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      09-12-2007, 09:43 AM   #1
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PC upgrading

I bought an Advent T12 a couple of years ago ....

P4 3.6 GHz
512mb DDR RAM
Nvidia 6610XL graphics

Last week I got a bit carried away and upgraded it with the following ....

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/112706

Which meant a new motherboard (MSI G965M)

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/121045

Which meant new DDR2 RAM

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/111439

Then to round it off a new BFG 8800 GTS OC graphics card.

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/131673

Can't quite believe I spend £200 on a graphics card. But it's actually really good fun taking out all the innards and re-building the thing.

Anyone else into building PC's? Now I want to try to overclock my CPU .. aparently it'll run at 3.0GHz all day long.
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      09-12-2007, 09:49 AM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by needforspeed View Post
I bought an Advent T12 a couple of years ago ....

P4 3.6 GHz
512mb DDR RAM
Nvidia 6610XL graphics

Last week I got a bit carried away and upgraded it with the following ....

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/112706

Which meant a new motherboard (MSI G965M)

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/121045

Which meant new DDR2 RAM

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/111439

Then to round it off a new BFG 8800 GTS OC graphics card.

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/131673

Can't quite believe I spend £200 on a graphics card. But it's actually really good fun taking out all the innards and re-building the thing.

Anyone else into building PC's? Now I want to try to overclock my CPU .. aparently it'll run at 3.0GHz all day long.

Haha I've been customizing and building PCs since the early days of the 386SX...! Remember one of those? It was a 16Mhz chip, with 128k cache... and was the mutt's nuts at the time.

You can overclock your 2.4Ghz Duo chip, but you will need extra cooling - you can use a fancy water-cooled case etc, but the amount of money you'll spend on it, you should just sell the Duo chip and buy a 2.8Ghz Extreme (four cores as opposed to two)... However, one of the biggest differences in speed is by increasing the memory size to 2Gb, or at the very most 4Gb. (no point using over 4Gb of memory, as Windows Vista / available software doesn't take full advantage of >4Gb RAM).

If u want/need any help, ask away..
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      09-12-2007, 09:53 AM   #3
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I've always found it was as cheap to buy a new PC than replace all the bits that needed replacing with the relatively bleeding edge stuff I like to buy (not quite the latest and best but when I replace I buy in the top 25% or so of capabilities at that time), particularly if you want "better" monitor and the architecture as a whole changes requiring new motherboard etc.... As an example Dell are currently selling a nice looking cor 2 duo with 19" flatscreen for £279 plus VAT. It is fun though, we recently b*****ardised a NAS at work to get 4 hard disks then bought the bits for a few hundred quid to make a PC based NAS with 1.6TB of storage. Was very satisfying. Around the same time someone's power supply went on their PC and we diagnosed and replaced it. Despite being in IT I hadn't done much PC hardware stuff before that, and I enjoyed it.
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      09-12-2007, 10:00 AM   #4
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best upgrade I made was getting a MAC Pro...it has never crashed unlike all the windoze thingies I have had
I did keep my Dell 24" screen
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      09-12-2007, 10:01 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by E92Fan View Post
Haha I've been customizing and building PCs since the early days of the 386SX...! Remember one of those? It was a 16Mhz chip, with 128k cache... and was the mutt's nuts at the time.

You can overclock your 2.4Ghz Duo chip, but you will need extra cooling - you can use a fancy water-cooled case etc, but the amount of money you'll spend on it, you should just sell the Duo chip and buy a 2.8Ghz Extreme (four cores as opposed to two)... However, one of the biggest differences in speed is by increasing the memory size to 2Gb, or at the very most 4Gb. (no point using over 4Gb of memory, as Windows Vista / available software doesn't take full advantage of >4Gb RAM).

If u want/need any help, ask away..

Cool - help would be good.

I've already got 2gig of DDR 2 800MHz 6400 RAM - will adding another matched 2 gig pair make much difference ?

Unfortunately my mainboards BIOS has no overclocking facilities built in. I can alter my RAM frequency, but that seems to be it.

From what I have read I should be able to get a bit more speed out of my CPU without extra cooling ??

I downloaded an overclocking tool from MSI (mainboard manufacturer), but if I alter any settings on it the PC just freezes.

How can I overclock without the relevant settings on the BIOS?
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      09-12-2007, 10:03 AM   #6
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Overclocking is dependant on the individual processor, some do it better than others.
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      09-12-2007, 10:06 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by red355 View Post
best upgrade I made was getting a MAC Pro...it has never crashed unlike all the windoze thingies I have had
I did keep my Dell 24" screen
I'm with you Red355 - I use a Macbook Pro with external monitor attached. As you say they never crash and are generally well behaved machines.
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      09-12-2007, 10:07 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by silverbmwz3 View Post
I've always found it was as cheap to buy a new PC than replace all the bits that needed replacing with the relatively bleeding edge stuff I like to buy (not quite the latest and best but when I replace I buy in the top 25% or so of capabilities at that time), particularly if you want "better" monitor and the architecture as a whole changes requiring new motherboard etc.... As an example Dell are currently selling a nice looking cor 2 duo with 19" flatscreen for £279 plus VAT. It is fun though, we recently b*****ardised a NAS at work to get 4 hard disks then bought the bits for a few hundred quid to make a PC based NAS with 1.6TB of storage. Was very satisfying. Around the same time someone's power supply went on their PC and we diagnosed and replaced it. Despite being in IT I hadn't done much PC hardware stuff before that, and I enjoyed it.
I did think about getting a new base unit from EBAY or similar .. I ended up spending £270 on the mainboard, DDR2 RAM and processor. Graphics card was another £200 on top.

I could have bought a new PC with an e6600 chip for similar money, but then the graphics card wouldn't have been anywhere near as good.

As it is ... it's a bit of a frankenstein affair now, since the original mobo had various odd connectors for scart sockets and the like, which are not no longer used.
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      09-12-2007, 10:08 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 1stnewcar View Post
Overclocking is dependant on the individual processor, some do it better than others.
From what I have read the Intel e6600 conroe (the one I bought) is one of the best units to overclock .. although it will vary for each individual chip.

Amazing little thing to handle when you fit it to the motherboard though ...
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      09-12-2007, 10:14 AM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by needforspeed View Post
Cool - help would be good.

I've already got 2gig of DDR 2 800MHz 6400 RAM - will adding another matched 2 gig pair make much difference ?
To get 4 GIG?! NO! Unless you are doing some serious processing.
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      09-12-2007, 10:18 AM   #11
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If its running Vista, I would say 2Gb is the absolute minimum.
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      09-12-2007, 10:18 AM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by silverbmwz3 View Post
To get 4 GIG?! NO! Unless you are doing some serious processing.
I take my processing very seriously

Nah .. I just play games - which is why I'm NOT running vista.

At the moment I am mostly shooting terrorists on Rainbow Six Las Vegas.
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      09-12-2007, 10:26 AM   #13
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[QUOTE=needforspeed;1395857]Cool - help would be good.

I've already got 2gig of DDR 2 800MHz 6400 RAM - will adding another matched 2 gig pair make much difference ?

Unfortunately my mainboards BIOS has no overclocking facilities built in. I can alter my RAM frequency, but that seems to be it.

From what I have read I should be able to get a bit more speed out of my CPU without extra cooling ??

I downloaded an overclocking tool from MSI (mainboard manufacturer), but if I alter any settings on it the PC just freezes.

How can I overclock without the relevant settings on the BIOS?[/QUOTE


It depends what you're using your computer for. If you're doing a lot of graphics editing, or high-def scanning, then yes 4Gb would be a great idea. Especially if you're running Windows Vista. But if it's XP you're running, and you're only using it to play games, then 2Gb is fine.

The e6600 chip is good for overclocking, but you need a tweaker's motherboard which will let you adjust the bus speed, ram clock settings and thresholds in the BIOS settings. Using software to try and overclock will always make a computer freeze. The other thing to bear in mind though is that not all stepping variations of the Intel chips are good for clocking - it is a bit hit and miss.

My advice? Forget about the overclocking and just enjoy gaming. I'm sure it's fast enough as it is for Rainbow Six... if you really need more speed, change the chip.
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      09-12-2007, 10:29 AM   #14
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I ran a machine of lower spec on XP with 512MB and then 1GB of RAM and did photoshopping, converting RAW files etc. etc. for a long time with no issues. You can tell if you need more RAM - you look at the 'peak' value on the Task Manager performance window having done some 'typical' processing and if it is greater than your system memory you will benefit from additional RAM.

Vista is fine on 1GB, I run that at home but to do the same stuff I did on XP with 1GB I should probably have 2GB. I've yet to meet anyone who needed 4GB on either operating system unless they were doing something weird and wonderful.
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      09-12-2007, 10:29 AM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by red355 View Post
best upgrade I made was getting a MAC Pro...it has never crashed unlike all the windoze thingies I have had
I did keep my Dell 24" screen

Yup the Mac Pro is one of the best machines out there - stable as you like, with the benefit that it can dual-boot either OSX and Vista using Apple Bootcamp...

The iMac 2.8Ghz Extreme is also very good for a cheaper all-in-one solution - I bought one a few weeks ago and it's blindingly fast for what it is. 4Gb Ram, 1Tb hard drive, 24" screen - less than £1900.

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      09-12-2007, 10:45 AM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by silverbmwz3 View Post
I ran a machine of lower spec on XP with 512MB and then 1GB of RAM and did photoshopping, converting RAW files etc. etc. for a long time with no issues. You can tell if you need more RAM - you look at the 'peak' value on the Task Manager performance window having done some 'typical' processing and if it is greater than your system memory you will benefit from additional RAM.

Vista is fine on 1GB, I run that at home but to do the same stuff I did on XP with 1GB I should probably have 2GB. I've yet to meet anyone who needed 4GB on either operating system unless they were doing something weird and wonderful.
I agree ... I've never seen much more than a gig of ram in use in the task manager window.

Some games are quite power hungry though .. hence the purchase of a monster graphics card.

I guess I'll just leave the overclocking then - but why would the software cause a lock up?

In hindsight I think I should have spent another £40 on an ATX case. That would have given me some more choice of motherboards (mine is micro-atx) so I could have paid a little more and got an e6850 and a mainboard with the P35 chipset.

Not to worried though .. I'm getting a 3dmark06 score of around 10,000 points and can play most games on very high or highest quality settings.
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      09-12-2007, 10:48 AM   #17
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Is your graphics card actually better than your main system can keep up with? It sounds like it cost more than the rest of the PC!
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      09-12-2007, 11:09 AM   #18
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Quote:
Originally Posted by needforspeed View Post
I agree ... I've never seen much more than a gig of ram in use in the task manager window.
If you are running XP you can also a boot.ini /3GB switch which as I recall changes the 2GB/2GB System/Apps allocation to 1GB/3GB. A bit useful if you have memory hungry programs

My CAD system at work is running this and showing 1.4GB of swapfile usage at the moment. It get's worse when rendering stuff out as well.
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      09-12-2007, 11:18 AM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by silverbmwz3 View Post
Is your graphics card actually better than your main system can keep up with? It sounds like it cost more than the rest of the PC!
I ran it with the original P4 processor and the system was clearly CPU constrained.

I achieved about 5500 points on 3dmark06 which was medium performance for similar projects, but in the bottom 5% for that particular graphics card.

The card runs much better now it's paired with the new CPU, although I think it would probably run better still with a quad core system.
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      09-12-2007, 12:15 PM   #20
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[QUOTE=E92Fan; (no point using over 4Gb of memory, as Windows Vista / available software doesn't take full advantage of >4Gb RAM).
:[/QUOTE]

I've heard that Server 2008 will support upto 4Tb of RAM.

Maybe we'll all be running Server 2008 with VMware ESX running a VMWare ACE client for each user. If virtual machines get their way.....

E92Fan prob knows what I mean but most of you are probably going eh?
So i'll switch off my geek mode.....
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      09-12-2007, 12:32 PM   #21
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      09-12-2007, 04:23 PM   #22
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Holy crap, I thought I was the only PC nerd on here - lol

Good choice of comonents there needfordpeed - but surely a E6750 would have been a better choice (cheaper and faster)
The 8800GTS is a great performer for the money though. It will run nearly all newer games at max detail.

I last did a machine overhaul about a year ago.
I have:

Core2 Duo E6400 overclocked to 2.5GHz with a good Arctic Freezer air cooler;
2Gb PC8500 Crucial Ballistix;
Gigabyte P965-DQ6 Motherboard - Great overclocker;
NVidia 7900GS graphics card. (slow by todays standards but overclocked to 550/800);

The Gfx card is the weakest link now and I am hoping to upgrade it to a 8800GTS (best bang for your buck) as Colin McRae DiRT is a greedy bugger!!!
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