Pick up the new CPU mag at your grocers now.

There are a ton of free tips in it that I have done in the past, but forgot where I saw them.

This mag will stay in my PC drawer for futrure reference.
Just about all of the tips are free too, and they do work.

 

Is "CPU Mag" this one?
http://www.computerpoweruser.com/

And, is this the current issue or last months?

 

That is the one Mark.
Notice is has the words "Scream" in big letters.

Basicaly what it covers is turning off uneeded Windows services, putting your Swap file onto a 2nd drive if you have one instead of your main C drive, and many many other tricks.

Also it touches on tweaking the BIOS and overclocking too.

I am still not done reading the articles, it covers a lot of ground.

 

Sweet. Thanks alot, will any of this void a warranty?

 

Anytime you overclock a PCs CPU or the GPU, you risk blowin' the goods.
I do not OC my vid card, it came that way already.

But I have OC'd my 2.4c GHz Intel CPU many times by 30% by the BIOS to 3.12 GHz, and it runs great and stays cool.
It is the same as having a 3.12 GHz chip when OC'd.

 

How do you move your swap file? I've had issues with that. Some programs say I don't have enough swap space, but I have 80 gigs free on one drive and 140 free on my otehr drive. wierd...

 

I do not have the mag here, but it lays everything out in very good detail.

I am going to try and do it all this weekend if I get time.
Looking at a good hour or more to do it all.

 

I figure we're talking about XP?

(note: if you have one PHYSICAL drive that's cut into two logical drives, then this won't make a difference - you need two different PHYSICAL drives)

• Click on Start menu
• Settings
• Control Panel
• System (you may have to switch to "Classic View" to see this)
• Advanced
• "Settings" under the "Performance" tab
• Advanced
• "Change" in the "Virtual Memory" section
• You'll see a dialog like this:
  
  Section 1 shows you how the paging file is setup now, section 2 is where you change it, and section 3 gives you the information you need to make the right changes.
  
  
• In section 1, note which drive is your boot drive (usually C). By default Windows will setup a paging file on that drive - if you have two drives, that's bad.
• Select the boot drive, then click "No paging file" in section 2. Click SET (don't forget to do this!)
• Now select the other drive (ANY other drive! ).
• In section 2, click "Custom Size", then using the "recommended" number from section 3, fill that into both the "Initial Size" and "Maximum Size" fields in section 2.
• Click SET
• Click OK

At this point, you'll get a message saying that you need to reboot. Keep clicking OK buttons until you get the option to "Reboot Now?" and do so.

When you come back up, you should be all set.


Side notes...

• The above process will LOCK the page file size and stop Windows from trying to shrink/grow it. This _is_ what you want to do. XP is better than 98SE or 2k, but having the OS manage your page file size is NOT something you want it to spend time doing. Setting it to the "recommend" size is fine...
  
  And don't be tempted to give it more just 'cause you have disk space! Windows will try to use what you give it, and having more will actually put the OS into a situation where it will swap MORE frequently even though it doesn't have to. That's bad.
  
  
• For better performance, you want the paging file on a different drive than the OS BOOT volume. For _BEST_ performance, you want it on a different _controller_. The problem in making this happen is that the cabling that comes stock with PCs these days is designed to put the CD/DVD drives on the secondary controller and the HDs on the primary. The _right_ way to do this is to split the HDs across multiple controllers, so in a 2 HD/2 CD/DVD system you'd have HD-1 & CD-1 on IDE1, then HD-2 & CD-2 on IDE2 - to make it happen, you need new cables.
  
  Check eBay for cables - I just bought a 3 pack of Ultra ATA cables for $8 versus the $20 that BestBuy wanted for ONE.
  
  
• BE CAREFUL BUYING DRIVE CABLES!!!! (and check the ones you have now)
  Most mfgs are good about using ULTRA ATA cables (for IDE drives, SATA don't apply) but if you've been moving drives around for a couple of years, it's quite possible that you're using "ATA" cables. The difference is that the Ultra sest have a separate ground for each of the 40 data/control lines, you'll see the difference in the number of wires on the cable. The net difference to you is SPEED - most drives these days can handle Ultra ATA cabling, and when they detect it - you will get a HUGE speed increase.
  
  
• MAKE SURE DMA IS ENABLED!!!
  • Click on Start menu
  • Settings
  • Control Panel
  • System (you may have to switch to "Classic View" to see this)
  • Hardware
  • Device Manager
  • Open up "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
  • Double click "Primary IDE"
  • Advance Settings
  • In "Transfer mode", set to "DMA if available" (do this for both "Device 1" and "Device 2"). ref:
    
  • Click OK
  • If you have another entry for "Primary IDE", check there too
  • Do the same for "Secondary IDE"
  
  I have seen MANY systems where the 2nd device on the primary IDE controller is set to "PIO". That's REALLY slow.

Past that... MEMORY MEMORY MEMORY. Yes, Windows XP will run in 64meg of RAM, yes it will run in 512meg, but it runs best in as much memory as you can give it.

I've seen it go from "oh hum" to "wow!" just by moving from 512 -> 768. Memory's cheap enough these days that I suggest 1gig hands down.

Another side note... If you increase your memory size, and you've set a "fixed" page file size (see above) then you'll have to manually increase the size of the paging file. The general recommendation is 1.5 * the amount of ram (so, 768mb of RAM = 1152meg page file).


Hope that helps.

 

Thanks Midiwall!

I had my swap space set on my boot drive. It is now on my other drive and I have used the recommended specs. (1534)

I currently have 1 gig, but am thinking of throwing another gig into it.

Everything was already set to (DMA if Available)

Thanks for the thorough help.

 

Yer Velcome!


Cool. One thing to add down the RAM side is that if your machine is capable of running dual ported RAM, do it. It'll basically double your memory throughput which can be REALLY noticable for stuff like media work.

 

how do you dual port ram?

I have 3 slots for ram, it appears.

 

Ahh, then the easy answer is "never mind".

Dual ported RAM would have to be added in pairs, so an odd number of slots says that it's not possible on your machine. (what's the motherboard or machine?)

If you're curious, dual ported RAM is a setup where there are two memory controllers on the motherboard and they work together in being able to move data around. When there's a large chunk moving from "here" to "there" then they both fire up and do the work in half the time. Or, one controller will work on one request while another controller will work on a different request at the same time. The term "dual port" comes from the RAM is designed to be accessed by two different controllers.

The "norm" is that _all_ memory access is blocked while one controller does it's thing. Any process on the machine that doesn't require memory access (say, the CPU adding a string of regsiters) can continue, but as soon as something needs to get to memory, everything stops.

You figure that all this is happening REALLY fast, but 3ns (nanoseconds) of wait time across millions of waits adds up.

 

Awesome, thanks for the explanation. I get it!

I have an ECS P4M800-M7 motherboard with a Pentium 4 2.8 ghz processor.
It was a deal at fry's, I would have gotten a better board, but I just bought a Radeon 9550 a bout a year ago, taht I wasn't wanting to to replace. This was the only board they had with an AGP slot that woudl support the processor.I guess PCI Express is the new standard. 2 of my memory slots are browna nd one is blue, not sure if that makes a difference. I have 1 gig of ram, a 100 gb boot drive and a 160gb aux drive (which now represents my swap space!

 

Cool... nice rig!

Here's the home page for the board:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Product...uID=93&LanID=9

And yeah, no dual port support.One thing you'll want to be sure of in terms of speed and general peformance is to be up to date on the BIOS as well as the drivers. They're a bit hard to see, but there're links on that page for drivers and the BIOS. The BIOS was just updated 1.4.2006, so I'd be sure to grab that.

 

Thanks!

Another dumb question though, hahaha, I downloaded the bios .zip file and inside that is a .rom file. What do I do/Where do I put that?

Also, I just realized this board only has two DIMM slots. I was thinking about my old ABIT NF&-S2G board which had 3 DIMM slots, too bad it couldn't support my new processor.

 

Check back on the site and grab the "Flash Utility Download" from the link just below the BIOS download link you just used.


Nah, you stepped up... The NF7-S2G only has a 400mhz FSB, your new one is 800mhz.

 

Ok I think I did it right. I opened that program, Then I went to load BIOS and Flash, chose the .ROM file, It asked if I wante to load that BIOS into Flash ROM, I said OK, it did something, rebooted and I am here now.

Does that sound right?

 

dude... if the machine still works you're all set.

Did cha' happen to notice what the version number of the old BIOS? I'm just curious as to what the cummulative changes were to where you are now.

 

i have an older 733mHz machine with 756 meg ram and it boots XP just as quick as my quicker 1.8 machine running 98 with only 500 meg ram.

It makes a diffrence.

 

Yeup, but you're also comparing apples and bananas.

XP boots quicker than 98 anyway - it was a marketing "gimmick" to get the user to see that logon screen a lot sooner. They did this by cheating the time to when the logon screen shows, (the rest of the OS is loading while you're looking at the screen, or in the case of autologon, while you "would be" looking at the screen) and also moving to an on-demand model for drivers and GDI support.