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Need help tweaking XP/KR7A rig...

saltedeggman

Diamond Member
My system Spec:

Antec 830 case
Philips 15" LCD
Ati Radeon 64mb DDR (163/163)
SoundBlaster Audigy Oem
Abit KR7A-RAID
Samsung 512 PC2100 DDR
Netgear 10/100 NIC
AMD XP 1700+
Alpha 8045 with sunon 50cfm 80mm fan
Maxtor D740X ATA133 7200rpm Harddrive

I have installed Via 4in1 4.37 driver, pci latency fix, video drivers from ATI most recent

 
Well, what is it that you're trying to tweak, exactly? Just looking for more gaming speed? Do you want to bother with overclocking? Here's the easy stuff, IMO - up your FSB a bit, say to 140-142 - that's a nice boost to the CPU and mem right there. Run a couple benches, ooh-and-aah at the improvement, let the system go for a few days to see if it's stable. If it is, take the FSB up to 145 and repeat. That's probably a good spot to stop the FSB - lots of device start getting cranky around there, so if you do decide to go further, spend some extra time testing the system for stability. Once you're confident with your FSB, start adjusting memory timings - try the "turbo" (or equivalent) settings and see if the memory holds up. If it doesn't, go back to "normal" mem settings and reduce CAS to 2 - hopefully that will be okay, and you can try the other memory options individually. (I've heard, also, that tRAS should be left at 6T to ensure data integrity.) Then work your vid card with Powerstrip - BTW, are you sure that its timings are 163/163? I've got the old 64MB VIVO with base timings of 182/182, and thought they were clocked the same. Powerstrip can take those up quite a bit - approach them the same way: boost and test. My Radeon is quite happy at 196/196 - and I don't really feel that a few extra MHz are worth the time to test it right now.

There are other tweaks you could do in the BIOS and in Windows, but they really won't have nearly the effect of the basic stuff above. You could also try unlocking the multiplier, though that's a lot of fuss for an uncertain profit.

Is that the kind of stuff you're looking for?
 
ooo sorry, its overclocked already, 145 seems stable, and playing ghost recon smoothly...my memory setting are set at most aggressvie setting, ie cas2, bank interleave 4, 1t command rate. The thing i am looking for is software wise, like the via 4in1 drivers, pci latency patch...those kind of tweak
 
Personally, I wouldn't install any software that affects system level stuff unless you have a specific problem that requires it. You'd probably only get a fraction of the performance you already got from the basics, and be adding another layer of complexity in case something does go wrong. I'm not even sure what else you would use. You might check out rage3d for more video related stuff, but again, you probably won't get much out of it. As for ECC, I think that would be auto-detected. I don't remember, though, whether you can use some ECC, some non-ECC. Since the ECC wouldn't boost your performance anyway, I wouldn't bother.

So... uhh... not much to say, I guess. 🙂
 
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