I have an elderly Intel motherboard with an i810 graphics chipset. Xorg regularly throws a wobbler, producing a frozen screen of vertical colour bars requiring X to be crashed - this problem is more frequent when using KDE and Debian based distros. Its starting to get ridiculous now though, so I've had to sack it. In response to DD, nah, its a somewhat upgraded five year old computer and really isnt worth getting a new graphics card for. I'll likely buy a two year old box off ebay soon and cannibalise the good bits off this one and other stuff I have lying around to beef it up a bit, when I can afford to.
Shit, Dunc, I expected you to be tuning on something like this guy, from another forum I haunt, has been tweaking since the fall. He's a geeky audio nut with a lot more money than I have.His post, bragging about how cool he is.
I just gave birth to a new Frankenstein PC. She’s still burning in. Yeah, PC’s need to burn in too – LOL, tell that to a tech and watch his head spin!
This machine is SO FAST it’s scary!
It’s benching 97% faster then a P4XE at 3.73 GHz which is about as fast as an Intel Duo T3000 at 2.5GHz which debuted in the Apple Mac recently. Its 60% faster then AMD’s fastest duel core FX2-62 at 2.8GHz in standard ALU/Whetstone ratings.
With multimedia extensions, its 298% faster then the P4XE, 400%Intel Duo T3000 and 268% faster then the AMD FX2-62.
Hard drives are equivalent in speed to a SCSI-3 10k Quantum Atlas used in servers and high end workstations.
Video and audio editing is frightening fast. Multitasking is fluid. I wish I could overclock my Zen Select
Intel Core2 Duo (Allendale E6400), Intel i965p/ICH8R chipsets
Swiftech water cooled dual radiators. 6 fan speed controller, quiet operation.
3.52GHz, 1760MHz FSB, 440MHz Memory
2GB DDR2 Ultra Low Latency (4-4-4-12)
(2) 400GB SATA-II (3.0GB/sec) RAID-1, NCQ
ATI X1900XTX PCIe16x video, 512MB DDR3
Dual DVI/HD, VIVO and HiDef component output.
GPU Core: 640MHz / Memory: 1550MHz - stock
Dual LAN GB/sec, WiFi 802, USB2, Firewire, External SATA-2, 7.1 Hi Definition Audio (24/192), Optical and Coaxial Outputs.
Wireless Keyboard, Wireless Laser (20x) Mouse
400GB External USB-II extra storage
Pioneer DVD-RW, Sony CD-RW
Scott Nixon USBTD audio
19” Hitachi - Super Invar Shadow Mask
JBL Pro Media-4 powered monitors
The board is an Asus P5B-Deluxe WiFi/AP which uses the new Intel P965 chipset that WILL do FSB speeds as high as 600MHz native (2400Mhz), current CPU’s don’t go any higher then 266Mhz (1066MHz) but they are about too. This is what you look for, a core design that is ‘going’ to be higher. The Allendale/Conroe chip core will go as high as 3400Mhz with a 333Mhz (1333Mhz) BUS. The next revision of that chip will go as high as 4600Mhz, so says Intel. So these cores are technically capable of WAY more then what they are rated at. Still, It’s a crap shoot, some chips (particular lot day, location made) will do better or worse then others.
The chipset also includes the ICH8 southbridge controller from Intel. Its on-chip SATA-II and RAID is very fast and utilizes 16x PCIexpress piplines to the BUS. You would have to spend at least $300 on a PCIe controller (meant for corporate servers) with onboard memory and processing to beat its performance and it won’t be by much. The Maxtor Diamond11’s are really fast too and very quite. There are others that are just as fast or faster but all so close it’s insignificant. I’ve had good lich with Maxtor for the first time ever so I decided to stick with them. The board also includes an external SATA-II port for external storage many times faster then Firewire or USB2 and you can RAID to an external drive if you want.
The Asus also has Hi Definition audio (sound nice, still like my Scott Nixon way better) with digital In/Out (optical and coaxial), 802 WiFI, Dual LAN 10/100/1000 speed. The board also supports crossfire for gaming.
The memory is always the killer, The G.Skills will do 500MHz or higher. It’s rated at 400Mhz but it overclocks well. There’s faster but it’s expensive and hasn’t settled yet. In a few months I’ll possibly upgrade to something that can maintain an even lower latency but this is fine for now. Memory bandwidth is NOT the bottleneck. 2GB is essential for Vista, I’ve been happy with 1GB which is enough for WinXP. The memory is stripped in pairs which raises bandwidth, so I have two 1GB chips.
The video card was another hard decision. The desktop 2D is still superior with ATI over nVidia so I stayed with ATI besides Crossfire is an ATI thing and my board supports it. nVidia uses SLI and this chipset doesn’t so SLI.
The video card isn’t the fastest money can buy but its close. HiRes gaming with lots of eye candy is easily possible. Two cards running in tandem with the proper game support can literally double the performance!
The video card also supports full Hi Definition video with VIVO (Video In Video Out). It has a component video output harness as well as RCA and SVideo and dual DVI.
I have a Logitech MX-1000 Laser mouse (wireless, rechargeable) and a Logitech S510 wireless keyboard (slim and small). The keyboard came with a mouse but I gave it to my wife, the laser mouse is a 20X enhanced resolution.
I use a 6-way fan controller so I can adjust the speed of all the fans to minimize noise. If I’m gaming I simply turn the fans up and crank up the volume to keep it cool but most of the time its all turned down. The water cooler is overkill so low air flow is more then enough to keep temps at bay.
Power Supply is an Antec 550 which is enough for now. The video card draws over 100 watts alone.
Stock the chip comes in these flavors;
Core2 with 2MB cache and 667 FSB: E5600 (1.83GHz
Core2 with 2MB cache and 1066 FSB: E6300 (1.86GHz), E6400 (2.13GHz)
Core2 with 4MB cache and 1066 FSB: E6600 (2.40)GHz), E6700 (2.66)GHz), E6800 (2.93)GHz),
WindowsXP Professional, ie7, Defender, MP10
MS Office 2003 Professional
Adobe Creative Suite CS2 Pro
Adobe Premier Pro 1.5
Pinnacle Studio 10 Deluxe
Sony Sound Forge 8
Nero 7 Deluxe Suite
iTunes, Foobar 2000
Macromedia MX Studio (Dreamweaver)
Symantec’s Security Center
Lots of games; Doom3, Half-Life2, Unreal2, Civ4, Call of Duty 2, many others
Logitech MOMO digital racing wheel, racing games.
Water Cooler setup but not primed.
