More new system questions.

[grizz]

Like a lot of the threads here, I'm thinking of building a new system and letting the wife/kids have at the old one.
But i've been out of touch with advances in MB/cpu etc. technology since I went from a Celeron 450 to a p3 600.  

Is there any compatability issues with the following hardware?

ASUS A7V266-E W/RAID ATX VIA KT266A (SK A) (ATA 100) 3 * DDR SDRAM
AMD ATHLON XP 1700+ AXP1700DMT3C 1.47GHZ CPU SOCKET A DDR NON-ECC PC2100 CL2.5 256MB MEMORY 266MHZ
ASUS V8420 GEFORCE4 TI4200 W/ TV OUT AGP W/128MB DDR MEMORY

Good choices or bad? I'm totally lost when it comes to newer hardware.

Thanks for any replies.

[Pongo]

I would go with a a7v333 board and ddr2700 ram..thats what I did..

[grizz]

Originally posted by Pongo
I would go with a a7v333 board and ddr2700 ram..thats what I did..

Thanks for the reply Pongo.  (forgot I started this thread, hehe)

I did go with the a7v333 and ddr2700 ram with the Athlon XP 1700+.  I was going to go for a XP1900 but decided to drop a little money in a new monitor instead.  

Question: AT what speed should the XP1700 run at? At post by default it says 1116 mhz.

Anyone know of sites on how to tweak the bios settings for optimal performance? Right now everything is set to default as it came from the factory.

[weazel]

Bios Guide

[Pongo]

Yes I went with an xp1800 and a radeon 8500 retail...and droped the extra on a samsung 900 nf monitor.
Let me know what kind of frames your getting. Im at 75 almost all the time at 1280 by 1024 32bit. But I think I should be able to do better..
You running Windows XP?

[volsung1]

The XP1700 should run at 1.46Ghz:cool:

[grizz]

Thx weazel. I'll look throught that as soon as I'm done setting everything up here. I've got to swap out some drives then reformat two machines here. Then I can concentrate on playing with this new one.

Pongo, I'm not sure exactly my fps at the moment.   edit: Running Win98 SE.       Initially it was stuck around 59-60 no matter what. After updating the via 4in1's and latest nvidea drivers it jumped to low 80's at 1024x768x32bit.

But that was at 1116 mhz like I mention above. The box is on the kitchen table right now waiting for a HDD and CD-rw. As soon as it's ready I'll be doing some playing around.

Volsung1.....that's what I thought. In the bios there is the option to run at 1446 mhz (iirc) but the damn thing overheated while I was in the bios.  I kept getting a "hardware problem" error message during post. When I checked the temp was fluctuating between 95c and 100c.  At 1116mhz temp is around 59-60c.

[AKWarp]

The clock multiplier in the XP 1700 is 11, so to get 1116mhz, you are running your Front Side Bus at 100mhz raw.  You should be running it at 133mhz.  The Athlon XP's are all made to run a 266mhz FSB (133mhz raw, double pumped).  The older pre-XP Athlons came in two flavors, 200mhz and 266mhz FSB (100mhz double pumped and 133mhz double pumped).  

As for the heat, that's too hot for your setup, it shouldn't be that hot unless you have something wrong.  Are you using the stock heatsink and fan that came with the CPU (assuming you bought a retail version of the CPU)??  If so, it should be running cooler than that as the heatsink included with the XP CPUs is actually fairly decent.  Did you scrape off the cheapo gunk on the bottom and use a good quality heatsink paste (like Arctic Silver 3)??  If not, I suggest you do.  

Either way, if the heatsink you have is inadequate (and it sounds like it is), get a good quality heatsink and fan.  Price range is only $20-$25 for a good one.  Do some searching on the net for heatsink reviews.

[grizz]

Akwarp, yes it was the retail version with the stock h/s and fan. I let the tech at the store install it as they have an instore warranty that would be void should I do it myself. I asked if they used a thermal paste when installing and was assured that they did. Now i'm not so sure. Looks like I'll be paying them a visit in the near future.   (i know I had a big club around here somewhere?)

Thanks for the info.

[grizz]

Pongo,

I managed to play for a bit today. At 1280x1024x32 my fps stays steady at 59-60. In all situations. Smoke, heavy traffic etc.

I did get the cpu running stable at 1466mhz. After approx. 1.5 hrs. of AH this morning, the temp held steady at 69-71c which is still in the "blue" so to speak. At idle the temp is still mid 60's. I'm going to look for a chassis fan and probably modify the case a bit when I get back to work on Tuesday.

I don't really care for the joystick port....very spikey compared to my old SB pci 128 sound card.

And I can't seem to get the mike working properly with the onboard sound. Might go look for another sound card to.

[Pongo]

Mine runs at low 50s idle and 60 full load. I added two intake fans and an out take fans..its a bit loud though. I have picked up some artic silver to re apply my heat sink cause I think they may not have mounted the fan correclty.

Mine is almost always at 75fps. But taking off in a burning field it can drop to 55. When I first got my pc about a month ago I could not get my joystick port to work properly for my sblive, so I pulled it and enabled the on board one and couldnt get it working either. I dont know if my old joystick was wacked or what. But now I have a USB cougar with a port on it for my gameport rudders.

I would think that the Gforce 4200 vid card would get you more perfomance then my radeon 8500...Maybe windows xp is better then win98 by that much?

[grizz]

Well i got the mic to work properly now. There was menu I hadn't noticed in c-wave mixer that had settings for input. Seems to work pretty well.

I noticed that my monitor refresh rate changes to 60hz in AH from 85hz on the desktop. That would be restricting my fps to 60. The osd shows 60hz when I bring it up in AH. Closing AH resets it to 85hz.  

But, I have to say I'm happy so far.    Quite a difference from a P3 600 and a TNT2 ultra.  

[AKWarp]

The refresh rate on your monitor should not restrict your frame rates.

I just tried an experiment to see for sure.  At 85hz refresh on the monitor (hard set), I still exceed 250fps in AH.  In fact, setting my monitor to 100hz made no difference in frame rates at all.

[grizz]

Thanks again AKWarp.

I was under the impression refresh rate affected fps.

It's always good to learn something new.

[AKWarp]

Let me add to that...I wasn't complete in my information...

Frame rate will match refresh rate IF you have vertical sync turned on!  If you turn vertical sync off, then your frame rates will max out, regardless of refresh rate.

There are intances where frame rates higher than refresh rate can cause problems (like rubber bullets, etc) in some games.  I have not experienced this in AH.  Lag, apparent rubber bullets, etc are all about the same regardless of how I have my vertical sync set.