Thread: Ensuring optimum performance from your PC

Originally Posted by surasak

Have you ever attempted this before?

Err, nope.

Originally Posted by surasak

Do you have a good power supply (not a cheap crappy one that weighs next to nothing)?

I'll get a 500w one. will that do? I'll also get a big heatsink/fan combo for the CPU from Pantip.

What do I do next?

Make sure it weighs like a tons of bricks. The heavier the PS the larger the trasnsformer and heatsinks inside (which means more reliable power).

Originally Posted by slimboyfat

i am still using my old computer (my newer computer should be attended by a nice man from Acer tommorrow).

now the old one is on the blink.

sometimes it wont start up at all and gives me a beep.
sometimes it starts and wont load windows because it tells me that ntfs.sys is missing.

but so far for the past 4 days i have been able get it to start properly by picking the whole casing up and shaking it violently and then switching it on again. Obviously i found this out by accident after getting a little bit stressed.

Keyboard problem. I had the same problem with my old lap top "ntfs.sys" missing, "ntloadr" (or something) missing. BS - the keyboard was generating crap input while it was trying to boot.

Disconnect the keyboard.

I tried to run PC Wizard (twice) tonight but my PC crashed. I think the CPU got too hot as I was performing the performance test. It seemed like a power cut, but the monitor stayed on.

I unplugged for 10 secs and rebooted with no problems. I think I should invest in a bigger heatsink regardless of whether I decide to destroy my PC by overclocking it.

^With my AMD XP2600 I had to redo all the cooling.
Having a larger heat sink and fan is only half the story.
You still have to get cold air in and warm air out of the case.

Get all your fans pointing in the same direction either north/south or east/west or else they will be fighting each other

Originally Posted by Thetyim

Get all your fans pointing in the same direction either north/south or east/west or else they will be fighting each other

darn - now i need to buy a compass

Easier just to leave the side off.

Originally Posted by surasak

Easier just to leave the side off.

but wont the kids electrocute themselves when they start poking around in there?

I have just changed a couple of options on my machine and it is really flying along today.
I have disabled QoS bandwidth limiting.
I have increased Core System performance.

The wife also phoned the ADSL engineer and told him that the service sucks


OK, so which one has boosted performance

Originally Posted by Thetyim

I have disabled QoS bandwidth limiting. I have increased Core System performance.

Are you going to enlighten us as to how these things are done?

Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

Are you going to enlighten us as to how these things are done?

Well the options must be available in Control Panel somewhere but I used a utility called Advanced System Optimizer which can be used to change a whole load of settings.

Just shout if you want a copy but I would wait to hear opinions from our resident experts first about these options.

Which version do you have? Mine is v2.01.04 but it's in my zzz folder which means the chemistry was wrong and I uninstalled, but might give a later version another chance.

^ Same here.

Version 2.10 has been released but I won't try it until I have a little something that makes it run without paying for it.

Modifying QoS from it's default won't make your DSL faster as your DSL is inherently slower than your PC's network adapter.

QoS adjustments are useful in a LAN where PCs are communicating faster than you'll ever communicate over the internet.

OK, I follow you so far.

So how about the second one which holds core windows in memory so that you don't have to wait for it being swapped all the time.
I appear to have sufficient free memory to make this work

Basically you're keeping the Windows system in memory instead of letting it be swapped to the hard drive.

Theoretically if you had enough RAM you could disable the swap file and all your applications would remain in memory (this works well for Photoshop, for example, by not having to use a hard drive as a scratch disk since hard drive access time is far inferior to that of RAM).

In effect: using what would be called a RAM disk (if you've used a Mac before you'd know what I mean).

Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

Originally Posted by surasak

Have you ever attempted this before?

Err, nope.

Originally Posted by surasak

Do you have a good power supply (not a cheap crappy one that weighs next to nothing)?

I'll get a 500w one. will that do? I'll also get a big heatsink/fan combo for the CPU from Pantip.

What do I do next?

Are we ready yet?

Originally Posted by surasak

Are we ready yet?

I'm still waiting to find out if the 500w PS is going to be enough. If it is, carry on old chap.

Alright, well, there are two major factors that determine processor speed.

One is the front side bus (the speed at which the CPU communicates with the motherboard's chipset....to be more precise, the 'Northbridge' which controls the memory, AGP/PCI express busses, and communication with the 'Southbridge' or the part of the chipset which integrates the PCI functions such as the IDE controllers, etc.) and the other is the clock multiplier. Taking the FSB and x the clock multiplier = CPU speed.

For example, if your FSB is 100MHz and your clock multiplier is 10 then you have a 1000MHz CPU.

Looking at your CPU:



In your case you have an Athlon XP 2500+ which actually runs at 1466MHz (11x133MHz). What we want to achieve (possibly) is getting it up to the speed of an XP3200+ (which runs at a 200MHz FSB speed).

Now, how to do this? Well, in most cases the CPU's clock multiplier is fixed at the factory...it cannot be changed (unless you have what's called an 'engineering sample' which allows motherboard manufacturers to change the FSB/clock multiplier for testing purposes, or, if you have certain Athlon processors you can use a pencil to fill in some of the laser cuts on top of the CPU...I've never done this myself so I can't vouch for it). If the clock multiplier is locked then the only other alternative is to increase the FSB.

Now, the potential pitfalls: you can damage the CPU (unlikely, but, possible) due to overheating. One of the things you might have to do to get the CPU up in speed is increase the power to the CPU (some motherboards allow this in the BIOS...you increase the V in very small amounts from say 1.52V to 1.53V). Another possibility (stronger) is corrupting Windows. This is the most likely situation you may encounter. Why?

Well, a motherboard's resources are divided into groups. The northbridge of your chipset controls the CPU, memory, and AGP speeds. The southbridge controls the PCI/IDE components. The AGP bus likes to run at 66MHz and the PCI likes to run at 33MHz. If you start overclocking the CPU then you force the other busses to overclock as well. Generally if your FSB is 133 then your AGP will be 1/2of that and your PCI bus will be 1/4. If you increase your FSB to 150MHz then your AGP bus will be running at 75MHz and your PCI bus will be running at 37.5MHz. This can cause issues with various components that may not like being overclocked...especially hard drives. While it won't harm the hard drive physically the chance of data corruption increases substantially. So, if you want to try this the PLEASE USE A SPARE HARD DRIVE. During my past days of overclocking I cannot tell you how many times I corrupted an install of Windows beyond the point of booting. Fortunately I had created a bootable Ghost image of Windows to allow me to restore it quickly. You may or may not have this convenience.

Some motherboards will allow you to fix the AGP/PCI busses at 66 and 33MHz. If your BIOS has this I strongly urge you to enable it. It will make things easier. Keep in mind, however, that some performance gain is lost this way.

Overclocking is a misnomer. Sometimes you are actually causing a CPU to run at its rated speed. If Intel/AMD make a batch of CPUs (this all according to some Intel people I used to know) and a certain % test out at a certain speed then the whole batch is marked at that speed. Some CPU cores might actually run faster than rated. In other instances the first CPUs in a CPU family have a high incidence of overclocking while the high end CPUs do not. This is because you are essentially making the 'slower' one run as fast as the 'faster'.

In any rate what you're going to do is this: go into your BIOS, find the section where the CPU's bus speed can be adjusted, and, increase it by a small number each time. For example: you start off at 133MHz and increase it to perhaps 140MHz. Reboot, run a program to test for stability (games are great for this) and if the system runs normally then reboot and increase the CPU FSB a bit more. Keep doing this until problems start to arise (lockups, random reboots, etc). At this point you can drop the FSB down 1-2MHz and try increasing the CPU's V (very small increments!). Reboot, retest. Essentially you do this over and over until you reach a point where the system becomes unstable and exhibits random freezes. This is your maximum point you'll probably reach, and, you then drop down the FSB until you achieve stability (I like to run a special Quake III demo for hours to test for stability...you might use any program that causes the CPU to be used 100%).

Now, some components may or may not affect your ability to overclock. Memory, video cards, sounds cards, etc. Onboard items don't fare as well as dedicated items (like a real video card, Sound blaster, etc). This is where the real crap-shoot comes in because something simple as a cheap piece of RAM could hold you back completely...and you may not even know it.