Asuka{eve}

Hey everybody!
Im gearing up another upgrade for my comp. Im out of the computer loop for a year and I come back and woah everything is smaller faster and better.

Well my comp specs are:
Lian Li PC-60 case
Gigabyte GA-75400 Pro 2
AMD XP 2500 Barton
Aopen Gffx5900xt<---I wish I hadn't bought this
Generic fan
Uber Generic 512 stick of 333mhz ram
120GB hard drive 7200rpm I believe 2mb cache
60GB HD 7200rpm
Maddog Entertainment 8.1 Entertainer

This system is freaking pissing me off *AHHHHHHHH*
My comp is slow and I get lots of hangups and slowdowns. read a few threads here and turned off indexing on my HD's. That helped somewhat but not much.
I tried over clocking but the temps go up too high for my taste. Help me Tfpers you are my only hope.

I dont want to but too much unnecessary things with new technology that's coming out in the future. Can you guys give suggestions on what to buy to have it decently fast?
What should I do? To become...truly hard core.

bltzkriegmcanon

I have to ask the obvious question - when was the last time you formatted/ran some serious spy/malware fixing software? These things seriously help, especially reformatting. I'm not gonna even say you need an upgrade for at least another year, and that hangups have to be due to something software related, because your hardware is too damn new to be doing what you claim it's doing to be just hardware-based.

__________________
What do you say to one last showdown?
- Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3

The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha.
- The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3

Asuka{eve}

Ive reformatted 6 months ago. De fragged. I've ran ad-aware a few times every week. I hate reformatting because my serial code for xp is invalid because I reformatted so many times. .
Thanks for your opinion.

bltzkriegmcanon

Ok, well what are you getting hangups and slowdowns on? I mean, are we talking games, or just Windows in general? I mean, the specs on your machine just don't make sense if it's a general Windows situation.

__________________
What do you say to one last showdown?
- Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3

The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha.
- The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3

Asuka{eve}

Windows in general. It just slows down and everything stops and my cpu usage is %100 this is just having a few windows open and starting crazy browser up. Btw do you thing upgrading to a better harddrive would be a good idea? At newegg that 40gig raptor is just about $100.

Asuka{eve}

woops I think I solved the problem. I only had a few megs left on my hd.

Xepidemic

u dl to much pron!

Asuka{eve}

How did you know!!!!

westothemax

You should be able to call in to do Windows XP activation, a toll free number is provided. I have to call in all the time for work and have only been denied once when a client admitted that he got his key from the Internet.

Dragonlich

If you solved the instability by checking the harddisk, I'd say there's not much to be gained by buying new hardware right now. A raptor harddisk is nice (I have it myself), but some new Maxtor disks, running at 7200 rpm, seem to be as fast as the raptor at 10,000 rpms!

Anyway, at this moment Intel is rolling out a new chipset (915/925), with a new motherboard layout and specs (new CPU socket, new PCI-Express videocards, new SATA harddisk connectors, new DDR2 memory,etc), while AMD is going to roll out a new socket for their Athlon64s. The result: if you buy now, you're not going to be able to use your "new" parts in a future computer. If you buy the new stuff from Intel, you might get an unstable system (first-generation might be crappy).

Personally, I'd wait a while for things to settle down. See if the new BTX case standard (pushed by Intel) catches on, see how the speed of the new systems compare to the "old" stuff, see what you can buy that would not be incompatible in a few months (SATA harddisks for example).

If you were to buy a state-of-the-art "old-generation" system right now, you'd either get an AMD64 with 400mhz DDR, or a P4 socket 478 processor, also with 400mhz DDR. Both would be using an AGP videocard. The speeds, when compared to your current system, would not be dramatically higher, except in games, due to the new videocard (which will also work in your current system!).

If you still have problems with instability, you might want to try a non-generic CPU cooler with higher performance, and add one or two case-fans for a better air-flow. And depending on the power supply, a new one might be better.

macsrule

Buy a Macintosh.

__________________
The reason I recommend Macintosh is because it will solve 90% of winblows users frustrations.

bltzkriegmcanon

Ooh. I'll let that slide, I'm not gonna fire up the flame warmachine.

__________________
What do you say to one last showdown?
- Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3

The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha.
- The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3

Asuka{eve}

I have done this where you go into the activation screen and they provide you with the numbers depending which state you are in. I absolutely hate it!!! Even though it is hassle free when I talk to microsoft rep they sound like zombies or really depressed people waiting to die. Gives me shivers down my spine. I was thinking about switching to linux but I have no idea what the pros or cons are or how easy it is to use.

I have a Lian Li case that i think has two 80mm fromt fans and another 2 exhaust fans. I was looking into watercooling but it did not seem cost effective as I have an xp and with that kind of money I could buy a much better chip.

Could anyone recommend a cooling solution for my pc? I checked my bios and it idles at 60c but I have no idea what it is under load.

I made some more space on my harddrive n my computer and pretty much solved the instability but I get some major slow downs when I open folder and it takes forever to get working? Any suggestions

Last thing. Do you guys think I should sell my vid card? Im pretty dissapointed with it.

Dragonlich

A good CPU cooler (I have it myself) is the Zalman 7000A AlCu. It's for P4's and Athlons. I dunno if it's the best around, but it'll certainly outperform the stock cooler (and it's silent too!). Just make sure you take a look at the list of supported motherboards, and take a good hard look at the 7000A all-copper option - it might cool better, but is waaaaay heavier. I run a P4 myself, and have idle temperatures (in a very low-airflow case, silent-modded) of some 35 Celsius; with the stock cooler, I had 38 C. But the real difference is in the temperatures at full load, of course.

Note that your XP processor will go up to some 80 C before overheating. If I recall correctly, the XP will then slow down to stop it from burning up.

For an extensive library of reviews, check <a href="http://www.frostytech.com/">Frostytech.com</a>

Should you sell your videocard... hmm. Performance-wise, it should be comparable (slightly slower) to an Ati 9800 pro. I have one of those, and I have yet to be disappointed by it. What exactly is disappointing about your 5900xt? It *should* be okay for most games. What games are you running, what resolutions are you trying to run, and what are the results?

Asuka{eve}

I run far cry at medium settings no aa no af water settings is at high. I run at 800x600. I get good speeds but I wish I didnt spend $230 for it. I have it overclocked it to 460 core and 820 mem.

Lasereth

A GeForce FX 5900XT is nowhere nearly as powerful as a Radeon 9800 Pro. In the NVIDIA market, "XT" means "Crap Version." There's the GeForce FX 5900 XT, then 5900, then 5900 Ultra. The XT is the worst version. The Radeon 9800 Pro is two steps above the XT, possibly more (in generation terms). The FX 5900 XT is about as powerful as a GeForce FX 5600 Ultra...maybe a 5700 Ultra, but that's pushing it.

You're probably disappointed with it because it has the power of a GeForce FX 5600/GeForce 4 TI 4200. Those cards are definitely not bad, but they're not top of the line and never were. If you want a new videocard, I'd save up $200 USD and get a Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB 256-bit. It'll run circles around your current videocard for a lower price.

As for your Athlon XP being too hot: mine used to run around 60 celsius until I got a good CPU Heatsink Fan. Even the AMD stock fan will run it as high (and higher) than 60 celsius. 60 isn't that bad, though...AMD actually says that Athlon XP's can be taken to around 80-90 celsius without taking damage. I do like to keep mine below 60 though! I suggest buying a Thermaltake Silent Boost or Thermaltake Volcano 7+ or 9+. None of those are over $30 and they'll cool your PC down at least 10 degrees. Remember that the temperature of the room that the PC is in is the biggest factor in how hot the processor is, though! At college, my processor was 30-55 celsius depending on the time of year.

-Lasereth

__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

Asuka{eve}

Thanks! I probably sell my vid card get some more money wait a bit and get a x800 or mabe a 6800. How much can I sell a 5900xt that I bought 2 weeks ago?

Lasereth

Where did you buy it? Just say it's malfunctioning and take it back if it's only been two weeks! The suckitude of that card is its malfunction. I'd try and get a refund first!

If you can't, good luck trying to sell it. The only person you'll be able to sell it to is someone who knows nothing about videocards. In other words, you'd be trying to rip them off really bad. That, or you can sell it for really cheap to a friend. If you did sell it, I'd ask for around $100-130.

-Lasereth

__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

Asuka{eve}

I cant refund it The place I bought it only offers 7 day full money back (no restocking) and they offer 30 day exchange. I guess I try to sell it for a 100 bucks sigh.

Does anyone think I should upgrade my ram? What kind of improvements would I get? Which is more important lower latencies or higher overclocks on ram?

bltzkriegmcanon

Lower latencies allow for higher overclocking in general. The lower they come default, the better. But, since you have a 2500+ Barton, and since about week 40-something or so, they've had a locked multiplier (unless we're talking a Mobile Barton 2500+), you'll have to get some seriously newer RAM in order to increase the FSB on your CPU. Because that's where the real overclocking is at. If you only have RAM that's clocked at 333 Mhz, your CPU is really, really restrained on OC'ing. I mean, majorly. I only know this because me and Lasereth tried it with Redjake's PC, and he had some genericore PC2700 RAM in there, and well, we got it to about 1.88 GHz, and that was about as far as she went without completely locking before you could get to Windows. So, yeah, I would definitely suggest some good PC3200 RAM, we're talking your Crucial or some nice Kingston, like some Kingston Hyper X 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200. That shiz has a nice, low, stock latency, at 2-3-2-6. Not bad for stock, but, with the proper cooling, you can do better.

__________________
What do you say to one last showdown?
- Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3

The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha.
- The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3

Asuka{eve}

So thats why I cant change my multiplier. Ive been able to get my computer to work at 200fsb making it a 3200 but I was scared of the temps so I stopped. I'll be looking for to get some ram soon. Thanks.

bltzkriegmcanon

Yeah, it was kind of something AMD sneaked in, we didn't realize the multiplier was locked until after some pretty research had been done, and overclocking had already commenced, but it's impossible to find a reputable vendor who has older Barton's.

__________________
What do you say to one last showdown?
- Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3

The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha.
- The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3

Lasereth

Buying faster RAM wouldn't benefit your system at all. Buying MORE RAM would, however. The only reason to buy RAM faster than your processor is for overclocking. As Blitz said, you need PC3200 RAM to OC your system stably. Make sure it's a reputable brand as well -- preferably Kingston, Crucial, Mushkin, Geil, and above all else, Corsair.

That's awesome that you got your PC to 200 MHz, but I doubt it would run stably. That's where the good RAM comes into play!

-Lasereth

__________________
"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

Asuka{eve}

Thanks!