Amd Dual Core and Windows XP

[mol3000]

I Just bought that amd 3800 dual core and mb from frys (BIG SALE) and wanted to know is there anything i need to add to windows xp to make it faster??? Some things seems to run pretty good while others slow down some.... can anyone give me some pointers of how to maximize my speed that?????

[ranchhand]

In order to offer some suggestions, it would be helpful to list your specs of the major components, including the FSB you are running at, RAM and clock on it, videocard and RAM on it, etc.

[redwudz]

I would try a Google search for reviews of that motherboard. There's usually some good hardware tips in those. Or you can overclock the FSB a little. Check some of the overclock sites for ideas.

If you are specifically asking about speeding up XP, you should also be able to find some ideas on the net. Check the Task Manager to see what's running. You can type 'msconfig' in the 'Run..' window and control the processes.

Usually XP takes care of itself. If you do a clean install of the OS after a repartition, reformat, that's about as good as it gets. Limit the amount of programs you install and check as above for background processes.

[ROF]

I Just bought that amd 3800 dual core and mb from frys (BIG SALE) and wanted to know is there anything i need to add to windows xp to make it faster??? Some things seems to run pretty good while others slow down some.... can anyone give me some pointers of how to maximize my speed that?????

Which motherboard have you paired with your DC Proc? How much RAM is installed and in what ratios? Are you running Dual Channel RAM? Alot of people believe they are running dual channel because they stick some RAM into the board and believe that's it. You must pair them up in the appropriate slots in order to achieve this speed boost. Are you SATA or PATA drives? 5, 7, 10K RPMs? SATA will show significant improvement over PATA. Most applications today will not benefit from the dual core.

Without knowing your current configuration of RAM, Drives, Motherboard, etc. it's really hard for anyone to tell you what you can do to improve performance. More than likely your RAM if old is not running dual channel. You may also need to purchase more if you have less than 1GB installed. You might also be running older PATA drives in which case your APPS will load slower. You may also have 5400RPM drives with minimal cache on your drives which again can effect performance.

Some more specific info from you will lead to better diagnostics from us.

[mol3000]

1 gig ram... yes its dual channel and i got the right kind of ram... do have regular 7rpm hd but will upgrade in future.... i did read some on my board the ecs k8t890-a and they said if you have a agp card that its really runing at pci speed because of some reason so im pissed about that but since it has the new pci express on it i will upgrade to that as soon as i can come up with enough money

[redwudz]

You can get an economy PCI-E video card using one of the ATI X300 series chipsets, about $60US. It's fine if you don't do gaming. If you are a gamer, you might want to aim a little higher.

Your motherboard has a VIA chipset, not my favorite. The Nvidia nForce4 chipset is more versatile. But you should get along fine with the VIA setup.

[mol3000]

well since i do video sometimes (editing and watching on my computer) i want something at least in the middle and are their different speeds pci-e cards?????

[mol3000]

ok i just do xp 64 and is playing with it now. its faster than the 32 bit brother but not enough for me to pay for it. I want to test it out to see how other software works on it. Also i dont know if i can mess with it because now my wireless card wont work with it for some reason and im trying to see if i can do something about it. I dl a vista beta from the web but it was 32 bit... have anyone seen a 64 bit vista beta yet?????

[redwudz]

There should be a 64 and a 32 bit version of Vista available by the end of the year, according to MS. I'm not sure about a beta 64 vista available at present.

I run XP64 on one of my computers. Not a large advantage over XP32, but more programs are setting up for it. Here's a recent compatibility list:

http://www.ukgamer.com/article.php4?action=win64

XP64 can use more RAM natively. This may help some programs. It's also better at multitasking than XP32. Both platforms can take advantage of dual CPUs, but it is mostly at the program level.

As far as PCI-E video cards, there are a lot more of them out there since I got my X300 card. It's at the lower end of performance. OK for most video work, but I'm sure there are faster cards for not much more cost. I don't keep up as they are changing fast.

I would wait for VISTA 64 myself. But it will have a lot a changes besides just the visible part on the screen. And knowing MS, it will take a while to work out the bugs.

[guns1inger]

Just remember that having dual core doesn't mean all software will use both CPUs. Only software written specifically to use dual cpus will really get the benefit. Most software isn't, and so will only use one core, effectively acting like a single core 3800. Most (all ?) games are single cpu only. Most high end editing and rendering software will see and work with both cores.

In time, all software will be dual core aware, but not for a while.

[mol3000]

well they need to hurry up... i hate so much that the technology industry is ALWAYS SO BEHIND on things

[jagabo]

Hit Alt+Ctrl+Del to bring up Task Manager. Switch to the Performance tab. Do you see two CPU's listed? You may have to update the BIOS to make the motherboard recognise both cores.

[rallynavvie]

well they need to hurry up... i hate so much that the technology industry is ALWAYS SO BEHIND on things

That's because they can market new hardware and sell it to people who buy it thinking the software is available to let it run at its whitepaper specs. Computer industry is rife with that sort of marketing. Right now dual-core processors are the money-maker (people think they're getting something twice as fast as a comparable single core system). Also have the 64-bit processors coming out well before any 64-bit native Windows OS. Then there's the AGP bus speed debacle, the last being 8x though only a very few cards available for 8x AGP even approach the bandwidth that interface afforded.

Granted there are exceptions to some of these but the marketing is aimed at getting mainstream buyers to purchase under some pretty large assumptions.

[EAO]

Just remember that having dual core doesn't mean all software will use both CPUs. Only software written specifically to use dual cpus will really get the benefit. Most software isn't, and so will only use one core, effectively acting like a single core 3800. Most (all ?) games are single cpu only. Most high end editing and rendering software will see and work with both cores.

In time, all software will be dual core aware, but not for a while.

BINGO!!!

FWIW - Things like DVD shrink, TNPGenc absolutley fly.... and if you're somewhat comfortable - and know what you're doing - you can easily o/c that cpu. I have the same one and I have slowly gotten up to 4600 + speeds on the stock cpu fan. But don't try it unless you know what your doing because you can fry it.