Well, will be upgrading memory after all

[Son Goku]

Well, not sure if to put this in general hardware, or the general forum... I guess it's a little of both.

Well previously I had been stuck with the 512 MB of Corsair XMS 2400 CAS 2 which I got with my Athlon XP 1900+ several years ago. When I upgraded to an Athlon 64, I just didn't have the money.

Anyhow, Best Buy has Corsair XMS Pro PC3200 on sale for $69.95 till tomarrow

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7048688&type=product&cmp=++&id=1107957009543

But they're sold out locally. Actually their website says it's in stock locally at the store on the west side (I live on the east side), but a call to the store, and a check of their shelves shows the website to be in error. And wouldn't you know, the local stores won't get it back into stock until after the sale is over, as it hadn't come on the truck...

However, I can get it from Santa Fe (they have 2 DIMMs in stock, which I checked as I have a socket 939 A64, and also do need 1 GB minimum now. As turns out, there's money in an account of mine back where my father lives, that he totally forgot about being there, so he transfered it, and told me I could grab it anytime now.

Only thing is it's a 90 mile drive (much farther then the theater was), so I got them to hold it (ordinarily I guess they wouldn't but the guy said for living in Albuquerque and all, and having to drive so far to get up there he would).

My computer no doubt will run better with it, will probably no more latter. Well I'm off, and will probably figure out lunch after I've gotten up there or something.

 

[Mastershakes]

Some stores have a policy. You can walk in, and get a coupon if they are out. They must match the sale price once the stock is in....

However, that's where the 'While Supplies last' clause comes in.

Bonne Chance.

 

[Son Goku]

Well, when I spoke on the people from Best Buy this morning, it seemed Saturday was it. It could have been ordered online, but my father prefered just sending the money out from the given account. It doesn't matter now, as I have the memory...

Just got in actually. After I got the memory, well I ended up heading back to get lunch, as the people there didn't have too many ideas that appealed to me, and I wanted more then just a sandwitch... :laugh: Japanese resturants (where I ended up eating) are quite expensive though, especially the way I eat, aka somewhat like Goku...

Well, anyhow, time to shut down, and install this memory. I think I'll re-adjust the swapfile prior to rebooting (and yes, I know this will probably result in perris re-posting that link which I've already read), but meh I prefer to keep my swapfile static at 1.5x physical RAM. I think I'll put the second half on my external USB 2.0 drive, as the swap is currently on the same internal SCSI drive that Windows is installed on, so it swap over 2 drives on 2 seperate buses. (The other internal drive used to be accessible to Windows, but has since been relegated as a Linux drive.)

 

[Son Goku]

Well, a few observations thus far:

- Don't bother splitting the swapfile, with part of it on a USB drive. Windows seems to ignore the setting altogether (probably because it recognizes that the drive can be removed). Though it lets one set it, it doesn't create the actual file on it, or advance the amount available.

Previously, when both SCSI drives were available to Windows it did let one split it that way, but not between internal and external drives. It was worth a shot, and of course I was careful to try rebooting before putting the memory in, so I would see.

- The computer is noticeably faster thus far, at least with opening programs and typing this. That's to be expected though as

* I was swapping a bit
* just doubled the RAM from 512 MB to 1 GB
* the old memory had to run with a 266 MHz DDR bus (aka I had to set the memory divider to lock it to a 133 MHz, of course considering that I was OCing which brought it up some

Actual gaming and other programs I haven't tested yet, but they should of course be faster also, as well the A64 isn't being held back as before.

- The amount of over-clocking which I did previously is a no go. Previously I set the HTT to 216 MHz and it tested stable at 219 MHz (with Prime 95), but didn't want to post beyond 218.

Now, it POSTS fine at 216 MHz, but Windows won't load with a

\windows\system32\system missing or corrupt

error message. This isn't true and at default clock, it boots fine. At 210 MHz it also boots fine, though at 215 MHz, same error message. Not sure how much margin is in this system now, but I will see... It's still faster though, either way...

Luckily however, there's no jazz with having to reset CMOS to find out, as that's not where it gets hung up, so it can all be tested from the keyboard

Edit: Yeah much better. Some things which I thought was video related lag, as the fps was dropping quite a bit, aka down to like 5 fps with skipped frames, doesn't appear to have been.

Same video card, but the fps is remaining consistently high, aka around 75 fps in the one game I played