while i was still going to school at UCSD, they were building Cal(IT)^2, the California Institute of Telecommunication and Information Technology. now that it's done, i've toured it (on work time... i felt it was important to see the campus's resources and facilities hehe).

it has this awesome thing called the HIPer Wall... i felt like i was on a holodeck



i was wondering if that's what you meant. and yea, i'd tend to agree--it'll happen (probably sooner than later).



my thoughts exactly. i usually game with winamp running in the background, and it is pretty disappointing when i have a sudden urge to listen to a particular song, but don't want to alt+tab into the other screen. i've also been playing morrowind lately (it was a gift, and since i was thinking about getting oblivion anyway, it seems like a good 'preview'). i'm kind of annoyed with it because i feel sort of lost (i'm used to the final fantasy line of RPGs with their tightly knit plots). i'd love to have a second monitor i could use to surf walk-thrus and such.

in fact, the only reason i think i might want a "wing" monitor on both sides of my primary is my neurotic need for symmetry: one would functionally be enough i think, but IMO a third monitor wouldn't be totally extravagent either. i saw several decent-looking monitors for right around $200 when i did a quick browse on newegg for my last post (of course, if i want to use something other than the stock monitor stand, it'll cost me).

also if i ever did want to try spanning multiple screens for a video game, i'd much rather do it with an odd number of monitors. not a big deal for productivity, but i hate the idea of a seam running down the middle of my viewing area in a game.

widescreen really is nice. it doesn't seem like a big deal until you have one and get used to it.

ugh, i'm finally getting around to actually cleaning my room since building my computer. i've had little bags of screws, extra modular cables, OEM stickers, proofs of purchase, and all that crap laying around. funny how knowing my mom will see my room later is a big motivating factor.

My motherboard is the ECS NFORCE4M-A v3.0, socket AM2, with a maximum RAM capacity of 32 GB DDR2 800. It is a workstation board. FDD, 4 PATA devices, and 4 SATA150 hdds. I doubt that I will ever see 8 GB DDR2 modules, although I can dream and drool.

It's not that I'm down them because I'm not really. I've used several nForce motherboards in the past. My only dissapointment is that I didn't see a big gain in memory bandwidth going from a DDR400 to DDR800 system (according to my own benchmarking). I was expecting to, but didn't. OTOH, the P31 provided those big gains I was expecting to see. So, for a chipset that advertises top notch performance, it didn't deliver.

Regarding memory timings, I think it's a good idea to use a benchmarking program to see if changes are actually worthwhile. I've been using Sandra and PerformanceTest. I also use MemTest to check memory is stable after making changes.

I think you'll find that tightening the timings doesn't provide that much of a performance increase. I've found that increasing the memory bus speed improves memory performance more than anything else (by running up the host clock which also increases FSB and CPU core frequency). In that case, the more relaxed timings in auto mode are better for stability. Check it out and see for yourself.

I also had a question about that refresh to ACT delay setting. It should be at some value and I don't know why the BIOS defaults to zero when in manual. I set it to the value indicated in the default column. Googling it found people setting it to a range of values, but I didn't spend a lot of time on it. I'm leaving the timings on auto and only running up the host clock. I could probably squeak out another 5% in memory bandwidth by tigtening the timings, but the increased host clock gives me much more than that. I'm happy with what I'm getting and running the timings in auto is less trouble.

Just a heads up: ram prices are going to increase dramatically in the near future as manufacturers cut production to bring the price up. I've seen $75/gb forecast for 2008, so upgrade now if you can because ram is as cheap as it's going to get.

I just picked up 2gb of OCZ Platinum DDR2-800 for $17 after rebate Check out a boxing day sale near you.

I haven't found that to be the case really. Although I have to admit, there is a certain comfort factor involved in running a chipset and CPU from the same maker. I've been happy with various chipsets from nVidia and VIA over the years. The nForce 520 has been the only exception and it may have been due to a quality issue with the ASUS board it was mounted on.

As far as AMD goes, they've never really been big into making chipsets the way Intel has. Pickings have always been pretty slim for motherboards based on the relatively small number of AMD chipsets that have been released. That may change for the Spider since it's marketed as a complete AMD platform. Unlike Intel, AMD is a major performance GPU maker with their ownership of ATI. Intel does offer some GPU products, but they don't compare with the high-end stuff from ATI and nVidia.


Yes, the lite version is free to use. It doesn't have all the utilites of the non-free version, but it has the stuff you need to benchmark your system.


Instead of Prime95, try this version of Orthos Prime. It's a nice front end for Prime95's torture test and initiates two threads by default. Unlike Prime95, it allows you to fully load both cores.


The Gigabyte board makes it really easy. If you run up a setting two high, the BIOS will detect any failure and reboot with stock speeds. Give it a few seconds though. It does a complete power cycle when it happens. That kind of freaked me out the first time. One thing that's handy is the F11 and F12 function in the Gigabyte BIOS. It allows you store and recall your own setting profiles. I'm using it quite a bit.

As far as damage risk, it's the over-voltage you need to be concerned about. You can pretty much run up frequencies without concern. However, with voltage control in auto, the BIOS will increase voltages as frequencies are set higher. You may want to keep voltage control in manual.

One note about memory voltage, the Gigabyte BIOS does not indicate the actual memory voltage. It only shows increments of .1 volts in the voltage setting. I had no idea what it was running at. The only way to get an indication is to install the Gigabyte motherboard utility. It shows the memory voltage there and that's the only way I've found to get it.

Dystopic,

The upgrade price for me was $299 from Vue 6 Pro Studio. Vue is 3D environment. Modeling is done in other programs. There is Easel, Esprit, Pro Studio (Esprit + all extras modules), Infinite, and XStream (plugin version of Infinite). 32 bit is stuck with a 2 GB RAM space, while 64 bit is not.

Galciv and Galciv 2 run fine in XP64.

3D CG is my primary interest.

Yea, it takes some serious horsepower to do that stuff. I've read the fastest machines around right now can render about 1/4 the speed required to do movie quality stuff in real time. Applying Moore's law, it shouldn't be too long until a peformance gaming machine can do that sort of thing live. One of the things that motivates me on these upgrades is that I enjoy experiencing the improvement in 3D video quality as machines get faster. I imagine a game with video quality that compares to the Toy Story movie.

You know, I was thinking the other day, why don't they package GPU's that same way as CPU's and put a socket on the motherboard for it. Wouldn't that solve a lot of problems? It sure would be nice to use a good CPU HSF instead of that hot noisy card mounted thing.

i had some similar thoughts myself; i want to step back a second to answer the question (why they don't do that).

in social science, there's a loosely defined concept one of my professors called "historical inertia." basically, once enough people with enough power are invested in a certain paradigm, it's hard to change that paradigm. the QWERTY keyboard is the classical example. it was originally designed to be difficult to use because in old-fashioned typewriters, the punch levers could get locked if keys were pressed too quickly. even though that problem was eventually solved, and there are numerous alternative to the QWERTY keyboard, it's still the standard because so many people already know how to type on a QWERTY quickly, and it's easier to stick with an inefficient design you can use efficiently than to teach yourself to type all over again.

it's the same issue with basic component design. lots of alternatives are possible, but none of the problems with the current design are serious enough to warrant a change. just look at the BTX design, which was supposed to solve a number of problems with the ATX design. but it never really took off, and i think the biggest reason is that so many people already had ATX cases, and manufacturing techniques were more oriented towards ATX designs (though if Intel had marketed BTX more aggressively, it could have probably done better).

now if you want to talk about re-designing MBs from the ground up, there are a few things that occur to me. could motherboards be made to be modular? imagine buying your MB in pieces, and connecting those pieces with something akin to a PCIe bus with a right-angle orientation. assembly might involve some extra screws to keep things secure, but i don't think that's a big deal.

i walked down this path of thought because i sort of wish i'd got a board with a southbridge that supports RAID. but i don't want to upgrade my whole mobo just so i can play around with RAID. then i wondered why NBs and SBs don't have a socket mounting system; the obvious answer is that it wouldn't necessarily be an advantage (even if your new NB supports two PCIe x16 slots, your board needs to be wired to two PCIe x16 slots to make use of the improved NB).

you could get around that in a couple ways. for example, there are a number of motherboards that have one or two PCIe x16 slots that only have 4 or 8 lanes actually assigned to them. if you could dynamically assign those lanes in BIOS, it could make the idea of putting the NB on a socket more appealing (instead of soldered directly to the board). so build all 7 expansion slots at x16 size and number them, put the NB on a socket mount, and allow the user to assign actual lanes to the numbered x16 slots in BIOS.

the next logical step in my mind was - well then heck, why not just make the entire motherboard modular? this sort of design would allow so much more customizablity... (wait for it)... across the board (sorry, i couldn't resist the pun). but seriously, you could more highly customize not only hardware specs, but also form factor, and the ability to upgrade more gradually. i'm sure the greatest disadvantage would be overall cost and the complexity of building a system; single, integrated boards would be the preference of OEM manufacturers. but for enthusiasts and professionals, i think it could present major advantages. those groups generally are knowledgable enough to handle the extra complexity, and for them it might actually save money or (hopefully) at least reduce the amount of money you'd have to spend all at once.

so... waddaya think? crackpot idea, or is there some merit to it?

fair enough; i completely glossed over how complex and difficult creating BIOS for such a system would be  not to mention that you'd probably have to flash new BIOS for every single upgrade (and while i've never had any difficulty updating BIOS, the various warning i've seen communicate clearly enough that there's significantly more risk than your average driver update).

but what about the sub-idea i'd had, to whit:



that doesn't seem too difficult or complex by comparison. then again, i'm not a computer engineer  

i've been fairly impressed with thermalright's heatsinks, based on what i can see; i really like the fact that many of their models come w/o fans, allowing you to pick and configure them yourself (or avoid paying extra if you want to opt for passive cooling). CoolerMaster has managed to impress me for similar reasons.

notwithstanding those facts, i think next month i'm going to buy this Rosewill RCX-Z4. i'm attracted to it because the fin array is offset to be lower than the center of the CPU socket; i'm hoping it'll line up fairly well with my rear exhaust fan, creating positive and negative pressure over the heatsink component. i also like that it uses a standard 120mm fan, which will allow me to replace it easily in the future if i decide i want to (or if the fan simply dies). at $40, it's also pretty reasonable for my budget (especially since some of the more monsterous HSFs run into the $70 range).

i haven't given VGA cooling quite as much thought; for starters, i'm going to upgrade in a few months (i have a friend at work who's said he'll buy my current 8600GTS 512MB whenever i'm ready to be rid of it). i'm not terribly excited by any aftermarket VGA cooler i've seen. some of them look quite nice, to be sure, but it seems like the most effective ones will either cause clearance issues or cover several other expansion slots.

the layout of the Antec 900 is a little unusual. the PSU mounts at the bottom of the case, and there's a 200mm fan at the top. this makes cooling the CPU relatively easy and efficient. you can also mount a 120mm fan in the center of the case window, which places it almost dead center above the 2nd expansion slot (where single x16 slots are most likely to be). basically, i'm not sure how to optimize airflow across the lower half of my motherboard and VGA.

A poor heatsink that lines up with an exhaust fan is still going to give poor cooling compared to a good heatsink that doesn't line up