Noobie Building performance PC - Need expert advice!

[Roscoe62]

Hi all,

I'm building a new performance PC. I've built PC's before but the amount of testing/benchmarking/overclocking that goes into a new build on the Anandtech forums just blows me away! Apart from running some tests with Memtest in the past, what you guys do here is brand new to me.

I tried looking for some guides but, unless I'm looking in the wrong place, I couldn't find any.

I already have the hardware "pieces" and have put them together, but what I'm looking for is advice on best timings for the memory & BIOS settings, and what software I need to make sure I'm getting the best performance out of my hardware (which I'll list in a moment) possible. Even just pointing me to where I can find the information would be a great start.

My priorities are stability first, and then speed as this unit will be mainly a HTPC, so overclocking is optional.

My Hardware:
M/board - Asus P5B-E (rev 1)
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Memory - 2 x GSkill 1Gb DDR2-667 modules (CL4-4-4-12)
P/S - Antec Truepower 550
Video - Asus EN7600GT

As I said, the machine is assembled, but I haven't even loaded the O/S yet. OK, well I'm eager to learn and ready to listen, and I'm grateful for any advice you can give me.

Note to mods : If this is in the wrong section, please move it as you see fit.

Thanks!

 

[Roscoe62]

Well, I gotta say that's an UNDERWHELMING response.

Maybe I should just make the question simpler...

WHERE DO I START?

 

[Atheus]

I already have the hardware "pieces" and have put them together, but what I'm looking for is advice on best timings for the memory & BIOS settings, and what software I need to make sure I'm getting the best performance out of my hardware (which I'll list in a moment) possible. Even just pointing me to where I can find the information would be a great start.

My priorities are stability first, and then speed as this unit will be mainly a HTPC, so overclocking is optional.

You say overclocking is optional, but if you're running stock, the correct timings and BIOS settings are the defaults. If you are overclocking, the correct settings are simply as fast as you can get them without causing errors and crashes. This is where all those testing programs come in.

In terms of software, you want good drivers and as little else as possible - to get a good benchmark score (and a nice computing experience in general) you don't want much running in the background. If you want to go all out, you can try modded video drivers and BIOS.

I wonder though - why do you want to squeeze every last drop of performance out of this box? You said it was going to be an HTPC, so the specifications are way overkill to begin with...

 

[Roscoe62]

Thanks for jumping in.

For DVD playback this is WAY over the top. Even for playback of HiDef MPEG 2 streams this is a little bit of overkill. However playing back HiDef H264 streams has proven to be much more CPU intensive and is made easier with a dual core processor. Also, with the introduction of BluRay & HD-DVD into the mix then CPU/Memory performance are much more important than they were before.

I guess, as a starting point, I'd like to know how to tune the CPU and memory settings to get a nice mix of stability and performance. I don't really know how to go about doing that.

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: Roscoe62
I guess, as a starting point, I'd like to know how to tune the CPU and memory settings to get a nice mix of stability and performance. I don't really know how to go about doing that.

Look for some beginner's guides to overclocking or ask in overclocking forums about some mild tweaking. Good places are the processors/oc forum here at AT, ocforums.com, and xtremesystems.org forums. The latter site is just what it says - extreme - so don't jump straight in and do what those guys do, or you'll end up with all sorts of crap soldered to your motherboard and your processor submerged in liquid nitrogen before the end of the day

The first thing you want to do is get it flashed to the latest BIOS, get that OS installed, and put all the very latest drivers on it. This means you don't want to use the ones provided on CDs with the hardware. Then you can install some testing programs (prime95, superPI, etc... more info at the above mentioned forums) and get tweaking.

 

[Roscoe62]

Atheus,

That's exactly what I was looking for.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!