like the way its seemingly designed for idiots (and I'm using the professional edition) All these annoying pop-ups telling me my computer just crashed and my network cable isn't plugged in when I don't even have a network running I'm sure there are ways of turning them off, but I'll be damned if I can find them all.

Plus, alot of old games, like Thief: The Dark Project, won't work

I need to see some good points soon or I'm switching back to 98

Zaphod Beeblebrox

Originally posted by Shinji
I returned one to Scan on behalf of a mate on the basis that it was quite clearly throttling at just over 60 degrees, which obviously isn't acceptable. Obviously this isn't normal behaviour, but it DOES happen.

Sorry I have to say this. Scan? SCAN!?! Was it your mate who ordered it from them? If so please slap him. For his own good.
Never even consider thinking about the mere possibility of going anywhere near Scan without the presence of a very large gun to your head. Speaking from bitter experience here. Very bitter. Like a coctail of vinegar and various citrus fruits. Splashed over an open wound.
Microsoft irritates me and Dell make me laugh, but the only company I utterly detest with the righteous fury of frothing bile gushing from my hate glands is Scan :mad: :mad: :mad:

Getting back onto the off-topic topic, I personally prefer Athlons based on the price-for-performance ratio, and have never had overheating problems, although a mate who put in a particularly sh!te cooler did. I have no problem with Intel, the last computer I bought was a P3 450 and it served me well. However my bank balance doesn't appreciate Intel too much, especially when you consider the differences in performance between a 1.57GHz Athlon-based PC and a 2GHz P4-based PC and then the price differences in building or buying those PCs.

And finally back to the original topic, I've had XP for two days now and so far am pretty happy - over the last week or so the Blue Screens of Death launched a particularly vicious bout of guerilla warfare assaults which have stopped since installing XP. Start-up is also faster which is obviously a Good Thing, but so far no difference in games/graphics performance. As for networking, I'll have to see over the next couple of days; hopefully it will talk to the other PC running Win98.

Typedef

Originally posted by MarcusGarvey
Typedef have you ever supported the average windows user ? They're not going to go to all that bother (which is sfa ) to run this patch. Its hard enough to get them to double click on a shortcut on their desktop that updates their AV software.

In a corporate environment you'll have some sort of support person that will install the patch as it will make his/her/its life a good bit easier when they decide to upgrade the hardware on every computer.

Unfortunately yes I have had the misfortune of supporting the average endluser, yes I know there are people in this world who have been using windows 95 for the last seven years and still couldn't find the start button when asked, but, still seems kinda pointless making the "security" that easy to break no? On the flip side if you make a corporate patch that is nothing more then a few dos commands and a link file you kinda make it easy to copy the OS no?

-Could you click on start please sir
=I don't have a start button
-No do you see on the screen in the bottom lefthand corner where it says start
=yes
-Well could you click on that button please
=What with my mouse button
-yes could you click on it with your mouse button
=What double click or ah
-no could you single left click on it once, with your mouse button
=I can't
-Whatdyou mean you cant
=It keeps disappearing
-How do you mean it is disappearing
=Well I click on it, and then I click it again and it disappears
-Ok sir, place the pointer over the start button
=Yes
-Now single, left click once for me please... now don't do it more than once, just single left click once
=I want to speak to your manager
-Why is that sir
=Because you don't seem to know what you're doing
=I'm sorry sir my manager is in a meeting right now(lie), so I will put you onto my manager for sure, but between now and then if I could just get you to try and click on the start button
-Ok, have done.
=Right so click on settings and control panel and double click on add new hardware
-What with my mouse button.