-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Arledge
>>>Oh yeah, and to the CF Gals (not Gels)... :P :| :P :| :P
I don't get it.
Erika
"Friendship is never an accident. It is always the result of high
intentions, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution. It
represents the wise choice of many alternatives." - unknown
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Arledge [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Saturday, April 21, 2001 1:01 PM
To: CF-Community
Subject: RE: Another Gel Saga: New Machine..(long)
Gel, however do you find the time to write so much? Shouldn't you be
coding? ;o)
<cf b!tch> I'm having trouble enough just reading all your emails while
I work a full daytime job and go to school full time AND operate a home
business. </cf b!tch>
Can you tell I'm a Crapricorn? j/k :)
Oh yeah, and to the CF Gals (not Gels)... :P :| :P :| :P
Cheers,
Ben
-----Original Message-----
From: Angel Stewart [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: April 21, 2001 9:37 AM
To: CF-Community
Subject: Another Gel Saga: New Machine..(long)
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=antec10
30b&
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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