PC gurus, speak to me

[Skybird]

Ah, please bear with me, the terminology played jokes on me...

[Thomen]

Originally Posted by danlisa

Partly true.

Even on XP you can enable the full use of 4GB by applying a switch to the boot.ini. This allows applications that use more than 1GB of physical RAM when running to access the additional RAM presented by having 4GB. The OS will still only list as having 3GB but apps will use it.

The /PAE or /3GB switch aren't really helpful, since you will effectively loose RAM (as far as the system is concerned) if you a use a video card or mulitple with a large amount of video ram.

I m not saying it wont work, it is just not as effective as it ought to be.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by danlisa

@ Skybird

Even if an application only uses a single core, using that application on a dual core system will see a huge improvement in performance over a single core due to the architecture of even one of those two cores. The processing power of a single core within a dual core setup is vastly superior to that of a single core.

Alas Klar?

Alles klar, jaaaaa!

[NeonSamurai]

I agree with the others here on what was said.

As for #2 like others said, about the only thing that will fix that is wiping the os partition and reinstalling. Windows pretty much slowly destroys itself over time and will eventually render itself completely inoperable (blue screen of death). Best solution for this I have found is to use a program like norton ghost or similar, do a clean install for that pc with all drivers and major programs you need installed (ie not games that shift on and off the computer, but stuff like winzip, office, etc), then ghost a backup of it. Then when the computer starts acting up again you can very rapidly do a clean reinstall using the ghosted image in a fraction of the time it would normaly take (as fast as 30 minutes). Keep in mind though that ghosted image is only good for that pc and when the hardware is changed a new image has to be made.

Also you should regularly defrag any drives which have alot of data being copyied around (such as where you install and uninstall games) using something other then windows defrag (i agree it sucks).

[Wolfehunter]

Originally Posted by Thomen

The /PAE or /3GB switch aren't really helpful, since you will effectively loose RAM (as far as the system is concerned) if you a use a video card or mulitple with a large amount of video ram.

I m not saying it wont work, it is just not as effective as it ought to be.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000811.html

Thanks thomen I forgot about this. I remember this issue came to me with STALKER and i was trying to see if I can squeeze more memory out of my current rig. Wasn't going to happen because of this stupid hardware limitation. Thats why my new one is a 64bit system.

[Wolfehunter]

Originally Posted by NeonSamurai

I agree with the others here on what was said.

As for #2 like others said, about the only thing that will fix that is wiping the os partition and reinstalling. Windows pretty much slowly destroys itself over time and will eventually render itself completely inoperable (blue screen of death). Best solution for this I have found is to use a program like norton ghost or similar, do a clean install for that pc with all drivers and major programs you need installed (ie not games that shift on and off the computer, but stuff like winzip, office, etc), then ghost a backup of it. Then when the computer starts acting up again you can very rapidly do a clean reinstall using the ghosted image in a fraction of the time it would normaly take (as fast as 30 minutes). Keep in mind though that ghosted image is only good for that pc and when the hardware is changed a new image has to be made.

Also you should regularly defrag any drives which have alot of data being copyied around (such as where you install and uninstall games) using something other then windows defrag (i agree it sucks).

This is correct. I had to reinstall XP every 3 months because of all the clutter building up in my system. I find Vista is very stable and I hadn't had to reinstall it over a year.

Very weird habit... I'm not used to that.

[GlobalExplorer]

Registry cleaner, installing XP every three months, I always bang my head on the wall if I hear this. If people only learned how to make use of something like http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-dos.htm they would always have a clean system.

Concerning hardware, I think the ideal price performance spot is a Core 2 E8400 and ATI 4500, at least that was what I chose after a long search.

Or you can wait for the Nehalem architecture to materialize, it should give a nice performance boost with its integrated memory controller.

[Blacklight]

I actually like Micro$ofts online Live One Care. It's free and cleans out your computer, registry, scans for viruses and spy/add/malware, defrags the hard drive, and a few other things. It actually does a really good job considering it's Micro$oft. I run it's full service scan on my computers once a month. It takes a few hours to run, but it really does a nice job (And it's actually killed viruses and addware on my system that none of the other big name virus/spyware scanners were able to get rid of.)
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-US/d....htm?s_cid=sah

[Wolfehunter]

Originally Posted by GlobalExplorer

Registry cleaner, installing XP every three months, I always bang my head on the wall if I hear this. If people only learned how to make use of something like http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-dos.htm they would always have a clean system.

Concerning hardware, I think the ideal price performance spot is a Core 2 E8400 and ATI 4500, at least that was what I chose after a long search.

Or you can wait for the Nehalem architecture to materialize, it should give a nice performance boost with its integrated memory controller.

I couldn't help it. I've used to do alot of installing and uninstalling plus many websites were a horror to my system adding stuff to it... Yes I used spybot and antivirus programs but in the end with all the tweeking and foolling around with the system I was lucky to get a years without a full format happing on my HDD. I used to hang out in alot of underground sites and hacking was a normal event especially those who hated MS + iexplorer.

[Blacklight]

I actually like Micro$ofts online Live One Care. It's free and cleans out your computer, registry, scans for viruses and spy/add/malware, defrags the hard drive, and a few other things. It actually does a really good job considering it's Micro$oft. I run it's full service scan on my computers once a month. It takes a few hours to run, but it really does a nice job (And it's actually killed viruses and addware on my system that none of the other big name virus/spyware scanners were able to get rid of.)
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-US/d....htm?s_cid=sah

[stabiz]

I do a full format/reinstall 3-4 times a year, and this keeps the computer slim and fast. I also have Ultimate Defrag 2008.

My current setup:

Core 2 Duo E6600 (2 x 2,4ghz)
4GB DDR2 ram
Abit something motherboard
Sapphire Radeon HD4870 512MB
4x 250GB harddrives
22" Samsung
500W Mist
XP Pro SP3

Not the best, but pretty good. SH4 runs at around 100 fps in 1680x1050 with everything on full + 8x FSAA, for comparison.

[Onkel Neal]

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...8011&CatId=114

Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 2.66GHz, 2GB DDR2, 250GB SATA II HDD, DVDRW Dual Layer, NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT, Gigabit LAN, G31M3-F, Windows XP Professional
This stylish and powerful Systemax Venture

Pros? Cons?

What's the diff between
Intel® Core™2 E8500 (6MB,3.16 GHz, 1333FSB)
and
Intel® Core™2 Q9400 (6MB,2.66GHz, 1333FSB)

Sheesh! Ther's no consistency in naming convention. A year ago someone recommended the 6800 over the 6600 CPU, so the bigger the number, the better? I remember now why I have not bought a new PC lately....


This chart, I guess my P4 2.4 is on there somewhere....
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu

[Thomen]

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...8011&CatId=114

Pros? Cons?

What's the diff between
Intel® Core™2 E8500 (6MB,3.16 GHz, 1333FSB)
and
Intel® Core™2 Q9400 (6MB,2.66GHz, 1333FSB)

Sheesh! Ther's no consistency in naming convention. A year ago someone recommended the 6800 over the 6600 CPU, so the bigger the number, the better? I remember now why I have not bought a new PC lately....


This chart, I guess my P4 2.4 is on there somewhere....
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu

I think the Q9400 is a quad core cpu

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Thomen

I think the Q9400 is a quad core cpu

I think you would be correct with that statement. All Intel CPU's that start with Q are quads, though i don't get into them much. AMD rules the server market which is why.

I doubt you could find an Intel based higher end x86 server since the AMD's stomp them pretty good. It has a lot to do with the memory controllers though in that AMD has a direct connection to the memory and Intel's are still stuck going through the FSB. So from a server standpoint, AMD is top dog. From a gaming stantpoint, Intel will beat them. It all comes down to what you are doing with the machine. That new AMD 9950 Quad however stomps most Intel CPU's so I am guessing AMD may be back from a desktop/gaming standpoint these days however.

Intel may up the ante soon however. Their next CPU bypasses the FSB for a direct connect to the memory. Should be an interesting design. Speculation in the higher end server market is already starting.

-S

[kiwi_2005]

I find Uninstaller 2008 a good registry cleaner its not actually a reigisty cleaner, It tracks the uninstallation and removes any traces like registry keys, values, and orphan files after uninstallation. Way better than the normal add & remove that windows has. When this sucker cleans, IT CLEANS! Just to test it i uninstalled a game through the Add&Remove windows tool then i got uninstaller 2008 to check and it found 48 registry files related to the game and removed them. Add&Remove missed them. Of course if you not going to uninstall anything then this program is probably not needed as much but its the best registry cleaner.

Other than that if my pc starts to slog real bad i use the best cleaner known to man. A reformat. Split your hdd into two move everything you want to keep to the 2nd partition or spare drive if you have one and reformat PC, reinstall windows on the C drive. PC will be like new again.