The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Doable if you get a good chipset sample, the auto system is allowed to raise the CPU voltage and the chipset voltage, and good Q9550s don't need many volts to reach 4 gigs. I'm inclined to believe it's not really 4 gig, but it's possible.

 

Rob,
Most computers will boot up with a single stick of Ram if the voltage is too low. I've seen a bunch that wouldn't let you into the setup with both sticks installed. Pull one stick and it generally boots right up. Take a look in Everest to check the voltages. On Auto, the voltage is still increased, as you raise the clock speed. With a Q9550, the voltage requirements are fairly low, so I can see his running that way without any issues! Will had his Q9550 overclocked to 3.9GHz, but it wasn't matching or beating my 630 Quad. Wasn't that the same motherboard? The new board he got from the manufacturer, also ran a high overclock but it performed light years better then with the original motherboard. Run Sandra benchmarks on it and see what kind of numbers it puts up. If it's only in the low 50,000 MIPS range with a Q9550, something is wrong with the motherboard.

Happy Holidays,
Russ

 

Russ, with Will's setup he does have his settings in manual most of then any how. and yea its running at 3.9+ but this guy is saing its all in auto settings... now i know with my board i can and do run 3.6 with all auto but when i take it any higher i have to adjust something out of auto and make manual settings. mch,vtt,ect.... i honestly dont think any mobo i dont care how good it is and who makes it will run 4.0ghz in auto settings. i have asked him to bring it in nd let me look at what he has but he shys away from that..
i have made a bios template for him from my settings. 1 for 3.6,1 for 3.83, and 1 for 4.12ghz. the highest i have had mine stable. i think he has it in auto and is running 3.6ghz.

 

Rob,
The big point I was trying to make was Will's running at 3.93GHz, yet it performed poorly! It would do the clock speed, but no grunt to go with it. With his new board, it clocks just as good, but performs well doing it!

Russ

 

ok i see what your saying and yes i remember his mips was even way lower than mine was and he was running 3.9 andi was only at 3.83ghz.

im just trying to figure out if this guy is telling the truth or pulling a fast one?? i know he dont knwo much about anyhting towards OC'ing hell he barely put it togetehre on his own. i know ive been talking about doing a I5 build of my very own next feb but if i can get this board for dirt cheap that it is now and preform like this i will do that instead and save alot of money and just max this bad boy out with all the extra goodies and still save money..lol

 

Get him to post a CPUZ maybe?

 

Sam,
I don't find CPUZ's CPU voltage accurate at all! Everest's numbers matches my PC Health numbers from the Setup, exactly!

Happy Holidays,
Russ

 

Ah well, if he agrees to install Everest so much the better, but CPUZ is at least a start

 

lol he isnt smart enough to do that..lol he printed out part of the everest log showing his ram running at 918mhz which puts his mulit at 459x8.5=3901mhz it doesnt even show any info more than that. its hard to try and help someone when they wont give you all the info. he is the type of guy that thinks he knows it all about everything but dont even know how to tie his shoes..lol

 

there are only a hand full of programs that measure the voltage, most other programs use there numbers aswell.

 

Quick question. Where have they put the Add/Remove programs in Vista Home Premium. The Control Panel is a total nightmare trying to find anything!

TIA,
Russ

 

It's still there, it's now called 'Programs and Features'. I use the icon view for Control Panel as it's much more coherent and resembles the old version.

 

Sam,
Thanks Sam. I wonder what was wrong with the familiar Add/Remove Programs? It's concise, and doesn't leave you wondering what it does. And yes, I'm against change when it's just for the sake of change! Icon view is fine if you know what you are looking for. Some things are simple and easy to understand, but I wonder how much it cost to put all that BS in the Control Panel instead of leaving well enough alone! If it was an improvement, I could understand it, but the average person wanting to do something in the Control panel will spend many minutes trying to find where everything is located! There's 52 icons in vista vs 38 in XP. There's no way that they can justify all that Bloat that essentially does little more than the Control Panel in XP! Naturally there's a few Icons for features not found in other versions of Windows, but M$ just missed the boat completely with all that. They took something very simple and made it complicated! If it was better, or an improvement, I could see it. Sadly with Vista, that's not the case at all!

Russ

 

I agree with that entirely, but it doesn't really bother me enough to put me off... On that basis I suppose is how MS gets away with stuff like that

 

Yeah I noticed it too but the transition was fairly easy.

 

The transition is as smooth as it gets. If I don't know where something is, I just run a search in the start bar. Its found literally everything I've searched for...

 

Oman7,
True, but that makes all the different icons defeat the purpose, doesn't it. It's not very intuitive if you have to do a search for things that would be common sense in the XP Control Panel! That's what you get with low pay programmers working with very inefficient code! A classic case of more is less! Why should you have to search for something that should be easy to find to begin with. I call it very Stupid!

Russ

 

I think the way they've designed windows 7 is agreeable. Everything has a logical location, and logical design. They gave windows a makeover. I think there are a lot of similarities to XP. Just slightly altered, and some areas altered more than others. But perhaps it was either necessary or desired by lots of people? I suppose we all have a different way of seeing things though. Everyones clock clicks differently Windows 7 has now been running long enough, that a google should yield just about any question one has.

Ω

 

Yes at first it was a bit weird for me. Had to re-learn how to do the same things. But after a while I realized things were placed more sensibly and I now can use 7 just as efficiently as XP or even better in some cases.

I have the same problems going backwards as well. If you've ever made the jump from 9x to XP everything is similarly different. Remember a lot of people hated XP at first but it's become a reliable and beloved OS. It just took time and understanding to realize everything was designed the way it was for a reason.

Mind you, Russ, that 7 was also designed with the intent of opening up computing to the uninitiated. They have dumbed some stuff down but I don't think they've alienated long time Windows users as bad as it may seem. With a bit of time and patience I feel even hardcore XP lovers will warm up to the new OS.

And as far as performance goes, Vista was a wreck. Some still may complain about 7 but remember that anyone with half way decent hardware can run it with little to no performance loss. I am very satisfied with the performance of 7, especially given they've vastly optimised the aero interface and basically cut the RAM use 30%.

I like to be nitpicky and I personally couldn't stand XP straight to Vista. But going back to XP for a long time then to 7 was a different story. They've done a lot to improve the interface and functionality without compromising performance. And with aero turned off the 32 bit version actually performs BETTER than XP. I have several testimonials from both noobs and experienced performance enthusiasts and the general consensus is that Windows 7 is the perfect blend of new features and performance.

And as for some general things I've done to improve performance further:

- Turn off the indexing service and disable it in HDD properties to reduce thrashing(slows searching from instant to a few seconds, whatever)

- Turn off the Nvidia stereoscopic service(if applies)

- Adjust the boot settings in MSconfig to detect all 4 cores when booting instead of after loading

- Turn my power settings to always on and just turn off the monitor after 10 minutes.

- Keep startup programs to a bare minimum and start them as needed. Don't leave background processes running when not in use.

- Schedule nightly defrags and do a cold boot every week or so to clear the memory and load up fresh.

- Run CCleaner clean up and registry scan daily. Also lets you edit your startup programs.

- Disable the hibernation service and delete the hibernation cache file(saved 4GB of HDD space and some nasty thrashing waking up)

Just these tweaks alone helped a lot with general responsiveness and cut down the terrible disk access from booting and loading files.

Mind you I'm a bit of an OS clean freak. My file organization might be a bit jumbled but my OS always performs in absolute top shape. You know how after a while a PC gets bogged down with cache and temp files and background processes and stuff? Mine doesn't ever get past a few temp files, period. I pay very close attention to my number of running processes and to my temp files. So much so I feel comfortable and at ease using task manager to manage my programs and I can navigate to all my other files, even deep into my system files, with ease.

Also remember to leave Superfetch on as that helps considerably with responsiveness and program load times. It is much different from indexing in that it actively takes up RAM in order to speed up the OS and gives the RAM back when needed.

 

Oman7,
Win 7 was designed by people who put form ahead of function. Never mind if it functions well or not, as long as it looks cool using it! It's not what you have but how other people perceive what you have that determines whether it's cool or not!

The one thing you don't seem to understand, is you shouldn't have to Google much of anything routine! I never had to Google to find anything in the control panel, and I never had problems as simple as trying to discover how to un-install a program, and I've been using Windows in one form or another for over 20 years. Windows was always intuitive for as long as I can remember. The worst thing they ever did was change a lot of the control panel icons from being familiar, to crap you can't recognize at all! Win 7 is better than Vista, but still not near as easy to use as XP-Pro. If games are not your thing, then you are just wasting your money.

XP has been around for 8 years now, and the way M$ is going with things, I suspect it will be around for another 8 years. For one thing, it's not fraught with peril every time you install new software! I installed Power DVD 7 on my Acer laptop, and promptly blew up the entire OS. I got no warnings, other than it may not work right. Cost me $44 for a restore disk from Acer. Thanks Vista! Maybe I should have sent the bill to M$! Win 7 was better at warning you of possible incompatibilities than Vista was, but it can still be a crap shoot! The list of programs that won't run on Win 7 is almost as large as the list for Vista. Office XP won't run on Win 7, so if you want it you have to shuck out $279 to buy a vista/Win 7 upgrade. Hey, it works fine in XP-Pro, so why would I want Win 7? So I can spend that kind of money on something I don't need to begin with?

With all the talk of how fast Win 7 is, it's a joke, other than games. Thanks to needing a "Permission Slip" for everything you want to do. Stupidest thing I ever heard of, and a total lack of any kind of security to boot! I love seeing "Microsoft needs your permission to install this software", or "Microsoft needs your permission to open this program"! Anyone can install anything they want on any computer they can get their hands on. How on Earth is M$ going to know who you are, at the keyboard? You could be a hacker who's gained control of someone else's computer, and M$ would never know! So what good is the slowdown? It accomplishes nothing but giving people a false sense of security, because they think M$ is looking after their interests, and slows you down to boot!

I'll be sticking with XP-Pro for a long time to come!

For those that would say that I need to upgrade my software, I ask why! My Office XP is 5 years old! They haven't changed anything! Word processors all work pretty much the same, so do spreadsheet programs or Powerpoint, so why do I need the expense? I happen to like Power DVD 7! I have 8, but I like 7 better. It's not that old, so why won't it run on Vista or Win 7. I see it as nothing more than a ploy to increase software sales, at totally outrageous prices. When XP came along, you could no longer play any of your DOS based games. Hey, I realize that you can't increase game sales if people continue to play their old games instead of buying new ones, so they slammed the door in everyone's face!

I personally think Microsoft should have made Win 7 a free upgrade from Vista, to fix their mistake with a buggy, resource hog, Operating System. They would go a long way towards gaining my respect if they did!

Russ