Brian Frank

AMD is going to be releasing the 900MHz Duron on March27th. This could be the last speed bump for the Duron before the new "Morgan" core which is supposed to come out at 950MHz. Unfortuantely, the current chipsets arent supposed to support the new Duron core or the new Athlon core-Palimino. Based on the info Ive read, I doubt AMD has underclocked Durons. If something on your computer smells burnt, thats bad news IMO.

Right now, if that mobo has a KT133A chipset, just sit tight. DDR while it is nice, doesnt seem to have much, if any, performance gain over the KT133A + SDRAM. If you want RDRAM, only the P4 uses it. RDRAM is expensive and shows no performance gain or just very little. The T-Bird can whomp the P4 and its $300 cheaper. If you get a DDR board, you shouldnt have to get a new processor. If you want to go to the AMD chipset, wait until the 760MP comes out. Im not quite sure, but it is supposed to be out this summer. Personally, Id say stick with what you got. In addition to the new board, you will have to buy DDR memory, which is more expensive than SDRAM. AMD has touted the current T-Bird and Duron chips as multiprocessor capable. Unfortunately, they had a brain fart and forgot to have a multiprocessor chipset to go along with it. So while AMD's current chips should support SMP, there isnt a board available to show for it. Oops.

Okay, would someone please tell me how to stop ZoneAlarm from trying to go to Zonelabs website on everyother boot up. Ive disabled autoupdate, and the web browsing isnt even set to go on on startup. Is there some way to stop this from happening. I have the latest version of the free one, so it doesnt need to be updated.

Uhh, JJ32, this forum was intended to HELP, not to flaunt your knowledge as if your the god of computers. There are plenty of knowledgeable people here, but they dont act like @sses. Sorry for being human.

I dont post completely stupid posts here do I? Just wondering, because this new jack@ss, JJ32, seems to think that anything I say is stupid. With that Zone Alarm thing, it was one of those D'oh! moments. I thought screwing up was part of being human... Id consider it a bad thing to have people against you already, when youve only been posting a few days...

Yeah, sometimes.

Did you increase the core voltage?

Its a little less hair-raising if you just hook up the hard drive to the non ATA100 primary controller and install Windows then install the drivers for the Promise controller. After that, then go ahead and hook the hard drive up to the Promise controllers and see if the problem goes away. Thats the way I do it. Ive done it the other way, but its just less stressful this way.

See if you can change the clock mulitplier and have it boot up. If not you dont, unless you do the L1 bridge closing trick. Play around with the hdd type setting, but its best to leave it as Auto. I really really doubt the V3 is a contributing problem at all. Is bios reading the name of cd rom weird? Like not saying Compaq CD-ROMxxx (for example) and giving a bunch of symbols like *()^&%$ and numbers and letters combos? If its doing that, its bad. If you get a new board and dont plan to overclock, I suggest if available a Tyan board. Or get the Asus A7V/133. I dont have any experience with Iwill, since I havent seen any of their boards in town. Really, if everything worked right before, Id say its the board or the processor. And based on the info, Im leaning toward the board as a problem.

Well believe it.

Your sig line works, alright!

Clean install regardless, it still sucks. While it is a little faster than 98 in the bootup, everything else was slower. Plus games were not as stable, crap like Movie Maker and Media Player 7 were not optional, unless you want to hack the registry. There's nothing worth going to ME for. Wait for something like XP, if you're really going to upgrade. Unless you need DOS to function, go to Windows2000 for now or stick with 98. ME was not all MS said it was ed up to be. With Win2k I have had to install drivers for two internal devices: my video card and my Promise ATA100 controller. I foolishly thought that ME, being a new version of Windows would have even better support than Win2k. No way. With a Voodoo3, Win2k didnt need drivers until you wanted to play games. With ME, I had to install almost everything except my sound card to get it run. You should not have to slave over an OS just to get it to run stable. Plus, like 98, the Defragger on ME is horrible...close down just about everything in the background, turn off screensaver, run defrag. The defragger on Win2k is much better. The Windows ME CD is best used as a coaster. What good is speed if you crash all the time? I had more game crashes in ME than 98. The only time my games have hosed up on me in 2k was when I overclocked too high. ME is a living hell to network to any Win2k box. I dont know if MS thought that Win2k would never ever in a million years be used by someone at home. Just because you know a zillion tweaks for this and that does not and should not be a basis for power user. A power user is some one that uses a particular OS and refines it and maintains it. MS didnt seem to consider Win2k as a home OS. It was designed off the NT core, which was targeted at businesses and not at the home market. I am not a weak user just because I dont go along in the registry. I have ventured into the registry, but thats not something I do for every little thing. YOU use the OS that suits YOU best. ME was a bad release and should have had incompatibilites worked out before it shipped. Isnt it a little odd that many apps that worked under 98 had to be upgraded to run under ME. Let me put it this way: When you buy a brand in' new car, dont you want everything, like the engine, oil filter, steering wheel, and such to properly work? Its kinda like that with an OS, as you shouldnt have to fix a bunch of problems right off the bat. It should work with minimal beating around the bush. I can get my Win2k system up and running faster than I can with ME or any of the 9x line with the same amount of hardware and programs. Also, power user does not necessarily mean Overclocker. Take IT guys for example, they're not overclocking the company's PCs, but they have to know a bit to make sure everything is running smoothly. What fun is playing games if you have to hit reset every ten minutes because your OS cant manage resources well without you changing a ton of settings? Win2k has much better memory management than ME. On the same machine, right after finishing boot up, Win2k has more unused ram than ME does...no tweaks.

Get X-setup. Under the video cards section, there's a folder with an nVidia tweak that enables the overclocking feature. I have the 10.80 Dets, and this works on it. I dont know if the latest version of X-setup still has these tweakers installed, but I'll have to look.

JJ32, the only good chipset for power users is either the AMD 760/760MP or the KT133/133A. I havent really heard of anyone boasting about their ALi/T-Bird combo. Also, there is the L1 bridges to connect on T-Birds and Durons, which are highly overclockable if the L1 bridges are closed. Then you can adjust the clock mulitplier. Intel chips are the only ones that can be overclocked only by the FSB. The KT133A is just a tweak of the KT133, which itself is just a tweak of the KX133 that "offically" supports the T-Bird. Intel thinks that having a faster clock speed means the fastest processor, which from nearly all benchmarks we know is true. Not to say Intel produces bad chips, but right now the P4 is a really bad move because 1.RDRAM, 'nuff said. 2. The next P4 will have a different socket pin layout 3. The T-Bird except for one or two tests is faster. The only reason to get a P4 is for extreme video editing. If you already have a KT133 chipset, wait until the next bunch of chipsets comes to market, or if you dont plan to overclock by the FSB it is not a bad chipset. The flaw on Via's part was saying that it DID support syncronous CPU/FSB clock rates to 133MHz, which of course, it didnt. However, AMD chips are easily overclockable with the proper knowledge. AMD chips are the way to go for extreme overclocking. If in doubt, you cant go wrong with a PIII, unless you want a serious overclock.

Ya know what, I refuse to believe the Global Warming shpeil. Okay, its March 25--we're almost to April, and its snowing. It shouldnt be this fricking cold now! Alaska should be a mild zone now!

Hmm...a crashing service pack or a stable service pack. After ME, I'd think MS would try even harder to keep Win2k trouble free as possible. The way people whine about SP1, maybe MS heard that and wanted you all to shut up. I dont know what problems you all have with it, but I dont have any. And also, for the record, Ive had no problems with Via chipsets. Right now unless ALi or SiS can make a good chipset for power users, Via's the only way to go, until the 760 is on boards. Better yet wait for the 760MP instead...especially when Tyan puts one out. Sorry, off the topic. I just want people to shut up about Via sucks, blah,blah, SP1 sucks, boohoo...GET OVER IT!

Best solution is to go back to 98 or go to 2000. ME isnt all its ed up to be. In fact, Ive found it to be the worst version of all Windows. Improved stability, my @ss! Also, check to make sure the bios settings for your hard drive are correct. Ive run across an interesting situation that I just couldnt install Windows on a computer that I KNEW had a perfectly good hard drive. Try to put the settings for the hard drive to AUTO. I know that may not be the most optimal setting, but if it stops your problem, you'll have to live with it or go back.

If you think nVidia's crooked, then whats that make Rambus? Just read the article at Toms Hardware concerning this. He tells exactly why he doesnt like Rambus, and I totally agree. Rambus seems like they'll do anything to get RDRAM out and down consumers throats. I will boycott any product using RDRAM as long as possible. Any company that uses unethical means of promoting a product probably has a sorry prodcut that is just plain sh*t. RDRAM is just plain SH*T!

Is every last ounce of speed really worth the vulerability? How hard is it to just turn it off? Especially if your on a network, it's even more imperative to have a firewall and antivirus. If just an old POTS modem, skip the firewall, but dont forget the antivirus. I dont know about you, but a little privacy is something I like here. I'm also not to keen on having a virus screw up my sytem. Plus, I really dont like to spend the time reinstalling everything. Call me crazy, but a little security goes a long way. Its unwise to go without protection in this digital age. A fast computer is worthless if its infected or hacked by some unscrupulous fellow. I dont think all s are malicious, but there are those who have a sick pleasure in screwing up someones system. I know some really great tech guy that has his system rigged to deliver a voltage spike to the s computer if they hack his system, or so he said. Unless you got a defense along those lines, or better, a firewall and antivirus are the best way to go.

That would explain a lot.

Uhh...Im pretty sure SMP isnt for 98. I dont think 98 can utilize 2 or more processors. As for the Voodoo3, it should work. You want SMP: Win2k or Linux. BeOS leaves something to be desired.

Well then, if its happened since you got the new board, and its the EXACT same one, the board is bad. You shouldnt have to reinstall Win2k if its just the same board. You can try to reinstall, but you might be right back where you started. The only thing I can come up with for the problem of the board is if they're diffferent revisions of the board, but Im stretching it. Im quite perplexed.

Thats what I thought.

800! Woohoo!

799 replies.