XP ... is it worth it?

DeVore

I'm going to have to upgrade to XP and generally upgrade my aging 450. I figure best to do them all together.

Anyone got any reports FROM FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE of what XP is like? I've seen it and it looks all Mac-cy (I know that can be changed).

Is it any good?

DeV.

koneko

I have it, it's pretty swank. I'm not a big Microsoft fan, but XP is pretty good alright (better than I thought it would be, ha).

Desktop-wise, you can pick use the new XP style (rounded corners everywhere), or the standard Windows one, lots of stuff included. One of my faves is where I get a message saying "A network cable is unplugged", so I don't spend an hour trying to figure out why my network won't work, when it's just a simple cable :P

It seemed to increase my whole PC performance (graphics/gaming mainly), but doesn't for everyone.

Occidental

If you're coming from the world of 98 or Me, then stability is the big bonus.

Been running Pro for a few weeks on a number of PIII and P4 workstations. Most of these had come from the world of 98, Me and NT4. I've had a few apps that fall over, mostly 5 years and older, but all without taking the system with them. McAfee and print queues (normally a good test) have also run without any problems.

On the looks side, it's a more feely carey type of Windows than we're used to with lots of little bits thrown in for graphics, multimedia etc. Some of the menus and taskbars have been arsed around again, but still lead to roughly the same places.

XP Home is very much the same as the Pro version, with the one huge difference being that XP Home will not log on to a domain(replacement for 98 and Me my arse!).

The pricing from Microsoft is taking the p!ss somewhat, especially for all the companies who will be forced to buy XP Pro rather than home.

If you're going to upgrade I would say do it for the stability and not the gimics.

Dr. Loon

Yeah...I got it, and I like it....seems to run alot faster generally. Althuogh I had problems with my DVD performance slowing down, but I can sort that.... all round I reckon it's fairly slick.

Boston

i find it buggy, you should probably wait awhile.
personaly i like win2k pro much more, its alot more stable, and i like small res which seems to be a problem in Xp

Shinji

If you're running a 9x core OS, then upgrading to XP is something which absolutely makes sense; in fact, unless there's an issue with old hardware support, I'd do it right away on any system that meets base spec.

The additional stability is massively helpful, and MS have managed the impressive feat of simultaneously dumbing the OS down in order to make it more friendly for people who just want a PC that works, and also making the under-the-bonnet workings of the PC more accessible to those who want to fiddle around.

Initially I advised people running 2k to hold back from installing XP, since there seemed to be few benefits, but I can't see any good reason now for them not to upgrade. It's 2k Version 2 for all intents and purposes, and the addition of some really nice stuff (like the new terminal services system) makes the upgrade well worth it. I've yet to find any major bugs and the system is significantly more stable than any Linux workstation environment I've ever used.

Caveat: it doesn't like ABIT boards with onboard Highpoint RAID controllers.

FWIW, the new interface can be turned off entirely, giving you vanilla Windows once again. Personally I stick to a combination of old and new - I prefer the old Start menu and so on, but the new file folders work nicely for me.

Shiminay

My brother just got a new PC with it on board and I only had a brief fling with it. I bumped the res up and it still looked huge and that annoys me (cause I like my 1600X1200), but games ran rather nicely on it.

It appears to like the networking (mini LAN in the house) - picked up the network without my having to do any work at all, but I want to look further into it and see what's what.

Overall, I'd say it'll do well for them. Stability is the key to it.

Kairo

Originally posted by Shinji

Caveat: it doesn't like ABIT boards with onboard Highpoint RAID controllers.

ACK! And what the fúck do you think I'm getting? An Abit board with RAID and Windows XP.

Typical. :mad:

yellum

They seemed to have rejigged the code because the OS runs faster than 2K which is a nice little bonus.

The UI is only okay but at least you can modify it. Definetly great for the non techy OS users, makes life easier for them and the OS protects itself from them doing dumb things to it.

Dustaz

Originally posted by Shinji

Caveat: it doesn't like ABIT boards with onboard Highpoint RAID controllers.

Yikes, can you be more specific?

Hobbes

Originally posted by yellum
They seemed to have rejigged the code because the OS runs faster than 2K which is a nice little bonus.

Erm from the stats I've seen it really doesn't run that much faster at all and doesn't it need more memory then W2K Pro?

Personally I prefer W2K Pro to XP. Feels a lot better to me and also your not locking yourself into the stuff MS cripples you on.

Shinji

Sure. As far as I recall, it's the Abit KT7A-RAID (and presumably applies also to the KG7A-RAID) which has the trouble - the OS simply will not install, and makes all manner of whining error messages.

There are two solutions. The first is to download the latest Highpoint RAID drivers, put 'em on a floppy, and when the install process asks for "Third Party SCSI or RAID drivers", insert the floppy and hit F6. This will install compliant drivers and the XP install process will work fine.

The other option, which is the one I used when installing on a machine here during the week, is to move the drives off the RAID controller back onto the standard IDE onboard controller, disable the RAID controller in the BIOS, and once XP is installed, re-enable the RAID controller in the BIOS, boot and install the latest Highpoint drivers.


It's worth noting that this does not apply to PCI card Highpoint controllers such as the ABIT Hot Rod Pro card, which work perfectly happily with Windows XP. That's what I'm personally working with on my main system and it hasn't had a bother.

Shinji

Feels a lot better to me and also your not locking yourself into the stuff MS cripples you on.

The look and feel can be entirely reverted back to the 2k Pro way of doing things. The main tip is to disable the XP window borders (in Display Properties) and disable the Welcome Screen (in the Users subsection of Control Panel) which gives you back the traditional login screen and the traditional (and more useful) CTRL-ALT-DEL menu, including the Lock Workstation option.


Regarding the stuff MS cripples you on, I've yet to find any of this frankly. Windows Messenger is pre-installed; I don't mind this because I use it anyway (it rocks) and you can uninstall it easily.

The CD burning thing is silly, a single ASPI patch fixes that; this also applies to ripping CDs to MP3s.

The DIVX thing was cracked in minutes once the DIVX dudes got their hands on WinXP, and DivX 4 is now fully XP compliant.

Mmm, what else... Windows Media Player is actually a lot more stable, reliable and speedy than it was under 2k. And you can still install third party players if you wish.

If you're perfectly happy with 2kPro, then there's no particular reason to upgrade of course. I personally like the speed boost, certain aspects of the new look and feel, the better compatability with certain hardware and, most importantly, the overhauled terminal services. Using a PC sitting at home on my cablemodem over a laptop from a train outside Waterloo station over an HSCD link simply rocks

yellum

Originally posted by Hobbes


Erm from the stats I've seen it really doesn't run that much faster at all and doesn't it need more memory then W2K Pro?

Well I already had lots of memory anyway and met the requirements. From running it on my work machine I found it runs faster, I don't know why ...

Cake Fiend

I've been dual-booting 2K Pro and XP Pro for a few months now and 2K will be going out the window fairly soon. Basically I haven't come across anything I can't do under XP that I can under 2K, and I haven't booted 2K since I installed XP. If you're currently running 2k and planning to pay for XP however, I don't see any major reason to upgrade if you're happy with 2K. If you're on 9x or ME (get with the times ) then stability and compatibility are good enough reasons.

I see XP as 2K with bits and bobs added in, most notably increased general compatibility (in my experience) with older programs. This is important to me as I play a lot of old games and emulators, some of which don't work well or at all under 2K, but can be coaxed into running on XP by changing compatibility modes. As for Media Player, bleh, I still use 6.4

I use an ABIT BX133 RAID with onboard Highpoint controller and I've yet to have any problems, but that could be because of the drivers already having been installed under 2K.

Boston

the Highpoint controller wont have any problems under windows Xp, it seems that theres excellent raid support in Xp, saves allot of hassel

amp

Weh, Win XP is to Win 2k what Win ME was to Win 98.

The version number tells the truth: Win XP is 5.1. I'll wait till they release v6 thanks.

corkey

Hi does Xp work with AmD CPU OK ? :rolleyes:

7Day Theory

[insert opinion]im suprised that anything runs on an AMD cpu, considering how cheaply they are made and how hot they run.[/insert opinion]


If its an AMD Athlon or Duron then you will be ok.

Shinji

Works perfectly fine on an AMD processor.

[insert opinion]That would be the AMD processors which run significantly faster than the much more expensive Intel equivalents, and which have absolutely no heating problems whatsoever as long as you have the common sense to invest in a decent heatsink and thermal paste. [/insert opinion]

7Day Theory

---->points Shinji to a video which he may have seen, but clearly shows which processor is made to a much higher standard.

[warning]AMD ownners,this will scare the cr@p out of you and to Intel owners, this instill some confidence in you[/warning]

Video is here ..only 9MB.

Cake Fiend

Don't give me that crap, I for one have the sense to attach an appropriate heatsink properly and although I generally use Intel chips, those videos are not going to deter me from buying AMD chips.

[edit] Think I might have come across as a bit aggro with that comment, I was a tad drunken at the time But anyone who knows what they're doing shouldn't be in much danger of frying their chip. [/edit]

7Day Theory

Originally posted by Sico

Please try to ensure you have something resembling a clue of what you're talking about before posting in future :rolleyes:

I really did think that the video would only reinforce my point, and that being "Intel chips are made to a higher standard than AMD chips".


Attaching a quality heatsink and fan are default measures when installing any chip, but should the worst happen (ie) the heat sink become detatched from the chip which chip would you rather in your pride and joy?

Quoted From: THG It is no rare occasion that the processor heat sink fell off while the system was in transport. <edit> The result is a black screen when the system is started for the fist time

And then theres AMD specific heat sink problems:

Quoted From: THG large heat sinks have one big problem however. They are often extremely heavy as well. If the mounting mechanism for those devices is not very sturdy, the heavy heat sink can still fall off because the mounting mechanism breaks off.

After a poor game of CS or HL have you ever accidently booted the PC?

Personally i would go for Intel time after time, and that was before watching this video, but im not a performance nut, i would be satisfied with the slower P4, but thats me.

Koopa

yeah i wish nvidia had used the intel auto shutoff thing on their geforce chips.. its the sort of thing that youd think of as a "useless feature" when comparing chips , but its actually not useless (wouldnt stop me buying an amd chip, but only because theyre cheaper or whatever)

i had a creative labs geforce 256, worked fine for about 15 months, then the fan on the heatsink stopped working, for no apparent reason.. might have been caused by dust, since i run my pc with one side of the case open (heat), but anyway, it stopped working.. so, since the heatsink was basically just a (really thin and crap) sheet of metal without the fan, i took it off and attached an older heatsink i had lying about.. this worked fine for another 2 months, then one day while i was using the PC, the display went weird (horizontal shadows across the screen caused by text or graphics, overall brightness of screen really low, colours kindof 'wrong').. i tried rebooting, but it stayed the same, i could see the distortion even in the bios screen, so it was definitely a hardware thing

i checked the graphics card to make sure it was seated properly etc in the agp slot (it was), when i noticed the heatsink was kindof hanging off the card, not making proper contact with the chip.. so the card was obviously heat-damaged due to no heatsink - "that wouldnt happen with an intel chip pffffft"

Shinji

Two small points which I've made before, but deserve making again.

Firstly, you know that "Dr" that Tom puts in front of his name occasionally on that site? Guess what he's a doctor of. Go on, guess. Something nice and techy that qualifies him to comment in this way on hardware yeah? Nope, friend Tom is in fact a Doctor of Dentistry, and no more qualified to write about this stuff than any other fanboy on the net. His site is good, but in no way more trustworthy than any other amateur hardware site.

Second point is less general and pertains to the video you just linked to. Mention this vid to any AMD employee and they'll shake their heads sadly - it's been a really nasty PR blow for them, and it's entirely not their fault. The fact is that the motherboard which Tom tested the P4 on had P4 specific temperature control/shut-off devices onboard, and the AMD chip was tested on a board which doesn't actually support AMD's heat protection system. Not exactly a fair comparison eh? No wonder the Athlon comes off badly!

For what it's worth, the P4 chips actually run hotter than equivalent benchmark speed Athlons. The difference is that AMDs chips are designed to continue running regardless - they rely on the mobo to chop the power if it gets dangerously hot, and they have better heat tolerances anyway. P4 chips can drop their speed by as much as half in order to compensate for getting hot, and often do even when the heat is within safety limits.

My AthlonXP 1800+ runs comfortably at 50 degrees centigrade, I'm reliably informed that if I had a P4 at this temperature it'd be running at 75% of normal speed to compensate - without telling me, of course.

Koopa - yeah, Geforces are STUPIDLY hot. The air coming off the fan on the pre-production GF3 Ti500 I had for a while left a brown scorch mark on the paper sticker on the back of the network card directly opposite it - scary stuff, I'd hate to see what'd happen if the heatsink on that fell off.

Victor

I'll probably get smacked for this, but someone (who should know) was saying the XP security doesn't "like" downgrades to previous versions.

7Day Theory

Originally posted by Shinji


and no more qualified to write about this stuff than any other fanboy on the net. His site is good, but in no way more trustworthy than any other amateur hardware site.

Yeah sure Shinji, THG is an amateur site....
Its not my only source for information, i also use Sharky and Anandtech, but THG is the original, most popular, and just like microsoft is subject to haters because of this.

Originally posted by Shinji

Mention this vid to any AMD employee and they'll shake their heads sadly - it's been a really nasty PR blow for them, and it's entirely not their fault. The fact is that the motherboard which Tom tested the P4 on had P4 specific temperature control/shut-off devices onboard.

The P4 mobo security features were never needed because the chip is advanced enough to throttle itself back inorder to curb overheating, if this fails the chip is shut down, but that obviously did not happen as the system remained functional without the heatsink and when the heatsink was replaced the system returned to normal status.

Originally posted by Shinji

and the AMD chip was tested on a board which doesn't actually support AMD's heat protection system..

This Athlon using the 'Palomino'-core, has no thermal protection and is completely reliant on the motherboard saving it in an overheating situation but that did not work even though the motherboard had "Palomino thermal protection circuitry"

We used a specific Palomino motherboard, Siemens' D1289 with VIA's KT266 chipset. Siemens assured us that the thermal protection circuitry is definitely working on their motherboard

Originally posted by Shinji

For what it's worth, the P4 chips actually run hotter than equivalent benchmark speed Athlons.

I have never used an AMD chip, so hopefully this thread will let me know if im right or if you are...:)

Which Runs Hotter?


Maybe i will have to eat my words...:)

Boston

Shinji is right, when you take it that a 1.4ghz will out perform a p4 1.8ghz on most benchmarks

but with the developemnt of new DDR chipsets for the p4 and the new windows Xp, this may not be the case for much longer.

Shinji

even though the motherboard had "Palomino thermal protection circuitry"

This is the point that AMD dispute. They're absolutely adamant that the board he tested his chip on did not have this functionality enabled.



For what it's worth, this is a bloody stupid argument in the first place. I've been running Athlon processors for a very long time, and have had a wide selection of the little fellas in my machine, with a variety of cooling solutions (current one being a SuperOrb - I was watercooling for a while, and have had all manner of others) and have NEVER had a heatsink fall off, ever. The clips to hold these things onto a Socket A processor are exceptionally resilient and well-designed - it's hard enough to get the little feckers off when you want to, never mind have them fall off in transit or some such nonsense!

Same goes for pretty much everyone in my clan and anyone else I know who owns one of these. I probably know about a hundred people running Socket A athlon processors right now. I know of not a single one who has ever had their cooler become loose or fall off.

7Day Theory

ok argument ends...

sceptre

Shinji, you've just meade me think twice about getting a GeForce - last thing I want to do is leave the machine on while I go away for a weekend and come back with the damn flat on fire

Koopa

haha, guess what card i replaced my geforce with?

yup, another geforce (ddr this time, but its the same card, creative labs, etc, exact same board layout.. and the exact same ****ty fan)

i dunno, ati drivers seem ****e for older games (which is what i play mostly), visual artifacts etc. , and i heard bad things about kyro 2 performance regarding some old games (quakeworld), although these are both only driver issues, im not naive enough to think that they will 'soon be resolved' anytime during my lifetime, so, once again, nvidia seems to be the only option for me, since i didnt want to risk getting a kyro 2 and finding out it was really ****e in old games (qw)

Shinji

Heat or no heat, Geforce cards are the only ones worth buying right now - although the new drivers for the Radeon 8500 are pretty decent, they're still not as good as they should be.

Just get a decent NVIDIA card (in other words, not a Creative one - Creative graphics cards these days are REALLY skimpy on cooling gear) and you're sorted really. They're hot, but not dangerously hot as long as they're well built.

Sceptre - graphics cards only really heat up when you're doing stuff with them, leaving a machine on over the weekend is unlikely to cause any problems...

_CreeD_

If you want a Geforce with heat protection get an ASUS. They have 'SmartDoctor' which can be set to automatically throttle the core speed if it overheats or to set off an alarm at whatever temp you specify. Also you can quickly view the card's heat at any time (Very handy for diagnosing problems when overclocking). Also they come with a great heatsink that covers the RAM aswell. The fan is the usual tiny thingy but is easily replaced (I have a decent 40mm replacing mine on an 8200 deluxe and it runs perfectly at 260core/560Ram)

On the Athlon side, I'm now on cpu number 3, no - not because of anything bad. Since the first edition I've found them to be excellent and stable performers, and since they;re so cheap it's always tempting to upgrade early. As for heatsink mechanisms being untrustworthy - I use a copper SK6 Heatsink (Weighs about twice as much as the average sink) with a 2 inch 80-60mm plastic duct leading to an 80mm fan, lots of weight and lots of leverage increasing the force, and it's fine (has been for about 8 months, not so much as a wobble).
Athlons and their motherboards are aimed at more tech savvy folks (no offense but intel are OEM and mom/pop first, hence the mandatory throttling and fk all features in their motherboards). They run hot and rely on you to protect your system adequately, using decent monitoring tools/Heat Sinks and plain common sense. What you get in return is unrivalled bang for the buck and a CPU that doesn't think it has the right to slow down just because it doesn't like the heat in the kitchen.

Supercell

Originally posted by Shinji
Caveat: it doesn't like ABIT boards with onboard Highpoint RAID controllers.

Not entirely true, running XP on a KG7-RAID, booting off a couple of IBM deskstars in a raid 0 config. XP installed clean .

That said perhaps the next board revision(the one with the A ) is slightly different.

Fact is scsi and raid boards have needed the f6 treatment for a long while on NT based os's, and perhaps this is needed on the newest ABIT boards, but not at least on the KG7-RAID.

But i wouldnt go as far as to say it "doesnt like" them, just needs installing properly.

MiCr0

is it just be or is this thread gone waaaaaay OT?

Shinji

But i wouldnt go as far as to say it "doesnt like" them, just needs installing properly.

Given that MS' official documentation describes the KT7A (and KG7A, I think) as "unsupported", it seems fair to say that it doesn't like these boards

True enough though - it's possible to sort it out, it's just not immediately apparent what the problem is and can leave you REALLY stumped when installing. The main problem is the nature of the error - it's not in any way obvious that "IRQ is less or greater than zero" means your RAID controller is having a spaz attack

Gerry

OT it may be, but jesus I wish we had topics like this on the tech board. A hell of a lot more interesting than most of the threads on it.

Ok, where to start throwing cents

Shinji, you are absolutely right about the athlon, as far as speed and heat go. However you are completely wrong about the p4.

The p4 clock throttling is all done on chip, it does not need the motherboard to tell it when to slow down.

Same as the p3, it doesn't matter what board you put a p3 into, it will still automatically stop running without damage if it goes over its max temperature.

The p4 only throttles if it is outside of its maximum safe operating temp, which is far higher than 50 degrees, I dunno where you pulled that 75% duty cycle bull**** from.

The clock throttling issue was debated for a number of months, but nobody seemed to have any evidence of p4's slowing down, except vans hardware. And van eventually shut up when nobody else could find any evidence of it. Most p4's will be running around 50 degrees as standard, since most pc manufacturers skimp on cooling. Yes, it will put out at least as much heat as an athlon on full load, but it won't throttle.

I do have personal experience of this. I had to replace the psu fan on a gateway p4, before replacement there was a lot of heat building up in the case. I'd say the cpu was running around 60 or 70 degrees, the heatsink would burn your fingers if you gave it long enough. The machine still ran fine, the psu was in far more danger of failing than the cpu.

On toms hardware, well shinji if you read the site extensively, you will see that tom usually takes a fairly tough line against intel, purely based on price based on performance. He is right to lambast them for this, now I don't agree with him all the time, since he has a tendency to exaggerate. ie say an amd wins by a hair in a benchmark, he will say "The amd trounces the intel in this benchmark". If the intel wins by a hair "The chips are about level here".

But, he turns around and rightly lambasts amd for their lack of thermal protection on PRODUCTION motherboards, and everybody starts attacking him.

Incidentally, you will also discover on extensive reading, that yes he really does know his stuff, and he's not just another wannabee hardware journalist. He has explained at length that he is not a doctor of anything computer related, does this mean he can't use the title?

Creed, you do have a point that intel systems are more "mom and pop". What does that have to do with tweakers? No hardware enthusiast buys an intel manufactured motherboard. An abit manufactured, intel based motherboard is just as tweakable as an abit amd motherboard. You don't really have a point here. To get the most out of either system requires common sense, and technical knowledge. To get the intel system working requires less work, and less care. Big ****ing deal.

And I've already dealt with the perhaps throwaway comment in the last line of your post, which is based on utter bull****.

As for the geforce, well the geforce1 is an extremely hot running chip, the geforce2 is not as bad but still pretty hot. I had a creative geforce ddr, and I replaced the ****e cooling with a decent socket7 heatsink, with an 80mm fan blowing over it. I have a similar setup on my geforce2 gts. I was at a lan over the weekend, and I had one of my fans on too low a voltage to start. And so the geforce got no airflow, and heated up to 70 or 80 degrees. After that, whenever I was playing a 3d game on the projector screen, there was a tiny amount of interference. This thankfully does not appear on my monitor!

_CreeD_

Originally posted by Gerry
The clock throttling issue was debated for a number of months, but nobody seemed to have any evidence of p4's slowing down, except vans hardware. And van eventually shut up when nobody else could find any evidence of it.
Most p4's will be running around 50 degrees as standard, since most pc manufacturers skimp on cooling. Yes, it will put out at least as much heat as an athlon on full load, but it won't throttle

<snip> I'd say the cpu was running around 60 or 70 degrees, <snip> The machine still ran fine...


Creed, you do have a point that intel systems are more "mom and pop". What does that have to do with tweakers? No hardware enthusiast buys an intel manufactured motherboard. An abit manufactured, intel based motherboard is just as tweakable as an abit amd motherboard. You don't really have a point here. To get the most out of either system requires common sense, and technical knowledge. To get the intel system working requires less work, and less care. Big ****ing deal.

And I've already dealt with the perhaps throwaway comment in the last line of your post, which is based on utter bull****.

Hmmmm.
So you accept that throttling is a part of the CPU makeup, also point out that at least one site DID prove it. And then say that to think a P4 will slowdown when overheating is 'Bull****', you're only 'proof' being that more people haven't seen it, and the wonderfully vague performance benchmark of 'It ran fine'.
Very good Gerry, impressive logic.
Maybe you could also try being a little less abusive and just express an opinion once'n a while? Oh, and without contradicting yourself would be good too.

As for the mom and pop comment. I'll stand by my claim that the majority of AMD owners are more technically skilled. Intel owns the OEM market, most folks thinking of buying a new PC dont have a clue what an Athlon is. Whereas those that do buy AMD are most likely tol do so because of the research they have done on forums like these, or tech sites like Anandtech. Anyone who can check the benchmarks, feature sets and is not fooled by a misleading clock rating will go for an Athlon based on price/performance alone.
Hold a poll here, and I gaurantee you the vast majority of folks who have built their own PCs will have Athlons.

corkey

:rolleyes: Hi All

new to computers just got one for home has xp on it last night it changed all desk top items now have a white arrow on the icons i know its silly but i tought this would be the place to find out how to remove them and dont give out im only new to this

thanks

corkey

Gerry

Ok, I didn't exactly make a very clear point. My point is, the chip will throttle when it overheats. This point is not reached when the room gets a little bit hot, as you suggest. When I pointed out that the gateway machine was running 60 or 70 degrees, I should have pointed out that the cpu was still not outside its specified maximum operating temperature, and so could not be said to be overheating. It will keep running with 100% duty cycle until it heats up to 80 or 90 degrees, whatever it is. Then it will throttle. Under all other circumstances, such as crappy oem cooling, it will work fine.

As for one site DID prove it, I wasn't very clear here either. Vans Hardware has a rather obvious anti-intel bias, moreso than toms hardware. However, when it became apparent that no-one else had any apparent throttling with their p4's, van was forced to re-evaluate the issue. I think this sums it up nicely, in his own words:

"I believe the Pentium 4 that displayed apparent throttling behavior under Quake III was a part that slipped through a hole in Intel's validation process. This is a manufacturing issue, not a design issue and is therefore correctible through more exhaustive validation cycles. This is a very common occurrence that rarely is cause for alarm unless a large percentage of chips are impacted, which I do not believe to be the case here. "


I did actually run quake3 benchmarks, it was a 1.4ghz p4 with a geforce2 gts, and it convincingly beat my own machine, I can't remember the exact numbers, I think it was around 250 fps in a benchmark where my own machine would get around 170-180. If it was throttling I don't think it would have been able to do that.

Apologies if I seemed abusive, I get a little worked up about these things. You know a great deal about athlons, but are prepared to make ill-informed assumptions about the pentium 4, I'm just trying to give both sides of the story.

I fully agree that the majority of amd owners would be more technically knowledgeable, but where did I say otherwise?

A poll would indeed show that the majority of people build athlons. Indeed the majority of machines I have built in the last year would be athlons. The price to performance ratio cannot be argued with.

Shinji

Er, you're making one unsafe assumption - the belief that all P4 cores are born equal. I'm not saying that all P4s throttle at silly speeds, but some of them most certainly do - I returned one to Scan on behalf of a mate on the basis that it was quite clearly throttling at just over 60 degrees, which obviously isn't acceptable. Obviously this isn't normal behaviour, but it DOES happen.

marauder

P4 Speed Throttling kicks in around 75C. This is the temp of the Processor Casing. The heat sink and fan should prevent the processor case from getting near to this.

Shinji, maybe your mates heatsink wasn't seated properly or there were bubbles in the thermal paste. Applying that paste is not as straightforward as most people think....
Did the fan/heatsink come pre-installed or did he do it himself?

Typedef

Was anyone else surprised how easy it was to work around the activation with the attached zip? Haven't Microsoft any clue how useless the entire activation scheme becomes once the corporate patch that negates the hardware activation becomes available on the internet?

I mean why even bother making the activation key a requisite if you are just going to release a patch like below for it? A patch that is so easily implemented, ie a couple of dos commands and a link file?

www.boards.ie/members/Typedef/Windows_XP_Final_build_2600_English_Patch.zip

MarcusGarvey

Typedef have you ever supported the average windows user ? They're not going to go to all that bother (which is sfa ) to run this patch. Its hard enough to get them to double click on a shortcut on their desktop that updates their AV software.

In a corporate environment you'll have some sort of support person that will install the patch as it will make his/her/its life a good bit easier when they decide to upgrade the hardware on every computer.

Kairo

I found no problem installing XP with my Abit board...although it is one of the newer models (KR7A-Raid) and I'm not using raid atm.

Anyway, XP..looks nice, seems like every other OS if you ask me. I can't see any real noticible features. It's not as stable as it should be, I've been running it only a week now and I've had my fair few crashs.

I also don't like the way its seemingly designed for idiots (and I'm using the professional edition) All these annoying pop-ups telling me my computer just crashed and my network cable isn't plugged in when I don't even have a network running I'm sure there are ways of turning them off, but I'll be damned if I can find them all.

Plus, alot of old games, like Thief: The Dark Project, won't work

I need to see some good points soon or I'm switching back to 98

Zaphod Beeblebrox

Originally posted by Shinji
I returned one to Scan on behalf of a mate on the basis that it was quite clearly throttling at just over 60 degrees, which obviously isn't acceptable. Obviously this isn't normal behaviour, but it DOES happen.

Sorry I have to say this. Scan? SCAN!?! Was it your mate who ordered it from them? If so please slap him. For his own good.
Never even consider thinking about the mere possibility of going anywhere near Scan without the presence of a very large gun to your head. Speaking from bitter experience here. Very bitter. Like a coctail of vinegar and various citrus fruits. Splashed over an open wound.
Microsoft irritates me and Dell make me laugh, but the only company I utterly detest with the righteous fury of frothing bile gushing from my hate glands is Scan :mad: :mad: :mad:

Getting back onto the off-topic topic, I personally prefer Athlons based on the price-for-performance ratio, and have never had overheating problems, although a mate who put in a particularly sh!te cooler did. I have no problem with Intel, the last computer I bought was a P3 450 and it served me well. However my bank balance doesn't appreciate Intel too much, especially when you consider the differences in performance between a 1.57GHz Athlon-based PC and a 2GHz P4-based PC and then the price differences in building or buying those PCs.

And finally back to the original topic, I've had XP for two days now and so far am pretty happy - over the last week or so the Blue Screens of Death launched a particularly vicious bout of guerilla warfare assaults which have stopped since installing XP. Start-up is also faster which is obviously a Good Thing, but so far no difference in games/graphics performance. As for networking, I'll have to see over the next couple of days; hopefully it will talk to the other PC running Win98.

Typedef

Originally posted by MarcusGarvey
Typedef have you ever supported the average windows user ? They're not going to go to all that bother (which is sfa ) to run this patch. Its hard enough to get them to double click on a shortcut on their desktop that updates their AV software.

In a corporate environment you'll have some sort of support person that will install the patch as it will make his/her/its life a good bit easier when they decide to upgrade the hardware on every computer.

Unfortunately yes I have had the misfortune of supporting the average endluser, yes I know there are people in this world who have been using windows 95 for the last seven years and still couldn't find the start button when asked, but, still seems kinda pointless making the "security" that easy to break no? On the flip side if you make a corporate patch that is nothing more then a few dos commands and a link file you kinda make it easy to copy the OS no?

-Could you click on start please sir
=I don't have a start button
-No do you see on the screen in the bottom lefthand corner where it says start
=yes
-Well could you click on that button please
=What with my mouse button
-yes could you click on it with your mouse button
=What double click or ah
-no could you single left click on it once, with your mouse button
=I can't
-Whatdyou mean you cant
=It keeps disappearing
-How do you mean it is disappearing
=Well I click on it, and then I click it again and it disappears
-Ok sir, place the pointer over the start button
=Yes
-Now single, left click once for me please... now don't do it more than once, just single left click once
=I want to speak to your manager
-Why is that sir
=Because you don't seem to know what you're doing
=I'm sorry sir my manager is in a meeting right now(lie), so I will put you onto my manager for sure, but between now and then if I could just get you to try and click on the start button
-Ok, have done.
=Right so click on settings and control panel and double click on add new hardware
-What with my mouse button.