I guess I should recount my experience here, so that others might learn heh
heh.
I set out to use my newfound, albeit oh too brief, 'wealth' to purchase a PC
upgrade as I'd previously suggested I would do.
I chose the Athlon because of the price-performance benefit, and decided to
go straight of rthe top, a 1.2Ghz 266FSB Thunderbird Athlon.
I used www.provantage.com because they accept international credit cards.
In their listing was a Gigabyte motherboard, and when i checked the Gigabyte
website, i saw a Revision 2 board displayed. i assumed Provantage was
selling the revision 2 board. They weren't..their board was old stock around
since June 2000.
A KT133 based VIA chipset.
The new chipset is of course the KT133a..and better yet there are new sets
available that address the 266Bus issue and are far more advanced. These
would have cost me a paltry 30US extra had I known better at the time.
However, I went ahead and bought the 7ZXR board, 2x 128Mb PC133 Kingston
memory dimms, a new Antec
SX1030b(http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardware_review.asp?review=antec1030b&;
page=1) case,and the Athlon processor.
it all arrived on Thursday, along with a WHOPPING freight charge of about
120US for the case. That was almost the price of the case itself by the way.
It weighs 33Lbs...had I known frieght would have been so high, I'd have gone
with one of the less sturdy aluminium cases.
Nevermind thogh, the black beauty looks totally impressive, and is one of
the best constructed cases out there. :)
ANyways..it all reaches on Thursday, and I get some of the techs in the
office to help me mount the motherboard, and the processor.
Word of warning, you NEED SERIOUS TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE TO PUT TOGETHER A
MOTHERBOARD, CASE , AND PROCESSOR. if you're not a tech head, doing this
will NOT be easy, or straightforward. Putting the heatsink and fan on that
processor was a chore! It is difficult to clamp properly, and it is
imperative that you ensure it makes proper contact with the chip. i am glad
I had help from people who had done this before. had I left it up to me, I'd
have made a mess of it. There are a NUMBER of people who crack their chip
getting the heatsink on, or fry it later because they didn't put it on
right.
Anyways, I came home in the afternoon, and spent about a further hour and a
half transferring hard disks, floppy and cd, and graphics card to new case.
Then I booted the machine.
Nothing. No graphics output. I spent another 30 minutes before I realised a
slack floppy connector may have been the cause of it not booting. i also had
to scale back the FSB from 133 right down to 100. So my 1.2 Athlon was now
running at 900Mhz. Not good.
I had to remove my AGP graphics card, and plug in an old one. THen I had to
adjust all AGP settings to their lowest possible settings..THEN put the
graphics card back in..and boot. My memory is STILL running at PC100 speed
rather than PC133..and I've beeen told that it is the MB at fault.
I got the AGP card up to speed by downloading the latest BIOS driver from
Gigabyte's site.I also managed to set the FSB to 112, so that my 1.2Ghz
athlon is running at 1Ghz. *sigh*. I can't get the board to accept a 133FSB
setting, and I've been told that it just will never reach that, it was a
failing of the KT133 boards, hence the improvement to KT133A.
I had a scare when the Gigabyte software reported the chip running at 85
degrees celcius. It appears the software is quite broken, and the BIOS
accurately reports a chip temp of about 60Degrees Celcius, which is not
great, but ok. I've lost faith in Gigabyte after this experience. THeir
software is buggy, and their operation appears..amateur. EasyTuneIII, which
is supposed to let me make software adjustments to the MB timing, locks up
on my machine and is unusable. And there is Zero tech support from Gigabyte.
Right now, the machine is running much faster than my PII 400 before, but
not as fast as the P41.5Ghz beast that my father owns and I was using before
;-). I get about 4800 3DMark2000 points, which is not great at all for a
Athlon 1Ghz system, but then it is married to a Geforce MX card which is the
limiting factor. if I slap a Geforce 2GTS 64 in here I am sure my score will
rise by as much as 2000 points. (3D Mark is a benchmark that tests how well
your system will perform under graphically intense activities that test the
entire system from processor to memory, to graphics card...i.e. playing
Games lol).
So..I have to buy a new motherboard. This time I am buying nothing other
than an AMD motherboard. I can't go wrong there. I am pleased with the
performance of the system so far though. Bryce rendering time has dropped
considerably, and I can have Poser, Bryce, and Photoshop open at the same
time with no worries with my 256MB of RAM. I am still upset over not being
able to run my RAM at the PC133 at which it is specced..but c'est la vie.
I have also noticed some minor odd GPFS from programs, such as CF Studio
4.51..it now refuses to start when Outlook is loaded. The ideal thing for me
to have done, was to just install Win2K on the machine..but I'm holding out
on that because I have so many programs installed on these hard disks. I'm
going to buy a large 40Gig and consolidate all 3 hard disks onto that in the
near future..then I'll consider a massive reinstall.
Would I have done this if I knew how much stress it would have been? Well..I
would heartily recommend anyone thinking of getting a computer created from
parts they want, to use a site like Falcon Northwest, or GamePC..or even
Alienware. Building your own from scratch can be real stress..very time
consuming too. And you're never going to be quite sure (unless you buy an
exact config someone else has) whether its all going to work. For example,
if I did not have an extra old PCI graphics card lying around..i would not
have been able to get into the Motherboard BIOS to change the AGP settings.
Putting together a machine from scratch ain't for the faint of heart..or
pocket if something goes wrong ^_^
-Gel
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