I've Just Gone Dual-Core :^)

[anonymez]

i have a 20GB portable HDD & many DVD-RW's, and back everything up that i wish to keep, i wouldn't format that often if my data was at stake

[Chewy]

I sometimes just set up XP on a 10 gig partition and start saving everything to the D partition. Just figured out recently that XP will let you delete the system partition and not touch D(data).


I had to make an exception to get rid of a german bootloader,
but I won't mention any names.

[anonymez]

OK after trying out this CPU for a few days, i can honestly say i am very impressed with AMD. I have done some basic testing on all cpu-intensive apps i normally use, including shrink, vdub, GK, Tmpgenc, Photoshop, ffdshow+MPC, etc.

the performance gains in programs such as dvdshrink, which we all thought wouldn't benefit much from a second core, were excellent, even if not at full potential. Photoshop, though it has little to do with digital video, in particular gives absolutely outstanding performance. Since i have updated the BIOS, my PC has NOT crashed, paused, frozen, lagged, or anything similar. If you know how to keep a 'healthy' system, your pc will never be unresponsive again.

It also allows pretty much 24/7 encoding. i am able to play any game i have while doing an xvid encode, setting the affinity for vdub to a single core. rome:total war, far cry, half-life 2, doom 3, gta san andreas all play perfectly on 4XAA & 4XAF. keep in mind you will need plenty of ram too if you wish to do this.

i would have recommended a dual-core to anybody buying a pc that would be doing digital video editing even before i had one, but now that i have really seen the improvements, it definitely gets 2 thumbs up from me

[anonymez]

and for anybody else who gets a dual-core, a little advice (you should do these even if its not a dual core ):

1. update the motherboard's BIOS. it may say nothing in the changelog, but there are usually compatibility issues that are resolved

2. download the cool 'n' quiet driver from amd.com. , enable it in the bios, and set your power management in windows to 'minimal power management' to enable it. this will extend the life of the cpu, especially for digital video editing/gaming

3. check out MS's hotfix if you have any issues (i didn't need it though) http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256

[Chewy]

"we all " hmmmmmmmm

cool 'n' quiet driver , not for me, fast and furious only, these babes,
amd64's run so cool already, of course my cpu only costs 135$
to replace and my OC won't work with cool and quiet.

[anonymez]

"we all " hmmmmmmmm

what would you have said if you were asked 'on the spot' to give an educated answer on whether shrink is multi-threaded?

[Chewy]

No, but after seeing a bench I quoted, I felt it had to be, considering the
respective core frequencies of the dual and single cpu's. When you weight those with the scores(little time consuming) it's obvious. The pieces of the puzzle are starting to drop into place, shrink 3.2 was so intensive, reencode
follows. My educated guess was contaminated by seeing benchs months ago.
From early reviews I thought the x2 was a waste of money, when the reviewers started adding the right benchs then the x2 64 showed it's true colors.

that's why all i wanted was a screenshot, it was a good birthday present thanks
now I want an x2

[UncasMS]

2. download the cool 'n' quiet driver from amd.com. , enable it in the bios, and set your power management in windows to 'minimal power management' to enable it. this will extend the life of the cpu, especially for digital video editing/gaming

first of all i must say: the cool & quiet function is impressive and i like to use it on my athlon64 most of the time as it cuts down the core frequenzy almost down to half the original when not needed - and i dont need the full power now typing in a forum

in addition to reducing the frequenzy the core voltage also goes down by some ~20-25%

taken together this will make your athlon64 run considerably cooler AND consuming less power

when overclocking, however, this function is NOT to be adviced as c&q might reduce the frequenzy (so far so good) but after heavy load it will not go up to the overclocked frequenzy again but only to the standard frequenzy the cpu normally uses

i use to enable c&q at startup if i dont need the overclocked power and when running conversions i turn c&q off

one more piece of information: there are quite a few c&q drivers from the mainbaords manufacturer which may NOT work - go for the ones provided by AMD!

[anonymez]

that was a pricey birthday gift chewy!

@uncas: if you are refering to asus, i never ever touch their own drivers unless i absolutely have to. i get them straight from realtek, ati, amd & via.

also, the drivers on their site are never the latest, it takes them a while to update...

[Floppy]

that was a pricey birthday gift chewy!

@uncas: if you are refering to asus, i never ever touch their own drivers unless i absolutely have to. i get them straight from realtek, ati, amd & via.

also, the drivers on their site are never the latest, it takes them a while to update...

A while to update is somewhat of an understatement (I feel you)...

With my other A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 the only thing updated was the bios after a year... I was already using that bios actually the beta 002 of that...

Asus dont really develop or demonstrate to be very interested in developing after the product is minimally stable..... once it reaches that stability they move on......

[mill]

and for anybody else who gets a dual-core, a little advice (you should do these even if its not a dual core ):

1. update the motherboard's BIOS. it may say nothing in the changelog, but there are usually compatibility issues that are resolved

2. download the cool 'n' quiet driver from amd.com. , enable it in the bios, and set your power management in windows to 'minimal power management' to enable it. this will extend the life of the cpu, especially for digital video editing/gaming

3. check out MS's hotfix if you have any issues (i didn't need it though) http://support.microsoft.com/?id=896256

Thanks for the info,PS since im getting my built by Monarch do you think there have the latest updates and drivers installed?

[anonymez]

don't know, but you could always check via my computer-->properties-->hardware-->device manager, and check the date of the drivers.

or you could just ask them

[mill]

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI Audio/GB-LAN/IEEE-1394/USB/PCI-E/SATA3G/DDR/ATX 64 939 , How would i find the newest bios for this mother board?

[anonymez]

go www.asus.com

select your region, click 'download' at the top of the screen. it will have drop-down boxes where you can choose your motherboard. it will then give you a list of updates.

OR you could install asus update, which is on the cd that comes with your mobo, i believe it can download the bios image automatically & apply it too. this way is easier.

[Chewy]

Hey, anony how do you flash?