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#1
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RAM to AGP mem sha Bad?
Hi everybody
My computer has a PCChips M925LR mobo with VIA VT8751 Apollo P4M266 (Nth)/VIA VT8233C (Sth) chipset and an Intel Pentium 4 CPU running at 1.8GHZ and 100MHz frequency. Two RAM sticks (128MB PC133 SDRAM but running at 100MHz) are in place and the mobo has an integrated S3 ProSavageDDR video card which shares memory with the RAM. It also has an external AGP slot which is currently empty. The computer runs well on WinME with startup and shutdown being impressively rapid and apps, in general, appear without delays. However, when I recently ran some benchmark checks on the memory (Everest), the RAM read/write speeds as well as the CAS latency turned out to be considerably worse than expected for similarly configured machines. Subsequent checks using SiSoft Sandra suggested that shared memory (RAM to AGP) can "seriously reduce system performance" and recommends installing an external AGP card. For this reason, I reduced (in BIOS) the amount of RAM memory shared with the onboard AGP from 32MB to 8MB. Surprisingly, this made no difference to the RAM speeds measured by Everest. Neither was the video quality adversely affected although both Everest and Sandra reported the available RAM as having truly increased from 224MB to 248MB. The following very interesting article from Tom's Hardware Guide http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/09/...nce/index.html suggests that integrated AGP cards sharing memory with RAM can very significantly reduce video quality and gaming speeds but is unlikely to reduce the performance of machines running office tasks. I'm in the latter category and therefore should not be adversely affected. Then why is Sandra saying the opposite and how do I explain the apparently poor results in the benchmark tests? My apologies for the long-winded lead-up but I'd would appreciate hearing from anybody who can clarify this subject for me, particularly anybody who has direct experience plugging in an external AGP and switching off the integrated card. TIA Paul |
#2
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RAM to AGP mem sha Bad?
On 16 Apr 2006 07:50:00 -0700, "PaulFXH"
wrote: Hi everybody My computer has a PCChips M925LR mobo with VIA VT8751 Apollo P4M266 (Nth)/VIA VT8233C (Sth) chipset and an Intel Pentium 4 CPU running at 1.8GHZ and 100MHz frequency. Two RAM sticks (128MB PC133 SDRAM but running at 100MHz) are in place and the mobo has an integrated S3 ProSavageDDR video card which shares memory with the RAM. It also has an external AGP slot which is currently empty. The computer runs well on WinME with startup and shutdown being impressively rapid and apps, in general, appear without delays. However, when I recently ran some benchmark checks on the memory (Everest), the RAM read/write speeds as well as the CAS latency turned out to be considerably worse than expected for similarly configured machines. Integrated video does that, but also Everest might be considering best-case scenarios which your memory or board bios won't do. PC100 (speed) memory just doesn't have a lot of bandwidth to start with then taking away some for the video makes it worse. If on the other hand you had a dual-channel DDR400 (PC3200) memory based system, there wouldn't be any perceived diference in performance for most uses, mainly gaming would be impacted by the integrated video. Subsequent checks using SiSoft Sandra suggested that shared memory (RAM to AGP) can "seriously reduce system performance" and recommends installing an external AGP card. Shared-memory integrated video does reduce performance in some tasks, but then the tradeoff was that it's cheaper. As always, if you want best performance the cost goes up and up and up and ... For this reason, I reduced (in BIOS) the amount of RAM memory shared with the onboard AGP from 32MB to 8MB. Surprisingly, this made no difference to the RAM speeds measured by Everest. It wasn't expected to, the issue is the bandwidth being used, not the amount. The amount is more relevant to what resolutions and bit depths are supported on your monitor, and to a very limited extent (since it's relatively slow video) how well it can play older 3D games. Neither was the video quality adversely affected although both Everest and Sandra reported the available RAM as having truly increased from 224MB to 248MB. What operating system are you using? If WinXP or Win2k with a lot of multitasking, the best performance increase for typical (internet, email, office, etc) uses would be to add some memory, increase to at least 512MB total if not more. However, the system is aging now and at some point you'd have to decide if pouring more money into it is appropriate instead of replacing whole thing. The following very interesting article from Tom's Hardware Guide http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/09/...nce/index.html suggests that integrated AGP cards sharing memory with RAM can very significantly reduce video quality and gaming speeds but is unlikely to reduce the performance of machines running office tasks. I'm in the latter category and therefore should not be adversely affected. Then why is Sandra saying the opposite and how do I explain the apparently poor results in the benchmark tests? Sandra runs a synthetic benchmark. It's not applicable to all real-world uses because some things don't stress memory as much as CPU or hard drive, other parts. My apologies for the long-winded lead-up but I'd would appreciate hearing from anybody who can clarify this subject for me, particularly anybody who has direct experience plugging in an external AGP and switching off the integrated card. Before you ran the benchmarks for the memory did you feel the system was too slow? If so, did it seem slower than it previuosly did? If so, have you defragged your hard drive and scanned for spyware, virus, etc? Your motherbaord bios might be running the memory at 133MHz, an asynchronous mode to the front side bus. "CPU-Z" (google will find it) will show the memory's SPD rating and the speed it's actually running at currently. If the running speed is below it's rated (SPD) speed, you might be able to change some bios settings to speed it up some... but be careful, it is very easy to cause instability doing this and at a minimum you should run memtest86+ for several hours to check stabiltiy if you do change the bios, _before_ ever booting windows to avoid possible file corruption. |
#3
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RAM to AGP mem sha Bad?
kony escreveu: On 16 Apr 2006 07:50:00 -0700, "PaulFXH" wrote: Hi Kony, Thanks a lot for your reply. My comments on your suggestions are interspersed below. Hi everybody My computer has a PCChips M925LR mobo with VIA VT8751 Apollo P4M266 (Nth)/VIA VT8233C (Sth) chipset and an Intel Pentium 4 CPU running at 1.8GHZ and 100MHz frequency. Two RAM sticks (128MB PC133 SDRAM but running at 100MHz) are in place and the mobo has an integrated S3 ProSavageDDR video card which shares memory with the RAM. It also has an external AGP slot which is currently empty. The computer runs well on WinME with startup and shutdown being impressively rapid and apps, in general, appear without delays. However, when I recently ran some benchmark checks on the memory (Everest), the RAM read/write speeds as well as the CAS latency turned out to be considerably worse than expected for similarly configured machines. Integrated video does that, but also Everest might be considering best-case scenarios which your memory or board bios won't do. PC100 (speed) memory just doesn't have a lot of bandwidth to start with then taking away some for the video makes it worse. If on the other hand you had a dual-channel DDR400 (PC3200) memory based system, there wouldn't be any perceived diference in performance for most uses, mainly gaming would be impacted by the integrated video. My intention was, and still is, to see what cheap (or preferably zero cost) options are available for optimizing the machine's performance. Therefore, I do not intend to upgrade the RAM sticks for the moment. Subsequent checks using SiSoft Sandra suggested that shared memory (RAM to AGP) can "seriously reduce system performance" and recommends installing an external AGP card. Shared-memory integrated video does reduce performance in some tasks, but then the tradeoff was that it's cheaper. As always, if you want best performance the cost goes up and up and up and ... I had thought of installing a second-hand (and therefore very cheap) 32MB (or 64MB) AGP 4x card and switching off the integrated chip. However, I was using this thread to see if the expected improvement was likely to be significant. The impression I'm getting from your comments is that this is improbable particularly as I'm not a gamer. For this reason, I reduced (in BIOS) the amount of RAM memory shared with the onboard AGP from 32MB to 8MB. Surprisingly, this made no difference to the RAM speeds measured by Everest. It wasn't expected to, the issue is the bandwidth being used, not the amount. The amount is more relevant to what resolutions and bit depths are supported on your monitor, and to a very limited extent (since it's relatively slow video) how well it can play older 3D games. Neither was the video quality adversely affected although both Everest and Sandra reported the available RAM as having truly increased from 224MB to 248MB. What operating system are you using? If WinXP or Win2k with a lot of multitasking, the best performance increase for typical (internet, email, office, etc) uses would be to add some memory, increase to at least 512MB total if not more. However, the system is aging now and at some point you'd have to decide if pouring more money into it is appropriate instead of replacing whole thing. The OS is WinME which I understand needs no more than 256MB of RAM. Indeed, I am told it can operate well with as little as 64MB. The following very interesting article from Tom's Hardware Guide http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/09/...nce/index.html suggests that integrated AGP cards sharing memory with RAM can very significantly reduce video quality and gaming speeds but is unlikely to reduce the performance of machines running office tasks. I'm in the latter category and therefore should not be adversely affected. Then why is Sandra saying the opposite and how do I explain the apparently poor results in the benchmark tests? Sandra runs a synthetic benchmark. It's not applicable to all real-world uses because some things don't stress memory as much as CPU or hard drive, other parts. My apologies for the long-winded lead-up but I'd would appreciate hearing from anybody who can clarify this subject for me, particularly anybody who has direct experience plugging in an external AGP and switching off the integrated card. Before you ran the benchmarks for the memory did you feel the system was too slow? If so, did it seem slower than it previuosly did? If so, have you defragged your hard drive and scanned for spyware, virus, etc? I have only been using this computer for about 5 weeks while temporarily away from home. My home computer runs on WinXP and has 512MB RAM and 2.53GHz CPU with an external AGP. However, I was very surprised to find that the computer I'm referring to in this thread is by no means slow in comparison. Indeed, it does many things faster than the machine I have at home. So my attempts to speed things up are not because of intolerably poor performance but rather a desire to "leave no stone unturned" in my quest for optimum performance. This computer is defragged at least on a weekly basis (Diskeeper Lite) and is scanned for viruses and other malware at least once per day with a range of software including AVG, BitDefender and Ad-Aware. Your motherbaord bios might be running the memory at 133MHz, an asynchronous mode to the front side bus. "CPU-Z" (google will find it) will show the memory's SPD rating and the speed it's actually running at currently. If the running speed is below it's rated (SPD) speed, you might be able to change some bios settings to speed it up some... but be careful, it is very easy to cause instability doing this and at a minimum you should run memtest86+ for several hours to check stabiltiy if you do change the bios, _before_ ever booting windows to avoid possible file corruption. CPU-Z confirms that the RAM SPD max bandwidth is 133MHz while it runs at 100MHz. The mobo does have a jumper which allows the CPU frequency to be changed from 100MHz to 133MHz. The mobo manual, in its BIOS section, indicates that "automatic adjustments" would be made to the CPU settings after the board had detected the "type of installed CPU". I took it from this that, were I to increase the CPU frequency from 100MHz to 133MHz, the CPU ratio selection would automatically be reduced to avoid overclocking of the CPU but allowing, at the same time the RAM to run at the higher speed. However, after I changed the jumpers, the machine simply refused to boot. Happily, it rebooted without problems when I readjusted the jumpers. My explanation for this is that the CPU just won't handle the higher frequency. In summary, can I conclude that you believe it unlikely that any significant performance gain will result from the installation of an external AGP card? TIA Paul |
#4
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RAM to AGP mem sha Bad?
PaulFXH wrote:
.... snip ... This computer is defragged at least on a weekly basis (Diskeeper Lite) and is scanned for viruses and other malware at least once per day with a range of software including AVG, BitDefender and Ad-Aware. If you don't have ECC memory frequent defragging can be very harmful. Each file move passes through a memory buffer, and there is NO check for dropped or altered bits in that buffer. So you can be gradually destroying your files with no warning. The actual destruction can be due to such things as cosmic rays, over which you have no control whatsoever. The damage will be in all your backups also. Always insist on ECC memory. -- "If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article. Click on "show options" at the top of the article, then click on the "Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson More details at: http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/ Also see http://www.safalra.com/special/googlegroupsreply/ |
#5
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RAM to AGP mem sha Bad?
In article .com,
"PaulFXH" wrote: Hi everybody My computer has a PCChips M925LR mobo with VIA VT8751 Apollo P4M266 (Nth)/VIA VT8233C (Sth) chipset and an Intel Pentium 4 CPU running at 1.8GHZ and 100MHz frequency. Two RAM sticks (128MB PC133 SDRAM but running at 100MHz) are in place and the mobo has an integrated S3 ProSavageDDR video card which shares memory with the RAM. It also has an external AGP slot which is currently empty. The computer runs well on WinME with startup and shutdown being impressively rapid and apps, in general, appear without delays. However, when I recently ran some benchmark checks on the memory (Everest), the RAM read/write speeds as well as the CAS latency turned out to be considerably worse than expected for similarly configured machines. Subsequent checks using SiSoft Sandra suggested that shared memory (RAM to AGP) can "seriously reduce system performance" and recommends installing an external AGP card. For this reason, I reduced (in BIOS) the amount of RAM memory shared with the onboard AGP from 32MB to 8MB. Surprisingly, this made no difference to the RAM speeds measured by Everest. Neither was the video quality adversely affected although both Everest and Sandra reported the available RAM as having truly increased from 224MB to 248MB. The following very interesting article from Tom's Hardware Guide http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/09/...nce/index.html suggests that integrated AGP cards sharing memory with RAM can very significantly reduce video quality and gaming speeds but is unlikely to reduce the performance of machines running office tasks. I'm in the latter category and therefore should not be adversely affected. Then why is Sandra saying the opposite and how do I explain the apparently poor results in the benchmark tests? My apologies for the long-winded lead-up but I'd would appreciate hearing from anybody who can clarify this subject for me, particularly anybody who has direct experience plugging in an external AGP and switching off the integrated card. TIA Paul But the office productivity benchmarks here, show little difference between plugging in a Radeon 9200 video card, and using the integrated video, in office applications. http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/09/...ce/page19.html A reason for moving to an AGP video card, would be to increase the display performance. For most people, this would be for gaming. In office applications, maybe you could scroll faster with the AGP card, but it might be a tie between the two graphics systems. In terms of the chipset itself, it is recent enough to have a 266MB/sec hub bus between Northbridge and Southbridge. Previous generations of chipsets used a PCI bus starting at the Northbridge, to connect to the Southbridge and the PCI slots on the motherboard. That sharing accounted for some of the slowness of the previous chipsets. So your chipset is "modern enough" in that sense. http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/ch...-series/p4m266 To improve performance, from most improvement to least improvement, the order would be: 1) Increase the CPU core clock. On many processors which have locked multipliers, increasing the FSB is the only method available to do this. On a certain percentage of AMD Athlon processors, the multiplier may also be adjusted. To enhance the CPU core clock, sometimes the Vcore to the processor must be boosted, and not all motherboards have an adjustment for this. "Wire mods" or switches have been used, to adjust the Vcore voltage on motherboards without a BIOS adjustment. The way I would do this, is disconnect the VID pins on the Vcore regulator chip, and control them with switches. Then the motherboard has no say in the matter :-) 2) Increasing the memory clock can sometimes help. But there is a caveat. If the CPU FSB clock and the memory clock are the same, the Northbridge designers remove resync flip-flops, which gives reduced latency whenever the clocks to the two subsystems are the same. When you run the CPU clock at 100MHz, and the memory at 133MHz, the resync flip-flops (a longer logic path), subtracts from the performance. On some chipsets, that means a significant increase in memory clock is needed, to pay for the added cost of resync. So, increasing memory speed pays, if you raise it high enough (without errors). Some chipsets just don't have the headroom for the necessary amount of memory clock speed increase. 3) Reducing memory CAS will give a slight improvement. Moving from CAS3 memory to CAS2 memory would help a bit. But this is not a cost effective upgrade, unless you can sell the original memory for what you paid for it. 4) Changing the motherboard might help a little bit. Some chipsets have better memory controllers than others. The biggest payoff would be moving your P4 to a dual channel memory controller, but as far as I know, that architecture change happened when DDR memory was more popular, so you'd need new RAM. So increasing the CPU core clock is the answer, and that is made easier if the BIOS has a jumperfree clock adjustment. This program can adjust some clock generators, while you are in Windows, but a very limited number of clock generators are supported. There are other programs available like this, where a specific version of program is needed for each model of clock generator. You must be "born lucky" to find the necessary clock adjustment program :-) And the amount of overclock is limited by not being able to increase Vcore, if that becomes necessary. http://www.cpuid.com/clockgen.php HTH, Paul |
#6
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RAM to AGP mem sha Bad?
CBFalconer escreveu: PaulFXH wrote: ... snip ... This computer is defragged at least on a weekly basis (Diskeeper Lite) and is scanned for viruses and other malware at least once per day with a range of software including AVG, BitDefender and Ad-Aware. If you don't have ECC memory frequent defragging can be very harmful. Each file move passes through a memory buffer, and there is NO check for dropped or altered bits in that buffer. So you can be gradually destroying your files with no warning. The actual destruction can be due to such things as cosmic rays, over which you have no control whatsoever. The damage will be in all your backups also. Always insist on ECC memory. CBF Thanks for pointing this out to me. I had never heard of this before. Nevertheless, in three years of frequent defragging on two computers I have never had the Windows Memory Diagnostic indicate any problems whatsoever with any of my RAM sticks none of which have ECC. Just lucky? Paul -- "If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article. Click on "show options" at the top of the article, then click on the "Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson More details at: http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/ Also see http://www.safalra.com/special/googlegroupsreply/ |
#7
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RAM to AGP mem sha Bad?
On 16 Apr 2006 18:51:47 -0700, "PaulFXH"
wrote: CBF Thanks for pointing this out to me. I had never heard of this before. Nevertheless, in three years of frequent defragging on two computers I have never had the Windows Memory Diagnostic indicate any problems whatsoever with any of my RAM sticks none of which have ECC. Just lucky? Paul Don't even bother with the Windows memory diagnostic, a proper memory tester must run without the OS because the OS occupies a significant, even substantial amount of memory on your system. Memtest86+ is preferred. |
#8
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RAM to AGP mem sha Bad?
On 16 Apr 2006 12:13:20 -0700, "PaulFXH"
wrote: I had thought of installing a second-hand (and therefore very cheap) 32MB (or 64MB) AGP 4x card and switching off the integrated chip. However, I was using this thread to see if the expected improvement was likely to be significant. The impression I'm getting from your comments is that this is improbable particularly as I'm not a gamer. It would be a minor improvement, worth doing if you had the spare video card just lying around unused. It wouldn't be worth buying one though, unless you could get it for peanuts. Similarly, some memory can be had cheaply and for your purposes the memory could be as useful or even moreso if you leave the system on for awhile between reboots, as this results in more files from the HDD being cached into main memory for faster access... IF you had enough memory to do so, otherwise the cache gets flushed as much as is necessary to run the applications. The OS is WinME which I understand needs no more than 256MB of RAM. Indeed, I am told it can operate well with as little as 64MB. It can, but just like any other OS your particular uses might exceed this amount of memory and then it would be useful to have more to vastly reduce access to the swapfile. Further the extra memory beyond that needed for the applications is used as a file cache (as mentioned above) which is much faster than rereading files from the hard drive each time. The issue isn't what the bare minimum is that'll work, since you aren't looking to barely be able to run the system but rather, the performance benefits of certain upgrades. Take for example those who have more than 256MB running WinXP... WinXP itself will run from 128MB, a lot better from 256MB, but many use their systems in ways that make 512MB, 1GB or more useful. WinME similarly benefits from more memory, but due to it's underlying Win9x architecture, it's realistic limit on the amount of memory it can use effectively is about 1GB, maybe 1.5GB depending on tweaks to various settings. I have only been using this computer for about 5 weeks while temporarily away from home. My home computer runs on WinXP and has 512MB RAM and 2.53GHz CPU with an external AGP. However, I was very surprised to find that the computer I'm referring to in this thread is by no means slow in comparison. Indeed, it does many things faster than the machine I have at home. Is the one at home an OEM setup? That, and misc. things that accumulate over time can slow a system down some. Plus, regardless of what some MS shills claim, Win9x IS faster than XP on any and all systems when it comes to doing basic tasks. More demanding uses will make them more even, when the OS becomes a less significant amount of the processing or % of memory utilization, it becomes the less significant factor in performance too. So my attempts to speed things up are not because of intolerably poor performance but rather a desire to "leave no stone unturned" in my quest for optimum performance. Then you want a modern hard drive, to increase the memory, and add the video card. Not necessarily in this order but the former 2 will tend to make more of a difference for your described uses than the latter will. CPU-Z confirms that the RAM SPD max bandwidth is 133MHz while it runs at 100MHz. What about the memory timings? Those can account for a few (single-digit) % performance difference as well... especially when something is continually dependant on memory throughput as with integrated video. The mobo does have a jumper which allows the CPU frequency to be changed from 100MHz to 133MHz. The mobo manual, in its BIOS section, indicates that "automatic adjustments" would be made to the CPU settings after the board had detected the "type of installed CPU". I took it from this that, were I to increase the CPU frequency from 100MHz to 133MHz, the CPU ratio selection would automatically be reduced to avoid overclocking of the CPU but allowing, at the same time the RAM to run at the higher speed. No, the CPU multiplier (ratio selection) is locked, unchangable on Intel CPUs. You do not want to, should not change the front side bus. You want the same FSB but if possible, an asynchronous (+33MHz higher) memory bus. Some boards may not provide a means for the user to change this setting. Other boards may hide the setting in the bios menu until you change another setting from "auto" (or another wording) to a manual mode at which point you pick either a frequency or a ratio for the memory like 4:3 (or 3:4 if it were FSB:Memory). However, after I changed the jumpers, the machine simply refused to boot. Happily, it rebooted without problems when I readjusted the jumpers. My explanation for this is that the CPU just won't handle the higher frequency. Yes, you'd be overclocking the CPU by 33%, which it "might" do successfully if you rasied the CPU voltage but you expressed no desire to do this and it may not be stable even with higher voltage or might need more cooling than possible with the stock heatsink. In summary, can I conclude that you believe it unlikely that any significant performance gain will result from the installation of an external AGP card? Yes, unless there is some other use you haven't mentioned that places a greater demand on either the video subsystem or the memory throughput. |
#9
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RAM to AGP mem sha Bad?
PaulFXH wrote:
CBFalconer escreveu: PaulFXH wrote: ... snip ... This computer is defragged at least on a weekly basis (Diskeeper Lite) and is scanned for viruses and other malware at least once per day with a range of software including AVG, BitDefender and Ad-Aware. If you don't have ECC memory frequent defragging can be very harmful. Each file move passes through a memory buffer, and there is NO check for dropped or altered bits in that buffer. So you can be gradually destroying your files with no warning. The actual destruction can be due to such things as cosmic rays, over which you have no control whatsoever. The damage will be in all your backups also. Always insist on ECC memory. Thanks for pointing this out to me. I had never heard of this before. Nevertheless, in three years of frequent defragging on two computers I have never had the Windows Memory Diagnostic indicate any problems whatsoever with any of my RAM sticks none of which have ECC. Just lucky? Who knows? If you run MD5sum checks on ALL your files before and after any defrag, you can be fairly certain nothing has bitten. The troubles can easily take years after their occurance to show up. I wouldn't expect any memory diagnostic to indicate any problem. -- "If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article. Click on "show options" at the top of the article, then click on the "Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson More details at: http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/ Also see http://www.safalra.com/special/googlegroupsreply/ |
#10
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RAM to AGP mem sha Bad?
kony escreveu: On 16 Apr 2006 12:13:20 -0700, "PaulFXH" wrote: I had thought of installing a second-hand (and therefore very cheap) 32MB (or 64MB) AGP 4x card and switching off the integrated chip. However, I was using this thread to see if the expected improvement was likely to be significant. The impression I'm getting from your comments is that this is improbable particularly as I'm not a gamer. It would be a minor improvement, worth doing if you had the spare video card just lying around unused. It wouldn't be worth buying one though, unless you could get it for peanuts. Similarly, some memory can be had cheaply and for your purposes the memory could be as useful or even moreso if you leave the system on for awhile between reboots, as this results in more files from the HDD being cached into main memory for faster access... IF you had enough memory to do so, otherwise the cache gets flushed as much as is necessary to run the applications. The OS is WinME which I understand needs no more than 256MB of RAM. Indeed, I am told it can operate well with as little as 64MB. It can, but just like any other OS your particular uses might exceed this amount of memory and then it would be useful to have more to vastly reduce access to the swapfile. Further the extra memory beyond that needed for the applications is used as a file cache (as mentioned above) which is much faster than rereading files from the hard drive each time. The issue isn't what the bare minimum is that'll work, since you aren't looking to barely be able to run the system but rather, the performance benefits of certain upgrades. Take for example those who have more than 256MB running WinXP... WinXP itself will run from 128MB, a lot better from 256MB, but many use their systems in ways that make 512MB, 1GB or more useful. WinME similarly benefits from more memory, but due to it's underlying Win9x architecture, it's realistic limit on the amount of memory it can use effectively is about 1GB, maybe 1.5GB depending on tweaks to various settings. I have only been using this computer for about 5 weeks while temporarily away from home. My home computer runs on WinXP and has 512MB RAM and 2.53GHz CPU with an external AGP. However, I was very surprised to find that the computer I'm referring to in this thread is by no means slow in comparison. Indeed, it does many things faster than the machine I have at home. Is the one at home an OEM setup? That, and misc. things that accumulate over time can slow a system down some. Plus, regardless of what some MS shills claim, Win9x IS faster than XP on any and all systems when it comes to doing basic tasks. More demanding uses will make them more even, when the OS becomes a less significant amount of the processing or % of memory utilization, it becomes the less significant factor in performance too. So my attempts to speed things up are not because of intolerably poor performance but rather a desire to "leave no stone unturned" in my quest for optimum performance. Then you want a modern hard drive, to increase the memory, and add the video card. Not necessarily in this order but the former 2 will tend to make more of a difference for your described uses than the latter will. CPU-Z confirms that the RAM SPD max bandwidth is 133MHz while it runs at 100MHz. What about the memory timings? Those can account for a few (single-digit) % performance difference as well... especially when something is continually dependant on memory throughput as with integrated video. The mobo does have a jumper which allows the CPU frequency to be changed from 100MHz to 133MHz. The mobo manual, in its BIOS section, indicates that "automatic adjustments" would be made to the CPU settings after the board had detected the "type of installed CPU". I took it from this that, were I to increase the CPU frequency from 100MHz to 133MHz, the CPU ratio selection would automatically be reduced to avoid overclocking of the CPU but allowing, at the same time the RAM to run at the higher speed. No, the CPU multiplier (ratio selection) is locked, unchangable on Intel CPUs. You do not want to, should not change the front side bus. You want the same FSB but if possible, an asynchronous (+33MHz higher) memory bus. Some boards may not provide a means for the user to change this setting. Other boards may hide the setting in the bios menu until you change another setting from "auto" (or another wording) to a manual mode at which point you pick either a frequency or a ratio for the memory like 4:3 (or 3:4 if it were FSB:Memory). However, after I changed the jumpers, the machine simply refused to boot. Happily, it rebooted without problems when I readjusted the jumpers. My explanation for this is that the CPU just won't handle the higher frequency. Yes, you'd be overclocking the CPU by 33%, which it "might" do successfully if you rasied the CPU voltage but you expressed no desire to do this and it may not be stable even with higher voltage or might need more cooling than possible with the stock heatsink. In summary, can I conclude that you believe it unlikely that any significant performance gain will result from the installation of an external AGP card? Yes, unless there is some other use you haven't mentioned that places a greater demand on either the video subsystem or the memory throughput. Kony Thanks for your comments. Basically, therefore the pain-free zero-cost option I was seeking to significantly improve this machines performance (reflecting Sandra's claim that shared memory will "significantly reduce system performance) appears to be nothing more than a chimera in my case. OK, so at least I now know and won't keep on chasing my tail. Best wishes Paul |
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Looking for Router/Switch to Share Internet Connection/Network Computers | MarkW | General | 8 | February 23rd 06 04:42 PM |
Mixing Wired and Wireless to Share DSL Internet Connection? | Jay Chan | Homebuilt PC's | 7 | September 30th 04 05:53 PM |
White box market share | Felger Carbon | General | 40 | November 17th 03 09:46 PM |
Do onboard peripherals ALWAYS share the same PCI Slot? | Terry King | Gigabyte Motherboards | 1 | October 16th 03 08:05 PM |