Archives for Computers

Warning: some of the tips involve changing your Registry, use them at your own risk. Your PC may not start if you muck up the registry so you should always backup your registry.

1. Run a scandisk or checkdisk. Let Windows fix any errors.
2. Run a disk cleanup utility. This will flush your temporary internet folder, trash can, temp system files, etc.
3. Delete any garbage files or data, if possible, run a Duplicate File Finder program.
4. Run Defrag on all partitions (NOTE: run this after you have deleted all trash and excess files!)
5. Run a registry cleaner utility and delete or get rid of any orphaned entries in that registry.
6. Check your exisiting swap file for it’s size and location (*will explain location later in the post). If you have alot of ram (i.e. 1 gig and over) set this swap file to something small, like 250 mb. The reason is that this will force Windows to load more into memory, resulting in faster performance (note: some games and applications actually require a certain sized swap file so check your applications performance after making a size adjustment for any error messages.)
7. Under XP, you can tell Windows to use Classic Style on your desktop, – this will remove the neat single click and internet-style desktop but for lower end systems this will improve performance in other areas, such as gaming and multi-tasking.
8. Run msconfig and under startup and only keep the programs that are essential to load in the tray icon (and hence stay resident in memory). Uncheck anything else non-essential, like an ATI or Nvidia control panel, Quicktime utility, Real Audio, etc.
9. Upgrade drivers! Check for the latest BIOS, video, motherboard, sound, etc drivers from the manufacturers. Alot of my friends had chipsets on their motherboard that had advanced disk management capabilities or AGP port settings but the drivers weren’t loaded for them so they were never being used. A simple upgrade realized a noticeable difference. For instance, they didn’t have the latest driver for their AGP port so it was set to 1x, instead of being used at 4x!
10. (OK, so this won’t speed up your PC but it could save you alot of time and trouble later on!) After making all these improvements, make a working backup! I use Ghost, but for XP users you can also use System Restore…

FOR ADVANCED USERS :

1. Take a look under the hood (for IDE owners). How are your IDE devices configured? If you have more than 1 hard drive, put the master hard drive on the primary IDE channel and the secondary hard drive on the secondary IDE channel (most motherboards have two IDE channels).
2. Place all CDROM drives, DVD readers etc. on the secondary IDE channel (or SCSI bus, etc). This will reduce I/O contention with your master hard drive which should have your OS and apps installed…
3. Remember when I mentioned the location of the swap file? OK, if you have 2 hard drives and you have one on the primary IDE channel and the other on the secondary IDE channel, move the swap file to a partition ON THE SECOND hard drive (on the secondary IDE channel). This will greatly improve system performance as the PC can write to the swap file while loading and running OS and system commands without I/O contention on the primary IDE channel!
4. Take a look under the hood (for SCSI owners) What kind of SCSI do you have? If it’s the newer Ultra 160/320 etc cards then guess what? Any devices placed on the same bus will automatically default to the slowest drive on the chain…this means that if you have say, an Ultra 160 SCSI card, and it has an Ultra 160 drive (capable of transferring 160 mb/sec) on the same chain as a SCSI cdrom drive (capable of only 40 mb/sec) then the whole bus slows down to the 40 mb/sec speed…use different chains for the slower devices and maximize those hard drives!
5. Run a utility like WCPUID and check the settings…is your CPU/front speed bus/AGP port running as fast as they should be? If not, check your drivers and BIOS configuration options. Also, are all of your chipset features enabled? If not, then enable them! (usually done in your BIOS!)
6. Dig in to the BIOS…check settings like boot order, for example…is it checking the floppy first? Change this! Select your order to reflect the hard drive first, then CD, then floppy for a noticeable boot time improvement. Also disable any non-used on board peripherals…for instance, – does your motherboard come with an on-board NIC card? Guess what, if you don’t use that NIC card and it is enabled it will eat up valuable CPU cycles and can be detrimental to your systems’ performance. DISABLE THAT MUTHA! Also, see if you can play with memory timing and CPU clock frequencies (NOTE! This is for expert users only!) Set these timings to “Aggressive” and see what happens in your games and apps…Also, check to see what your video aperature is set to. If you have a video card with 128 megs of on-board memory, your aperture should be set to this amount too. Read the BIOS owner manual for further non-general performance tricks or improvements! Do you have the latest BIOS firmware version?
7. Under hardware properties, check to see that everything is working properly, and fix any hardware contention issues. You’ll see the dreaded yellow exclamation point (!) beside any hardware component that is not working correctly.
8. Evaluate the potential for system/hardware upgrades…usually, the best bang for the buck is adding memory so buy all that you can afford (don’t go much above 512 megs for Win 98 or ME). If you have a motherboard with an 8x – capable AGP port but you are using an older 4x video card, consider upgrading to an 8x card. You get the idea here…
9. Quit using software pigs like Norton system utilities, etc. These place files everywhere and can be a real system resource hog on lower end PCs.
10. Did I mention to make a good backup? Do it now! Also, while you’re at it, run a good virus program with the latest definitions.

Overclocking takes on 3 forms:
First, is the casual overclocking, easy, and anyone can do it.
Second, is the right way to overclock, taking into account, everything.
Third, if you want serious power, your gonna need to be savvy to what does what.

The casual overclocker gains about 5% increase, and really doesn’t see any benefit from this, whilst it makes you feel good, no serious damage can be made, by upping the FSB a little, or changing your multiplier, only thing is, you want more.

The correct way to overclock, is to start looking at your system, check the motherboard specs, PSU, amount of hard drives, CD ROMS etc. (high end systems, including the latest graphic cards will need serious power).

Lets take a base system like my old system setup:

AMD XP1700+ ( Thoroughbred JIUHB DLT3C )
Core Voltage = 1.50v
Maximum Die Temp = 90c
FSB = 266Mhz
(factory unlocked)

Jetway K266B KT266 chipset
DDR + SDR RAM (not together)
No onboard RAID

DDR RAM = Dane Elec PC2700 DDR (333Mhz)
Not registered

2 Hard drives
1 CD Writer & 1 DVD ROM drive

2 LAN cards

1 PCI soundcard
(onboard sound turned off).

Now, lets look at what they can do:
The Thoroughbred is still the top processor for overclocking, Thunderbirds are just not up to it, even though they are capable of some really decent speeds, same as the Palamino, not to mention the Barton’s (these are not what they have been made up to be).
(for the purpose of space, I’ll not go into unlocking your CPU)

As you can see, my Thoroughbred has a core voltage of 1.5v, and as my motherboard is capable of giving my processor anything upto 1.85v, there is score for more there.
The FSB on my motherboard is capable of a max of 200Mhz (this is the magic number).
Die temps to a max of 90c is good (never been near it, yet!).

Now, to work out your Mhz on your system, or to check your multiplier or FSB, there is a little calculation you’ll need to remember, and it’s easy:

Your Mhz is worked out by your multiplier timed your FSB.
example:

CODE
133×10 = 1.33Ghz

Of course you can divide your Mhz with your known FSB to give you your multiplier etc.

Now for easy, I have the results of my previous unlocking tests handy, so I’ll use them, and not the current speeds etc.

Standard Multiplier = 11.0
Overclocked Multiplier = 12.0

Standard Voltage = 1.50v
Overclocked Voltage = 1.52v

Standard FSB = 133Mhz
Overclocked FSB = 136Mhz

Standard Speed = 1467Mhz
Overclocked Speed = 1630Mhz

Standard Temps = CPU = 37c SYSTEM = 32c (idle) CPU = 44c SYSTEM = 36c (under load)
Overclocked Temps = CPU = 34c SYSTEM = 29c (idle) CPU 40c SYSTEM 34c (under load)

As you can see, the system is cooler when overclocked, this is due to having the correct cooling setup, and temps for it when it was standard, was standard cooling setup.

Basically, all I have done, is raised the FSB by 3mhz, the voltage by 0.02v and the multiplier by 1.0, this has given me a 163Mhz increase without over stressing my system, but, here is where it gets tedious:

To achieve this, it took me about a week, and this is how I did it:
I started by lowering the multiplier to 5.0, from there I raised the FSB to its max (at the time, have latest BIOS update for mobo, allowing 200Mhz FSB), 166Mhz, this is the correct way of overclocking.
From there, I started to raise the multiplier one by one, getting it back upto the standard multiplier or higher, checking the stability of the system each time.
(currently I am way passed the 136Mhz FSB, as I am running PC2700 DDR).

One thing to look at though, overclocking using the FSB WILL (unless your system allows you to specify it) mess with your PCI & RAM speeds.
Even raising it by 3Mhz can make your PCI cards to not work, and your RAM to get confused and crash your system.

Now your thinking to yourself ‘I can do that’ and yes you can, anyone can, but…….
It takes TIME, I can’t stress that enough, if your going to try this, then you’ll need to run your system for at least 6 hours between changing your multiplier, and as you can imagine, this can take a long time to do.

For your information, I used Hot CPU Tester, SETI & played Vietcong for testing purposes.

Now, for the hard part:

As most experienced overclockers will tell you, heat is your enemy, killing heat is your number 1 aim, don’t worry about your speed at first, a 50Mhz increase isn’t gonna make your 3D Mark scream through the roof, actually, you’ll probably not even get any better than what you did before.

There are several ways of dispersing heat, and they are:

Air cooling:
Pro’s: Cheap, effective at lower speeds.
Con’s: Noisy, dust collectors, need maintenance.

Water cooling:
Pro’s: Can lower your CPU by about 10c easily.
Con’s:
I

t has water in it, expensive, hard for some to understand.

Pelter:
Pro’s: With water cooling, it’s the daddy
Con’s: ONLY EXPERIENCED PEOPLE NEED TO APPLY, very complicated, power hungry, NOT for the faint hearted. Stupidly expensive.

Air cooling:
Upgrading your CPU fan is the first step, there are several companies that offer aftermarket fans, which are better than the OEM fans are 2 a penny in todays world, but it’s NOT just about your CPU fan, your system needs to breath, you need to get rid of ‘hot spots’ within your system.

Water cooling:
Its easier than most make out, its a good thing, kit prices can be got from about £120 ($200 US), just make sure they are upgradable, as you might want to add, a Northbridge water block & a GPU water block.
Modern day kits & parts are idiot proof, and will not leak, unless you act like Noah.

Pelter:
Pelter cooling is DANGEROUS, mainly for your system, fitting it incorrectly, and you could end up with not only a baked CPU but a system that will end up as a very expensive paperweight.
Ask your local overclocking expert for more info.

Basically, if you can get hold of a decent Thoroughbred cored XP, your in luck (just like me), if its unlocked, then your in business, obviously, its not just down to your CPU, your motherboard and RAM will denote whether you can overclock big style or not.
I’d advise ANYONE thinking of overclocking, to research into it more, weigh up the odds on what they want or need, if your on a buget, DON’T attempt it, things can and do go wrong.
Most of the time, its not about ‘mines faster than yours’ or massive speed increases, its done by most, cause it can be. 90% of the time, you’d be better off buying a new CPU (as prices are so low), but if you get the urge, then a new world awaits you great tutorial. this should help the OC noobs. If I can add something like you said know your specs of the mobo….and if you are serious about OC’ing dont go and get some generic NO-NAME ram and some ghetto mobo. to get the best stability go with ASUS and ABIT for the mobo and Crucial, Kingston, mushkin for the ram. A great forum for OC’ing is amdmb.com.

Indeed, if you are serious about your overclocking, its advised you only use serious brand names.
Generic parts are always a lower spec, and can easily destroy themselves with even a little stress aimed towards them.

Memory advice, use the following:

Kingston (added because of reviews, personally, I’m not sure about them).
Crucial (for Dual Channel DDR ONLY)
OCZ
Mushkin
Corsair
PNY (for EEC rated)
Samsung
Geil (my choice, when I can afford it)

Motherbord advice, use the following:

Asus A7N8X Deluxe nForce2
Asus A7N8X-VM nForce2
Asus A7N8X-X nForce2
Abit KD7-S KT400
Abit KV7 KT600
Abit NF7 v2.0 nForce2
Abit NF7-S v2.0 nForce2
MSI K7N2 Delta-L Nforce2
MSI KT6 Delta-LSR KT600
Epox 8RDA+ nForce2
Epox 8RGA+ nForce2

Any nForce2 motherboard would be best, they allow more score for overclocking your system.