The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

You mentioned the XTA-UD4 board in the other thread russ. I own it as you can see in my sig It has been a wonderful board. 3.9 came quite easily for my 965 processor. A little too easy LOL! Almost freakishly easy. I can't wait to see how a 1090t does with it!

 

Oman7,

I was surprised to see some new things in the bios Setup. I understand that there are even more things that only come up on an AM3 motherboard, as well! The only real mistake I was making was not installing SP3 for XP. My browsers kept randomly crashing. Once I figured it out and installed SP3, no more browser problem!

I've got more good news! I took a look at my next door neighbor's notebook yesterday and I happened to mention that I needed a small drive for a boot drive. When he came to pick it up, someone had accidentally turned the wireless off with the fn key, so there really wasn't anything wrong with it. He asked me how much, and I told him to forget it. 5 minutes later he brought me over another Seagate 160, just like the one I had that went south. It had been in his Media Center PC, and he changed it out for a 500GB WD. No room for a second drive, so he gave it to me! So now I'm back to 3 drives again! Must be my week! Maybe I should be out looking for Wallets! LOL!!

Russ

 

Speaking of bios, Have the US2H boards you've worked with, had no Gigabyte splash screen initially? The one I slapped in my buddies system last weekend, showed no splash screen. First Gigabyte board to do this to me. I only looked briefly, but I couldn't find a way to turn it on. And I know i've seen the option before!

Please note, the board was not brand new. The last guy probably shut it off Probably in the advanced bios options eh? Where you have to key something specific?

 

No, the one I installed had one. It's what caused me all the grief where I had to put in the 955 again and flash the bios. I couldn't get past that screen! I just looked on Oxi and there is no Logo screen in the setup or in the manual!. I didn't even notice that! LOL!! It's in the Advanced section on my motherboard!

Russ

 

Russ, remember when you told me a way to unlock more features in the bios? What did you push LOL!

 

Oman7,

Ctrl/F1 Otherwise it doesn't save the changes.

Russ

 

I always turn the splash screen off. Most of the time you don't need a big screen to advertise to people what motherboard you have, especially if it's only you that's going to see it.

 

wow russ, some nice luck going around for you. Karma and all that

 

What can I say, I'm a proud supporter of Gigabyte

Thanks russ

 

Shaff,

It certainly has been my week, that's for sure! I could get used to this in a hurry!

Oman7,

You're most welcome. BTW! If you hadn't asked, I don't think I ever would have realized that the MA785GM-US2H didn't have a logo screen! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Thanks russ. I see it now

 

@ Russ

Check this out if you did'nt see it yet Old school... and congrats on your new 6 cylinder can't wait to see the Dvd Rebuild times the different between the 4 and 6 core times how much you gained on a 2 pass

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/8744652/24231970

 

N_3_Days,

Thanks! I'm loving it already. Encode times with DVDRB/CCE 2 pass are about 35% lower than with the Phenom IIx4 955BE Quad. I ran Predators through it last night as I had recorded the time at 28 minutes with the 955 @3.8GHz. It took 21 minutes with the 6 Banger, set to 3.8GHz. At 3.9GHz it took 20 minutes, which is roughly about 35% faster. I got a kick out of the "Old School" music demo. As it happens I have 2 Wurlitzer Theater organs programed into my computer, a Model 216, 2 manual and a Model 260 3 manual. There are over 5000 digitally created pipes, all modeled by me one at a time, along with Piano, Harp, Vibraphone, Bells Chimes, Drums and Cymbals. Even chirping birds and Train Whistles! It sounds like you are in one of the old Music palaces from the 20s and 30s! It would take a very large room full of Synthesizers to do what I can do on the computer with it! And even then it wouldn't be as good! Sounds Awesome! If you ever want to hear what it sounds like, PM me an email address and I'll send you a few tunes!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I can't see upgrading to the 6 core for only a few minutes saved time with dvd rebuilder. However, it would no doubt have a significant impact with BD rebuilder encode times I'll no doubt be buying one soon. Just gotta sell my secondary...

 

Oman7,

Ah! You're beginning to understand what I mean when I ask how fast is fast! A 35%% improvement with Predators sounds impressive, but with that particular DVD it only amounted to 8 minutes! When I went from single core 3.83GHz P4 to an E4300 dual core, the difference was 1 hour, 30 minutes. The second E6750 dual core took another 15 minutes off of that. The third AMD 6750 dual core got it down to about an hour. The first AMD 630 Quad was about 45 minutes, and the 955, about 30 minutes. now it's averaged 23 minutes so far, with 21 minutes for Predator being the best so far. These are all rough numbers just to put the numbers in perspective.

Still, for me the $40 difference in price between the phenom IIx4 955BE and the Phenom IIx6 1090T BE is worth the money difference, and the lack of heat at 4.1GHz is impressive. It's incredibly fast and so smooth in operation. All these virtues will improve with the move to a Socket AM3 motherboard and DDR3 memory. If there was no socket AM3, I would be working on getting 4.1GHz stable right now, as I'm pretty sure I could tweak it that far on AM2+/DDR2. 4GHz+ seems to be the norm for the Thubans! I would venture a guess that the binning on this particular CPU is quite good, given the ease that it got to 4.0GHz. Then again, the binning on most of them seems to be excellent, and because the Wafer Yields have improved considerably, the production costs have dropped to the point where AMD is making a good profit on all of them! No more "Fire Sales"!

I know little or nothing about BD Rebuilder, so I can't really comment on the performance. I doubt that I'll ever own a BD player or burner, so the performance with DVD ReBuilder is what counts for me. This build has been such a struggle due to a bunch of very weird problems, that it's nice to see it all come together like this!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Well yeah, I think we're coming to the end of needing much more CPU power for standard definition video encodes nowadays, unless you're running batch scripts of loads of them. The real benefits in terms of video encodes for CPU power are high definition stuff. 720p is 3 times the pixel count of NTSC or 2.22x the pixel count of PAL. Likewise 1080p is 6.75 times the pixel count of NTSC or 5.55x the pixel count of PAL. What would take 30 minutes for SD one CPU could take 3 1/2 hours for 1080p, and what would take 25 minutes on a 20% faster CPU would only take less than 3 hours.

 

Sam,

You will have to do a better job of explaining, because I'm not following the 20% faster CPU at all. Could you explain it a little better please?

Thanks
Russ

 

What I'm saying is, if, for example, a faster alternative CPU were to be 20% quicker, it makes very little difference for small jobs like SD video that only take 30 minutes, as you'll only shave 5 minutes off. Run 1080p HD video encodes though that take over 3 hours, and the 20% faster CPU is shaving off a full 35 minutes, which makes an appreciable difference.

 

Sam,

I understand that, but 20% faster than what? Stock 3.2GHz as in the case of my 1090T, overclocked to 3.9GHz, or overclocked to 4.1 or 4.2GHz. So far the slowest encode I've done is 23 minutes, which is about 35% faster than the 955BE. I would think that the same would apply to any format. It still should do that 3 hour BD Rebuilder job on a 955, in just under two hours with the 1090T, or about 63 minutes faster!

Russ

 

20% is just an arbitrary figure used for the sake of example.