Keep in mind my usual advice on this list is that hardware needs
to be eliminated from any problems, specially if it's a ready made,
in the first place. OC'd or not. OTOH, if it's there, RUN IT!!
Windoze reviews: the current darlings are the nforce an newer KT
400a/600 chipset boards runnin AMD XP's. P4's are bitin the dust,
still no decent chipsets to run on. OTOH, are these winsux reviews
applicable to Linux? As far as chipsets go ....yes an no. nforce*
chipset boards have several unresolved issues with Linux, gcc, an
GNU. Forget anything SiS. As far as Winblows reviews on hardware
sites, disregard, IMO, is usually the better idea. They have little
to do with a real OS.
So, just a report. I changed out a tired an old oc'd 1.4 Athlon
(1.553g) on a Soyo KT133a chipset with sdram, for an XP 3000+ with
Kingston DDR400 on an Aopen AK77-400 Max with a KT400a chipset.
Didn't really wanna but the ancient (8 years!) ram was startin to
fsck'up on the old mobo. Run hard, put up wet. Might'a been the cpu
L caches anyhow...
Pulled the case out from under the table, changed out the
motherboard/ram/cpu. What'a heck, tryin boot. ...... No problemo,
harddisk recognized a differnet NIC (now onboard), different AC97,
now 5.1 surround, and 9.2 cooker went about it's business. No
disruption for aDSL or sound. HDD's love the new board /cpu/ram/
controllers.
So went to testin and clockin. The Kingston ram was a
convienice. I got it bundled with the cpu/mobo. It was a variable,
even a concern since it's only sold by Mwave as Cas 3 DDR ram.
After several weeks testin tho, the ram has performed flawlessly at
Cas2.5, Ras/Cas 2, pre-Charge 2, at 2-bank, now DDR427. Way over
it's specs. Ram is what'll do, an I'm not sure I've found the top
of this Kingston yet. Still, I wish I'd gone to the trouble of
gettin Crucial or Corsair.
Currently (as I type), the XP is at 2301mhz (13x177, 354 FSB, PCI
35.2mhz) and rock steady. I keep inchin it up. Might go a bit or
more further. I haven't tried reducin the multiplier and goin to a
200+ FSB yet. I reckon I'm better off stay'in with oc'd 166@ 177
since the PCI is only out'a spec @ 35.2mhz, an the AGP is just over
70mhz. Some view this mistakenly as overclocked. It's not. It's
just out'a spec. Damn nVidia card was complain, but recent cooker
updates to XFree86 cooled that off. (XFree86-4.3-19mdk)
I know y'all believe memtest86 is _THE_ test, an I confess I run
it first too. But it's a weak test. It sort'a sux. Better is
mprime's #17, the torture test. Harder still, the acid test is,
cpuburn's 'burnK7'. One or two passes with memtest is a breeze, run
mprime's torture test thru test #1800 or so, run burnK7 for 25
minutes ..... then you know your hardware is stable. So far I am
with an XP core at 2301, CL2.5-2-2-2 DDR427.
So I gott'a XP Whatever (3600+?) that RUNS like a scalded ape.
Glibc compiles are a lot shorter ;) No Winsux ;)
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft?
Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
