StickyMicky

Ok so its probably time to upgrade my old rig but on a "budget".

I recently bought a new 500gig Sata hard drive to see what all the fuss was about and to tested it in the current rig (yes its quieter, but its not that much faster, so what is the point in sata if you are not doing the raid malarkey?)


My spec was that i needed the fastest capable motherboard i could get, with AGP support (because i have just changed the graphics card for an X1950 pro agp, the current cpu is bottlenecking it to death lol)
it also needs to run xp only, no vista needed (or wanted) as my work cctv software is not vista compatiable.

i have found this and it should get delivered this week
ASRock > Products > 775i65G R2.0 > CPU Support List

it will allow me to use my "new" x1950 pro i have just bought, and will allow me to upgrade to a dual/quad core, with ATI still releasing better AGP cards (and talk of nvidia coming back to AGP) i figured i had no real need for this PCIe stuff at all

so i have the HDD`s sorted, i have the potential for quadcore if i need it/want it

my PSU is ok for the job,

my problem at the moment is this memory malarkey, at the moment i have 2 x 512mb pc3200 sticks which are "CL3"

the motherboard documents say this

external VGA card is fine, i have one, but the CL2.5 memory i dont

this board only has 2 slots, so i am thinking 2 x 1gb sticks would be the best bet (board can only use 2gb max anyway)
i have been struggling to find some DDR400 pc3200 CL2.5 1GB sticks!!

found loads of 2 x 512mb sticks, but can not find any 1GB ones

what i have found is some DDR400 CL2 sticks, from what i have read on the net so far, CL2 is "better" then CL2.5, so can you use the "better" ones in a system that needs a lower type?

cheers!

StickyMicky

just found this although i have never heard of OCZ
OCZ Value 1GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM - Aria Technology

could be a winner?

StickyMicky

Anybody dealt with "ARIA PC" before? the cpu`s seam reasonable although i am a bit out of the loop with prices, so only did a quick google to see what i could find online.

edit, seams cheap as hell for a Q6700 cpu according to a quick google

just ordered these


hopefully this little upgrade will see me another 10 years like the last one did

wah

eBay.co.uk Shop ? fastflashstore: Search results for ddr pc3200.

spectrum48k

As a contrast, I just recently upgraded 2 of the bottlenecks in my system:

- the RAM, upgraded to 8GB for £80
- the OS hard disk, upgraded to a solid state drive, OCZ Vertex

old processor stayed the same, Core 2 Quad
old gfx card stayed the same, GF 8800 GTS

I run 32bit Windows XP, so you may ask why all the RAM ? The answer is a RAM disk , a piece of software which utilises all the RAM WinXP 32bit can't address (some 4.75GB). So my pagefile, photoshop scratch disk, google chrome cache, etc, all sit on this RAM disk - and it's lightening (photoshop opens in about 3 secs)

StickyMicky

nice!

i suspect the quad core will last me quite a while, as most things dont even seam to support all 4 cores yet, the ram can always be used in my work cctv machine (with the old xp2500 chip and mobo i am replacing)

and i have seen a mobo that allows you to use socket 775 chips, agp and pcie gfx, and a choice of ddr or ddr2 memory, so it seams the options for upgrades are still huge!

it will be intresting to see how the new system fairs with some newish games to be honest, as it should be a pretty high end AGP rig, IIRC

read lots of stuff on he web from people saying that bringing out these new high end AGP cards is a waste of time as the cpu`s on agp boards can not handle them, but i can not see a q6700 quadcore causing any kind of bottleneck at all with the card that i have, infact i could not see it bottle necking the ATIHD dx10 AGP cards that were brought out either.


all this bloody started because i could not play fackin half life 2 on my old system due to the broken 9700pro graphics card lmfao!!

StickyMicky

All the stuff has arrived, AriaPC have sent me feckin CAS 3 memory sticks instead of 2.5

they have asked me to try it as it will probably still work ?

StickyMicky

As suspected, did not work, infact i could not even get the system to POST, no beeps, nothing, it powered up, the fans spin, nothing ever happens.


now this motherboard will only do 1066fsb if you have cl2.5 ram fitted according to the manufacturers website

with a slower FSB processor fitted the cl3 ram might have worked?

i have ordered a cheap 256mb cl2.5 stick of ram from fleabay as a test, just to make sure the board is not bad, but i will be returning the 2gb of cl3 that i have just bought from AriaPC as i cant use it!

my perfectly executed plan fell to bits
came home from work, ripped guts of of the desktop, built the new one up, knowing in my heart it was never going to work, finding it not working and then having to build up the old one, just so i could do my figures, its enought o drive you insane

Coffin Dodger

What RAM Disk software are you using? Just been given 4GB for my work PC running 32bit XP so I know it will only be able to access 3GB. Would be useful to put the other GB to some use

Sorry for the thread hi-jack

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

RAM Disk...that takes me back a bit to DOS LOL

Dos 7 Device Drivers - Ramdrive.sys

Surely it must be a bit different now

Shaun

StickyMicky

Never heard of these ram disks myself

for what it`s worth, i have still not built up this pc

i had a slight change of plan, and ordered yet another motherboard, this one takes both PCI-E and AGP graphics cards, and also has DDR1 and separate DDR2 slots, i have also bought 2gb of DDR2 ram as it works out cheaper then the DDR1 stuff (why is this?)

the DDR1 has been sent back for a refund as it was miss sold (they don't sell CAS2.5 sticks)

also upon looking into the PSU further i discovered that it was not beefy enough to run the x1950 GFX card on full chat, so somehow ordered a new case and 650watt psu that can deliver a max of 23amps on both 12v rails

hopefully the new mobo will be delivered tomorrow so i can get the thing built up on sunday

this bloody "budget" upgrade is starting to spiral out of control LOL

Ant

I would imagine DDR 2 is in more of demand then DDR1 as it's "old technology"

good luck on sunday

StickyMicky

The new motherboard was delivered yesterday

ASRock > Products > 4CoreDual-VSTA

managed to get the thing up and running last night after work, the board says that if you use a quadcore cpu, the performance may drop by 5%, although a quick tweak of the FSB sorted that out anyway, so i dont know what the problem is?

regardless, its all up and running, i bought a copy of PC gears of war for 8quid on fleabay and installed it last night as a quick test, it all runs sweet as hell, around 60% CPU load when playing with all details on the highest they will go

the game seams to play far to fast, it may just be the extra FPS making things seam much faster then the 360, i am not sure how the ATI x1950 PRO AGP compares with the card that is in the X360 console, but it seams to be out performing it in my current new rig at 1080x768 screen res (ie the same as the 360 running through my VGA lead)

it was 1am when i had to turn it off as i needed to get some sleep


i need a better stress test for the system, i tried to run 3DMark06 on the old rig to compare, but it was only making 1FPS on the cpu tests, and then crashed LOL!

I will hopefully install a benchmark tonight after work and see what sort of numbers it can push.

Current costs

Asrock 4coredual-vsta motherboard = 40
New case with 650watt psu = 35
Thermaltake Blue Orb Cooler = 14
Intel Quad Q6700 = 130
2GB DDR2 667 ram = 15 ?!? (ebay? came new and sealed?!?)

total = 234 pounds

parts from old rig that were bought quite recently, not sure if i should add/total them up, i needed a GFX card anyway, and i had run out of hard drive space on the old rig
ATI X1950 PRO 512MB AGP card = 50 (ebay)
Hitachi 500gb Sata drive = 53 (pc world)

spectrum48k

sorry for the delay - yes, modern RAM disks can really give your system a boost, utiliinsg any left over RAM your windows OS can't address. I use RAMDISK PLUS from these guys, It contains my browser cache(s), photoshop scratch disk , pagefile, tmp files, etc...

Microsoft Certified RamDisk Solutions

spectrum48k

funny how these things have a way of coming around again - in even this seemingly modern world!

StickyMicky

Righty

I finally got things up and running pretty much how i want them

First things first, this motherboard is complete and utter GASH!! it is just a total pile of unstable crap, for whatever reason it can underclock any quadcore cpu that is used by 5%, fair enough i figured i could just tweak the FSB up a little to compensate.

While it technically has the potential for a decent over clock, including locking the AGP/PCI/PCI-E bus, in reality, i can not get the machine to boot into windows with anything more then 2.7ghz (q6700 2.6ghz cpu)

what is frustrating is that i can use "SETFSB" and do a software over clock up to around 2.9ghz without any problems, i have seen test results of people getting huge overclocks on this chip, so the mobo is probably to blame.

regardless, it does actually play games quite well

checking Gears of War yesterday i was getting around 60fps on full details (1080x768 res is all this lcd will do)

and i was playing Frontlines without an issue at max detail to

now i am not sure what is considered a "good" result from these types of programs? but i tried 3DMark06 and this was the result.



to be honest i have a feeling that something is wrong, maybe the memory? due to the bios having problems with the over clock, but as it seams to be playing quite recent games without an issue, then i will probably leave it alone.

I have tried to download the Crysis demo twice now and both copys have been corrupt so have been unable to test it out "properlly" (that is what most people seam to use to stress a system?)

cheers

Sleazy Badger

Post up your CPU-Z screenies so we can have a nosey.
Have you manually set your voltages and timings?

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Thats pretty low for a 3dmark06 score you should be over 10k really, if not higher, but your mobo wont help (hence I prefer ASUS mobo's for their overclocking facility ) and you should either match your fsb with your mem speed or half it, ie 1066mhz (8500) or 533mhz (4200?).
Would have gone for something like this mobo, still relitively cheap though
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...SATA-3Gb-s-ATX

Tony

StickyMicky

I will try to remember the CPU-Z screens tonight (i am at work)

i am wondering if the low score is down to the older x1950 pro graphics card ?


IIRC the memory is 667mhz although when the mobo is in "auto" it constantly wants to run it in 533 mode, i can manually select it in 667, but when i was checking one of the software FSB programs it was telling me that the ratio was (iirc) 4:5 instead of 1:1

i did actually get slightly faster speeds with the ram running 1:1 instead of running the ram a little faster, the system just just not seam to be all working together, although it is not crashing or anything (unless i tweak the FSB in the bios)


I managed to get a demo of Crysis installed, and playing last night on medium settings (the shaders/textures and i also think physics on high) was giving me a FPS of around 29 while shooting the Koreans.

i think i will go and search for "best x1950 pro" 3D06 results and see what i can find.

StickyMicky

ohhhhh, easy fix

just did a quick search

X1950 Pro giving terrible 3Dmark06 score - HELP!!!!

it seams my score is actually OK for the old graphics card when compared with this lads Q6600 system

edit, after searching a few more threads, it seams the X1950PRO (remember this is AGP LOL) in my system is giving excellent results compared with other peoples systems.

I think the next time i buy an upgraded GFX card, i will take the opportunity to dump the mobo and replace that as well for a proper PCI-E system, instead of this hybrid one that uses both.

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

Here is my bench mark with a 280GTX and clocked (3ghz) Q6600 (B3 version so not as good as the G0)
http://i632.photobucket.com/albums/u...ny3dmark06.jpg

Room for improvement you should be up there with a decent card/board/memory

Tony

StickyMicky

Is that 3DMark06 you are using?

I wonder why your Q6600 overclocked to 3ghz is showing a smaller CPU score then my Q6700 at a lower speed ?

The only difference i was led to believe existed between the Q6700 and the Q6600 is the multiplier, i did actually try dropping my multiplier down to 9 and increasing the FSB in the bios to get past my boards apparent speed wall with no joy

the board is supposed to allow up to 340 FSB

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

The latest ones of these chips, especially your Q6700 have more functionalities over my somewhat old Q6600 (ive an early one) so its a little quicker
The rest is memory, access speed, graphics etc where I probably have an advantage over you, but your cpu is quicker overall
Oh and i use the cheap version of 3DMark06, think its 1.1.0 or 1.1.1 now so doesnt have all the bits on there

Tony

StickyMicky

CPU-Z stuff as requested

StickyMicky

dammm photobucket resized it and made it to small to read

will try and redo it later on as i am now late for work

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

A comparison for you see mine is the older B3 chip and yours is the newer G0

http://i632.photobucket.com/albums/u...1968/CPU-Z.jpg

Tony

StickyMicky

This system is now dead

I woke up this morning and tried to switch on the PC to check emails before work, the system would not switch on at all, very strange when i was happily playing Frontlines last night

It turned out that switching off at the wall and then back on would allow the system to boot, but i could not get online as the ethernet port was not working, very strange!

After coming back home and checking things out, the missus said that she tried it, switched it off and now it will not switch back on, so i figure that the PSU is dead, quickly swap that out with a spare, no joy, the system was switching on for half a second and then powering down, i went through everything, testing it all one by one, and then found a capacitor head on the floor under the computer desk

I dig out the old xp2500 system i had just retired and start getting that ready, only it will not POST as it says the keyboard is missing, i am beginning to suspect that the new systems MOBO has went **** up, killed the ethernet port earlier on, and has now fried the keyboard

Quick trip to PC world for a nice Logitech keyboard/mouse combo, the old system then fires up without any issue.

Upon checking the new systems mobo yet again i figured the cap head was not from the system, as the caps on the board were all mainly black, and this one was green.

Tried the system yet again and another cap actually blew in front of me, with added smoke

As i suspected a while back, the motherboard is/was complete junk and has blown, taking out a keyboard with it

I will now be replacing the MOBO with a proper PCI-e only one, maybe the one Tony suggested further up, and maybe one of them gtx260 cards he seams to be happy with

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

You can pick one of those nice GTX260's up from scan (XFX one with 876?mb) for 115 quid now
Shame about the mobo still some nice ones out there which are not that expensive (Asus! )

Tony

StickyMicky

Just ordered this mobo

Asus P5QL Pro

and this GFX card

Asus GTX 275 (comes with free terminator salvation game)

StickyMicky

Wowsers!

Must have been lucky that i ordered when i did, just rechecked the Scan website and they have bumped the price of the GTX 275 card up

i paid this

1 Asus P5QL Pro MoBo £45.99 £52.89
1 896MB ASUS GTX275 HTDI/896MD3 £130.27 £149.81

it seams the asus GTX 275 is now listed as

£146.27 Ex VAT

£168.21 Inc VAT

Sweet!!!!!

and the P5QL PRO motherboard is now not listed on the site ?

Its all listed as arriving tomorrow