Immortal

Well, ive fixed the problem. Its probbaly the stupidest workaround ever. All i have to do is leave a CD in the drive so that Windows detects the CD-RW... stupid.

What heatsink are you using and at what voltage is your RAM at?

The Barton 2500+ is a 333Mhz FSB chip. So it is DESIGNED to run @ 166FSB (333FSb DDR) and hence if ur setting it to 400FSB ur overclocking the CPU by a fair margin and that will explain your crashes. If the RAM is running in Dual Channel mode and in sync mode with the CPU @ 166FSB it will provide more performance than if you run it Async @ 400Mhz. Thats why it got set to 166FSB, cause it is the optimal performance. In Sync with the CPU. trust me, running @ 333FSB in Sync with the CPU is much better than running ASync 400MHz.

If your talking about your new Pentium 4 rig, i would say look elsewhere... this is AMD only! If its for an AMD rig, then go for it!

You will see a HUGE improvement. Radeon 9800 Pro cards are very fast, even with the eye candy turned on. Definetley worth upgradin.

Just saying, my rig has more seting up to do, but once it has been setup as it has been now, it does smash the other one in... Your point about thermal management is well taken! I have to agree that the Intel Stock HSF is the best stock HSF ever, much better than the AMD one. My mate has the stock AMD HSF and his temps are way ionto the 50's, my temps border 50c at Full load after around 8 hours or so.

Im running an low end Jetway KT266A chipset motherboard and it runs even more stable than my current rig.... *NIX Systems, fine probbaly, but that may be the OS's problem, not the CPU's. Developers should cater a one size fits all solution....

The early celerons and PIII versions were very good, they offered excellent price performance ration, the current ones dont. As you have a dual channel chipset, that reduces the bottleneck slightly as your faster system RAM makes up for the lost CPU cache slightly.

Clutch, not to be rude or anything but do what you just said makes no sense at all. The AMD Athlon series and the AthlonXP to ANY software is an intel -compatible CPU. There is no way that a program designed to run on an Intel CPU will not run at the same speed or better on an AMD system. This has been proven. This was a misconception when AMD first started mass-producing but was rightly shown to be a load of cowpat. Stability is not an option, a well setup AMD based system will run just the same as a well setup intel system. A computers stability is linked to its setup and hardware configuration, for many people the AMD systems have been easier than the intel systems. Your theory holds true ONLY for the old K2/K3, not the Athlon series. Except maybe the heat managment bit, that still plagues them a bit. As i said im not trying to be rude, but people have been using this as a thing agaisnt AMD whereas its not true in anyway. CyberGenX, Celerons, because of their crippled cache can fill their pipe quick enough so they must stall for it to be filled before they process. Gaming suffers a lot, your wife can probably play those games because she has a good GFX card, which matters more to Graphics intensive games than CPU does. Lets not also forget resolutions and also details. I did a test with my system, using a Celeron 2.8Ghz my FPS fell from 100 FPS to around 40 FPS in some games, thats a huge hit for a CPU 400Mhz higher clocked than mine. As a genrall rule of thumb, a celeron needs to be either 1.5 or 2 times higher clocked than a P4 equivalent to beat it in most applications!

If you want an expensive paperweight then get a celeron. Seriously, if you want a comparison then a 2.8 Ghz Celeron will be outperformed by a 1.6Ghz Pentium 4. NEVER EVER even consider a Celeron, ever.

IC7 MAx3 has apparentley been fixed of its fluctuating vDimm issues. So its really the mobo of choice so far, very fast and very stable. Secondly, why dont u spend an extra $20 and get a 9600XT?

No noticebale performance gain. Maybe as games require more memory bandwidth it wil come into play but as yet no noticeable imporvement, only around 5% MAX, 2%-3% normal gain usually.

Halo renders the textures and stuff in a different way to other games, thats why the graphics are different and AA and FSAA have no effect. I played halo and found it an excellent game. One thing tho, Halo reverts to PixelShader 1.4 with Radeon 9xxxx series GFX cards and the new GF-FX Series (I dont have one so i cant be sure). But the newer cards support Pixel Shader 2 which looks better and is highly optomized, so if you put this extension into the shortcut : "X:\Microsoft Games\Halo\halo.exe" -use20 This will force the game to use Pixel Shader 2.0 which makes the GFX look so much better! Note, this fix is good, but nVidia cards will suffer HEAVILY, the GF-FX series doesnt have as powerfull and optimized PS2.0 as the radeon family so use at your own will. AND ONLY the GF-FX series and Radeon 9xxx family support this feature i beleive

PC4200 is only for overclockers so you are sure its not ur RAM stopping you getting further, no CPU requires it yet.

no probs, always happy to have helped, thats what forums r for!

I think this is the most up to date and correct relations: GF FX 5950 Ultra / ATI Radeon 9800XT GF FX 5900 Ultra / Geforce FX 5950 / ATi Radeon 9800 Pro GF FX 5900/ GF FX 5800 / GF FX 5800 Ultra /ATi Radeon 9700 Pro / ATI Radeon 9800 GF FX 5600 Ultra (V2)/ ATi Radeon 9600 Pro / 9600XT GF FX 5200 / ATI Radeon 9200 Pro GF4 Ti4600 / ATi Radeon 9700 GF4 Ti4400 (no longer made) / Ti4800SE / ATi 9500 Pro(no longer made) GF4 Ti4280 / ATI Radeon 9600 GF4 Ti4200/ ATi Radeon 9500 ATI Radeon 9200 ATi 8500 / GF3 Ti500 ATi 8500LE (9100) / Matrox Parhelia / GF3 ATi 9000 pro GF3 Ti200 ATi 9000 GF4 MX / GF2 GTS/Ti/Pro/Ultra / ATi 7500 SIS Xabre 200/400/600 GF2 MX ATi 7000 TNT2

Its marketting hype. Its saying that if you were to use this DUAL CHANNEL set @ DDR533 speeds you DO get 7.4Gb/s. This is true of all Dual Channel DDR533 modules. Run em @ DDR533 in dual channel mode and you get PC4200 (4.2GB/s) x 2 which is actuall 8.4Gb/s. They r taking advantage of the fact that its dual channel, whereas it is actually correct to market it as Dual Channel DDR533 (PC4200).

As sapiens said all those are excellent brands, however OCZ has problems with the MAX3 at high voltages and refuses to work properley thats why i STRONGLY advise you to stay away from OCZ PC4000 and above.

Id like to take this opportunity to say that FSAA and AA HAVE ABSOLUTLEY NO EFFECT ON HALO. Its the way the game works, FSAA and AA dont work with it. So enabling it just looses you performance....

Go with a known brand. Geil or Kingston would be the best bet and also A-Data RAM seems to run very well. Ive never heard of this KOMUSA DDR RAM, you cant be sure its quality. Remember that RAM is a vital part of the system dont skimp on it, get a well-known brand name!

Quote: P.S.=> Benchmarks? Yes, of course... eventually, you know I will want to compare it to your "internet & gaming hotrods" as I usually do, running a 'Dragrace/Shootout' type of test as I have done in the past here... they're fun, & a good gauge of how your system stacks up in a place full of Ferrari class systems! apk Your rig will smash anyones, seriously, with that kinda power nothing will be out of its reach!

So ur not going for the 9800XT then, ah well . Your system will rule badly, be sure to post benchmarks when ur done!

Ive seen it done @ the Abit Forums. You have to enable the on-chip raid ROM in BIOS and then using the intel RAID utility setup the RAID volume. Windows will see it as a normal HDD, but you must remember to press F6 before install and install the SATA drivers!

Hi Alec, Well the P4 EE is actually a new Xeon core thats been made to run on 800FSB and in a 478pin package. The Abit IC7 MAx3 supports it with a BIOS update (Bios 13). If you want more info on it Toms has done a good review of it and comapres it to the NEWER Athlon64: http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030923/index.html P4 EE costs a large sum, but the performance gain over the normal P4 3.2Ghz is quite a hefty amount. But the problem is they are in short supply, but famous retailers should stock them, try newegg or excalibur PC. And heres a review of the 9800XT: http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030930/index.html Enjoy!

Pentium 4 2.4Ghz 800FSB HT - Stock cooling (Upgrade to Zalman CNPS 7000Cu soon!) Abit IC7-Max3 BIOS 1.2 Hercules 3D Prophet 9800 Pro 128MB Geil Ultra Platinum Series PC4200 Dual Channel 2x256MB 2 x Seagate Barracuda V 80GB 8MB Cache 7200RPM SATA150 in RAID 0 16k 1 x Fujitsu 6GB Backup drive Artec WRA-WA48 CD-RW Intel Pro 1000CT NIC (Onboard) Cheiftec Dragon Series Case w/ 3 80mm Akasa Case fans. Codegen 400w PSU MS Multimedia keyboard + Optical Mouse