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Posted @ 5:55 PM EST
Sigh. Nothing ever goes according to plans. My weekend is wasted, and most of my productivity is in the 0% realm. Tonight is
going to be a busy night to play catch up with my homeworks and projects. Saw Kill Bill yesterday night. All I can say is, that is
one crazy, funny, awesome movie. The bloody violence is hilarious. Blood is just gushing out like a fountain. Reminds me of Mortal
Kombat. Lots of limbs are lost in this movie.
Max Payne 2, I will get a hold of this game tomorrow. Could've gotten today, if I would've known about it, but I'll just have to
get it tomorrow. My new desktop computer is up and running fine. The only thing wrong with it is that I still need to find a wireless
network card for the computer. Running wires everywhere in my house isn't an option. Going through 2 floors from top to bottom isn't
going to be a pretty process.
Well, time for me to get back to cleaning up my mess and start on my homeworks and projects.
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Posted @ 7:20 PM EST
Managed to squeeze almost 600 points out of 3DMark2001 SE. I achieved 17,166 after overclocking the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro AIW to
418 MHz for core, 360 MHz for memory (default: 380 MHz/340 MHz), and using the Rage3D Tweaker to set it optimized for 3DMark2001 SE.
Well, at least I broke 17,000 3D marks barrier. I was hoping for higher scoring, but finalized scores will have to come later.
Well, that's where I'll have to stop overclocking the graphics card, as any more, it showed artifacts. Anyhow, Comcast is
sucking balls lately. For the past day and into today, my Internet connection has gone up and down. Sigh. Pushing my computer to
stability while performing at maximum overclocking speeds will soon end tonight, thanks to homeworks that I have to complete for
tomorrow's classes. After stability testing ends, I'll have to migrate all of my data over to my new and lovely computer. The never
ending saga of tweaking the computer and setting it up correctly.
Posted @ 4:38 PM EST
All I got to say is, oh my gosh... I don't know what I've been missing all these years. The graphics look pretty darn nice in
3DMark2001SE. All the graphics are rendered so smoothly and filled with vibrant colors. Also, been living in a slight blurry world of
monitors until I connected the flat panel to the video card via DVI cable. Makes a good chunk of difference how everything is so
crisp. Initial run of 3DMark2001 SE gave me 16,571 3D marks at default settings. More than 8 times what Voodoo3 can do and looks
prettier too. If you all don't get the hint, I just got the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro All-In-Wonder video card today. I'll see if I can
get more performance out of my entire system since I now have everything completely hooked up. Just have to find out if it's still
stable or not before I finalize everything and install a fresh new copy of Windows XP Pro with SP1. I got to find more options to
enable and disable, because I should get a higher score in 3DMark2001 SE, but who knows. I just installed the latest and newest
Catalyst 3.8 drivers.
Very wise to have one HDD loaded with Windows XP Pro w/SP1 and use it as a test bench and then put in the actual HDD. Well, time
to get back to messing with my system and get it performing like a champ and get overkill results.
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Posted @ 11:11 PM EST
I'm able to lower the memory timing down to 2-5-3-2. That's awesome. Wish it would do 2-5-2-2, but it wouldn't let me. Raising
the FSB to 261 MHz yields unstability, so I backed down to 260 MHz and stick with 3.12 GHz instead of 3.14 GHz. The extra 20 MHz
boost isn't doing much, so I went ahead and stuck with the lowered memory timing instead of the increased clock speed. I'm still
playing around with the other memory settings.
Posted @ 10:09 PM EST
Looks like I found the working combination to get 3.12 GHz and still have the chasis case on. It turns out that I have to give
the memory the maximum voltage that my Abit IC7-G can give to the RAM - 2.8 V. 0.2 volts higher than what is required, but if this
lets my system stay stable, then let it be. So far, the 3DMark2001 SE looping is still running currently, and over 60 benchmarks have
passed. So I'll have to declare my system is now stable, CPU clocking at 3.12 GHz. And the only modification done is raising the RAM's
voltage. And what's better is that I'm able to lower my memory timing down to 2-6-3-3 instead of 2-7-3-3. Now I'm trying to see if I
can get it lower than 2-6-3-3.
Now to see if it'll still be stable when I stick in the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro All-In-Wonder tomorrow.
Posted @ 6:51 PM EST
Still working on getting it stable for 3.12 GHz. I haven't found the correct settings yet. That's only because I don't want to
compromise the performance. Still going through a lot of combinations before I have to compromise and start relaxing some settings.
Running 3DMark2001 SE sure gives a nice notice if my system is stable enough, because after a loop or so, it would restart. The
Voodoo3 is sure running into that 2000 3D Mark points wall. So far, I can get about 199x out of the Voodoo3 without
overclocking the Voodoo3 at 3.12 GHz for the CPU. I'm currently in the process of eliminating problems, and it looks for sure that
a couple of things were holding me back: voltage for memory and heat in the chasis (e.g. not enough cool air flowing through). If I
slide out the side covering, the benchmark seems to go indefinitely. If chasis is on, then reboots start to happen.
I won't know for sure if it's the video card, as the Voodoo3 does not have a fan on the heatsink. The Voodoo3 2000 only comes
with a heatsink back in the old days. And that's when CPU's aren't at 3 GHz. Was used back in the old days when it was in a Pentium
200 MHz MMX system that I was using. Temporary using it until the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro All-In-Wonder gets delivered to me tomorrow.
Hopefully it does come tomorrow, and I will find out if 3.12GHz with the correct video card in is stable. Then let the benchmarks
begin. I'm reading around that with the Radeon 9800 Pro, should be pushing 1xxxx 3D Mark points with 3DMark2001 SE. More than the
Voodoo3 can ever push. And it only pushes around 199x.
Well, the whole day, I spent cleaning up the place while running benchmarks most of the day to test which settings fit best. So
far, having my RAM voltage upped 0.1 V will make the 3.12 GHz a possibility even more. But now 3DMark2001 SE crashes and returns to
desktop after more than couple of loops of benchmarkings. Having the RAM's voltage upped 0.1 V allows me to run the RAM timming as
2-7-3-3, at about 208 MHz. My RAM is rated to be about 434 MHz (this value is in DDR form), giving me about 217 MHz. So I technically
have about 9 MHz of headroom left. But, there's something wrong. When I up my FSB to 261 MHz from 260 MHz, it won't boot, CMOS would
end up being reset. I'll have to play around with more settings if I want to go pass 3.12 GHz. Right now, 3.12 GHz sounds good to me,
especially still letting me keep the 2-7-3-3 RAM latency. I know it isn't the best in the world, but it's better to not raise up the
timing to get more CPU clocks. But I'll find out for sure later on. Just got to wait for that Radeon 9800 Pro to show up tomorrow at
my door step. Should have results around 3 PM tomorrow.
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Saturday, October 11, 2003 |
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Posted @ 11:51 PM EST
Well, I spoke a little too soon. I did join the 3GHz club. Although at 3.12GHz, my computer starts to be unstable. At first, the
computer boots up into Windows fine. But when I built my computer, I was only able to just clock it up to 3.12GHz (going any higher
wouldn't boot pass POST screen) and leave it as that. No time to give it the torture test (you know, run a benchmark for some time to
see if it's stable at such speed). Now over the weekend, I got some time to do some testing. Testing lead to results that 3.12GHz was
unstable. Do anything in Windows for more than a few minutes was asking for a reboot. I've so far got it more stable by raising the
RAM's voltage, to allow the programs to run without corruption. So that's good. But the bad news still is that it would reboot. So
this means that the CPU is outputting too much heat. Still tweaking it to go beyond 3GHz with standard air retail cooling. Well,
that's pretty much it for me right now. Busy trying to hit 3.12GHz or else settle in between 3GHz and 3.12GHz.
By the way, Voodoo3 sure still renders 3DMark2001SE at a decent rate. Hehehehe. I'm pretty sure benchmarking all the video cards
all over again like I did with the Celeron 300A overclocking to 450MHz.
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Posted @ 10:23 AM EST
Let's just say, I joined the 3GHz club. 3.12GHz to be exact.
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Posted @ 5:30 PM EST
Well, another new month has arrived. There are some things happening around me, so I'm going to get to it. My new computer is
coming in pieces. Motherboard has made its way to me. CPU, RAM, HDD, chassis will be coming next week. The video card however, I have
no idea what's the case right now. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what's going on here. I may have to find another
source if the video card doesn't get delivered. DOA (Dead On Arrival) won't be determined until I get all the parts in so that I can
plug them all together and get it up and running. Hopefully, none of them are. So I'm looking at Monday at the earliest, Tuesday at
the latest to test everything.
The only problem is that I won't be able or better yet, I shouldn't be able to mess around with my new computer until the end of
the week, as I have two exams during next week. Better to study than to fool around. Of course, when all my computers come together,
that means that I'll be testing the hardware to the max. Expect me to also attempt to write up editorials for my new computer. The
question is, can I get it up on my website. It'll be determined next week.
The new schedule that I'm following sure gives me more sleep. So that's a good thing. It's working out pretty well. So my next
goal is to now get all my school work done early instead of at the last minute. This is going to be a hard one, considering that I
seem to like procrastinating on and off. If I'm able to pull this off, then this sure opens up more time for me to play with my new
computer and push the hardware to the extreme and able to complete the tutorials that I've been wanting to finish up for some time
now.
Dual monitors is a nice feature, but I'm going to miss it soon enough, as I don't have another monitor to use once my new
desktop computer gets finished being built. I'm pretty sure that once my new computer gets built, I'm going to lose a lot of time
into it to optimize how I want it to perform. Sigh.
I got to say, the season premier of Smallville is a good one. I want to know what happens next, but I have to wait until next
week to find out. Pretty good and interesting show to watch.
Well, that's enough of me rambling on. Time to get busy once again. Need to get some things done around here before I get
backlog with a lot of things to do. I hate that.
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