BX users, increase your system performance for free!

[borealiss]

here's a file in *.lzh format to uncompress. i saw this over at bp6.com and it's a little program that enables you to tweak the northbridge of the bx chipset. it's under the heading "bp6 just got better" on the front page. my quake 3 scores with 2 466 celerons went from 87 fps to 100 fps! when i overclock to 583, i went from 110 fps to 121 fps. this is in normal mode. some people in the forum mentioned on bp6.com seem to have similar results with different applications. use this at your own risk. sometimes some settings caused my system to hang, but the extra performance boost is sweet. you just gotta find the right settings. and if this has been posted before, sorry, didn't know about it.

 

[Pete]

Seriously, Calvin and Hobbes was the epitome of quality comics. Watterson nailed everything. I've recently found a bunch of web comics that lessen the pain--not in the same league, but close. Sinfest, Superosity, and PVP are good places to start. The first and third show some great artistic talent (particularly Sinfest--that guy is amazing), and the second is probably the funniest. All good stuff, though. Of course, there's the FDA-approved and veterinarian-recommended Penny Arcade for the gamers.

Oh, about the BX improvement . Well, I have a BH6, so I might try it in the future, but right now I'm aiming for stability and a quiet running PC. I'd like to hear how stable people's sytems are after this, though. I recall it being posted before (a few days ago).

 

[borealiss]

i'm glad you share my pain on calvin and hobbes. stupid syndicate. anyways, i've been running this program with rc5 going in the background for about a day. it seems that you have to find the right settings, and mine hasn't crashed yet on the settings that i do have. good luck.

 

[Pete]

I thought Watterson retired? Very close to Larson and somewhat close to Schultz--all a shame. I don't think they cancelled it. Sure, I'd of liked him to go on indefinitely, but he did such quality work, I'm OK with what he gave us. Ah, memories .

 

[Mixxen]

Dam I crashed hard...maybe it's my FSB setting. I'll try again.

 

[borealiss]

well...they didn't really cancel it. but watterson was fed up with the syndicate. they constrained him to certain outlines for the sunday newpapers, and he wanted the freedom to do what he wanted. so basically he was shunned for his creativity by newspapers that wanted to print standard ho-hum cookie cutter strips. and because many papers dropped him, he also got a lot of pressure from the syndicate. so they kinda forced him into the corner.

oh yes. about the crashing. mine crashed hard too, but i found that it had to do with the dram refresh rate. i disabled it, and that's not a good thing evidently with my computer. i put mine at 15.6 microseconds.

 

[shawn_16]

anyone else try this on another bxboard, possibly a BE6? If so, did it improve performance to a degree which is noticable? and what settings did you use?

 

[oldfart]

First Bloom County, then my beloved Calvin and Hobbs , then Far Side. I haven't read the comics in years. Remember the Calvin and Hobbs snowman series? ROFL

 

[Paul]

Watterson was my high school English teacher's brother. He's a cool fellow and the comic rocked!

 

[Mixxen]

Okay, I found that adusting the Leadoff Command Timing crashes my computer.

Here's what I have set now...

SDRAM CAS 2/2/2
DRAM Idle Timer = 8T
Idle/Pipeline DRAM Leadoff = 0 wait (best improvements)
Host Bus Fast Data Ready = Disable
Leadoff Command Timing = 4T
DRAM Refresh Rate = 15.6us

SiSoft Sandra Memory Benchmards
Before tweaks (my CAS was already set to 2/2/2)
ALU = 335MB/S
FPU = 404MB/S

After tweaks
ALU = 382MB/S +14%
FPU = 426MB/S +5.4%

Um, I guess that was fun.

 

[shawn_16]

how do you adjust the settings (in dos)?

 

[borealiss]

you should just set them, then click "ok" in windows.

 

[Pete]

Paul, you lucky bastard!

 

[borealiss]

paul, you can hook us up right?

 

[borealiss]

anybody try the "pci controll status" options? i'm really afraid to do this. i don't have enough balls to do so. or any of the other dare-devil options no one is willing to try?