The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Merry Christmas to all! And to all a CoolIt ECO!

 

Sam,
Compared to older versions of EasyTune, you are right. I can't really see why EFI would look bad though. You really don't need it anyway, as AMD Overdrive pretty much serves the same function. The last two versions are really good, and easy to use. You can make the changes permanent by transferring them to the actual bios, or you can set up profiles to suit the need such as special settings for games and things like that. With the profiles you select the profile you want at boot-up and you have what you need. I'll be sending in my CPU for evaluation after the first of the year. AMD feels that my sound glitches may be caused by the CPU, and if that is the case, they are willing to discuss an upgrade to a 1090T.

We also had a discussion about the water cooling voiding the warranty, as there is nothing in my warranty about that, like there is in the newer ones. Blame the Butt-Holes that go CheapCheap on water cooling for that!

I wanted to ask you, what software I should use to check my HDDs. my boot drive is getting on in age and I wanted to do a thorough test on the drive. SMART looks good, but is there more I need to know?

Happy Holidays,
Russ

 

Call me a sceptic but I really don't like the idea of applying overclocks on-the-fly. It just seems too risky to me.
Interesting the clause on watercooling voiding warranties, keep me posted on that. I have yet to specify a watercooler in any system because I don't agree with them, even to this day, but there will always be those who insist upon it, and it would be worth noting if manufacturers will take issue with warranty claims using them.

SMART readings vary depending on the program used to read them. Speedfan's built-in SMART util is reasonable, run the web analysis tool and it will tell you pretty much all you need to know, save the manufacturer-specific tags that companies like Samsung use to hide faults from users.

 

Sam,
I quite agree on the overclocks on the fly. The way I use OD is to overclock manually until I get to a reasonable level of stability, and then tweak the fine adjustments with OD. Things like CPU, NB, CPU NB VID, SB voltage, HT Link Multipliers, NB Frequency Multipliers, Memory settings and so on. This way you don't have to keep re-booting the computer. For instance, the CPU NB VID, which is critical to getting a good overclock has a broad range, and each step up or down is very small. Conceivably you could have to reboot 5-10 times before you get it right. Making the adjustment with OD lets you do that right from the Windows environment. If testing reveals a problem, it generally won't crash the computer unless you do something really stupid. It does the same thing as making the adjustments in the bios settup, and the settings can be transferred directly to the bios, if you choose not to create a profile. It just saves time. Some people, myself included at times get impatient and move a setting two clicks at a time instead of one, which can make you miss a more ideal setting. It just makes a time consuming process go much faster, especially if you are tuning the individual cores with the ACC for maximum performance. Say you have 3 cores that don't crash the computer at 4.1gHz, but the 4th core won't go past 4.0. You can drop that one core's speed with the ACC to 4.0 or 3.9 and leave the remaining three at 4.1. This would be an extremely small loss in overall performance, but still give you an overall gain in performance. This way you aren't losing the benefit of the faster cores. It's also very good for unlocked dual and triple cores, where you can use the other cores and get some benefit from them.

Russ

 

Heh, fine adjustments. Every time I've resorted to those they've never made a blind bit of difference. Now I'm well aware that's not true for everyone, but all the occasions I've hit walls with overclocks, they've been no use. Then again I'm not exactly pushing the boundaries with mega watercooled overclocks.

 

Sam,
I prefer not to overclock to the max anyway, because that puts you in the area of diminishing returns. Benchmarks may look great, but in real world applications like DVDRB/CCE can crash a computer that passes stress testing for 12 hours quite easily because of that. The real world difference between 4.1GHz and 4.0GHz is very small, but the time difference doing an encode is even smaller. How much time has someone saved, if the program crashes the computer, and they have to start over. I've found that I can get about 97-98% of the best I can do at 3.9GHz, at 3.8GHz, by tweaking the memory sub timings. That doesn't mean that you can use the same settings st 3.9GHz either, because usually you can't! Seems to me that overclocking is all about getting a balance of everything to get, in my case, good RB times. The acid test is Folding at Home. I can run my computer at 4.0GHz all day long, but I have to go slightly over 1.40v to do it, and it will not pass Folding! The computer remains stable and doesn't crash, but never completes the work units.

Russ

 

Yep, same attitude I have. People often ask why I run my i5 at 4.1 and not 4.2. Simple fact is, it's [usually] stable here, and it isn't at 4.2, at least not without more adjustments.

 

You ever heard of this Russ? it's a Free Download on there limited options but it's good to check your transfer rate and access time and burst rate if that's all you need to do...

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

 

Will,
I want to check the drive for errors. The performance is fine! Thanks for the link, though.

Merry Christmas Will,
Russ

 

No one has posted the obvious yet, have you tried the chkdsk utility that comes with Windows?

 

Deadrum33,
Checkdisk is good for file structures, but it doesn't do a surface scan for errors as far as I know.

Merry christmas,
Russ

 

Yes, not the same as SMART, but i thought that it was good for reporting and fixing bad sectors? Going further, if these sectors are unrepairable that is a sign of disk longevity, or lack of.

 

Deadrum33,
I just downloaded two versions of Seagate Tools. Both fail to install because of some MSI error. Typical for Seagate drives. I've bought them with install disks that show the message that it can't find any Seagate or Maxtor drives in the system. It's just like Ati not recognizing my monitor. Funny thing there! Windows has no problem seeing it, nor does Sandra, Everest and others. Ask Ati and they say that perhaps it's time to get another monitor. Gee, I wonder if they would like to pay for it? Ati just doesn't spend the money to do it right. Even old PCI nVidia Gforce2 cards identify my monitor correctly. I suspect that Seagate is the same way and adopts the philosophy of just ignore it and it will go away eventually! If you want a real laugh, WD Data Lifeguard installed it! LOL!!

Russ

 

sam, I don't think you should write off GBs EFI, due to current software, and ASUS's smart doctor crap, looks and runs horribly. All onboard software really sucks, bar amd's overdrive.


russ, have you tried speedfan?, get that and use it to check for errors? Though it reports smart errors, and the like, so I assume you already have a program that can do that.

 

Thanks Shaff, SMART looks good. I was just wanting to see if there was anything else I could check! You are right, AMD Overdrive is pretty darn good! At least the way I use it! saves a lot of re-booting!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year,
Russ

 

Shaff: I'm hardly writing it off, I haven't even seen it yet. I'm just a little apprehensive.
Russ: To be fair, I'd wager there'll be plenty of monitors out there that are the other way round - they work on ATI systems fine, but only show up as default plug and play monitors on geforces. If you were to complain to nvidia about them I bet you'd get the exact same response.

 

The thing that's aggravating about the 4670 is that it does work in VGA, sometimes. It still doesn't see the monitor, but it does allow me to do 1680x1050. The sometimes, is because every once in a while it won't boot up in 1680x1050, but 1600x1200 and I have to reboot a couple of times and then it straightens itself out. I didn't buy a DVI video card to use VGA! I put a Geforce2 440 4x AGP in the old Dell 420 Workstation, and it sees the monitor just fine! I also have a Gforce 2 200, and it sees it too! I see hundreds of computers every year, and the only time I have issues is with Ati cards. The older ones work fine, but none of the on-board HD video or Ati HD cards will render 1680x1050 with my monitor! They just show up as Unknown Monitor, not even Plug and Play!

Russ

 

With your monitor. If you'd happened to have bought a different monitor, you would never have known about this issue, and wouldn't be openly panning ATI all the time. As I say, there's probably a monitor that has this issue on geforces. What if you had that instead?

 

then he would be saying it against geforces, and rightfully so tbh. If its happeneing, it id happening. Im sure russs doesn't want it, and its annoying. You just want something like a monitor, or a kb or mouse etc, to just work. Russ i assume you can't get iy rma'd.?
imagine you had a whole load of broken mobos but from gb, instead of asus, would you say thesame thing?

 

It's not a question of a faulty product, it's a question of incompatibility. He says it affects every ATI card he uses, and I believe that. Faulty products isn't really the same thing at all and you know it, but to respond to your question, yes I would. Fortunately though that's unlikely to arise as Gigabyte boards aren't terrible. You can tell even from the design of most Asus products that they're bad, even if you ignore the terrible reliability.
Do you really want to open that can of worms again?