Wirehead Studios

I just did a major upgrade to my computer, that's why I've been away for a couple of days. I gotta say, this upgrade boosted my computer 1000% it's unbeleivable. Here's my old system specs:

Old Setup[/b]
Mobo: I forget the exact model, but I know it's Abit, has 333 Mhz FSB, 3 PCI slots, 1 AGP 4x8x slot, Socket A design, supports up to 3GB PC3200 DDR400 system memory.

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2200+, 128kb cache, 1.8 Ghz

Memory: 1GB PC2700 (2 x 512mb)

Video Card: ATI Radeon 9600 128mb

Current Setup[/b]

Mobo: DFI, nForce 4 chipset, 1000 Mhz FSB, 3 PCI Slots, 2 PCI Express Slots, 2 PCI 1x slots, Socket 939 design, supports up to 4GB PC3200 DDR400 memory. Supports SLI dual video cards.

Memory: 2GB PC3200 (2 x 1GB) Dual Channel Mode

Video Card: GeForce 6800GT 256mb

Click on thumbs to enlarge.
(http://img390.imageshack.us/img390/8175/img09014so.th.jpg) (http://img390.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img09014so.jpg)
Inner Beauty...

(http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/8367/img09025dj.th.jpg) (http://img391.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img09025dj.jpg)
Body shot...

(http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/6959/img09044wh.th.jpg) (http://img391.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img09044wh.jpg)
Glow in the dark... oooOOOooo... :]

I already ordered an Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card (because the weakness of this mobo is the on board sound eats the CPU up) the second video card and 2GB or RAM.

Very nice specs.  The only things I'd be concerned about is heat buildup with a second vid card, and making sure you have an adequate power supply to handle it.  Cables are a bit cluttered, but they're out of the way of the fans, which is a plus.  Keep an eye on your temps just to be on the safe side.  Otherwise, very good!  :thumb:

thats a chieftec case ( or other brand same case ), it has 2 fans on the front , 2 in the back , 1 in the side , and still some room to put 1 in the top ( if you wanna drill a hole in it )

these cases are UBER , and with 1mm thick steel there very solid cases without any knocking panels or so.

only thing you need to do to it to stand out is sunbeam lighted casefeet.
2 new leds ( for harddisk and power )
and 2  10cm led tubes ( neons ) behind the front grill (its really SWEET then.
 :thumb:  

LED is not the same as neon.  Neon is "cold cathode", which does not mean "cold tube", it just means the cathode does not have a thermal element.  It's still a tube full of ionized gas.  Cold cathode tubes are very hot and not really good for an aircooled case.  Why add extra heat?  LED lights are the way to go.  They don't drain power, don't heat up, and put out just as good light.

Oh I forgot to post this which was the purpose of this topic:

I got this stuff off of new egg for a grand total of.... $690 including shipping... That is cheap, so if you need an upgrade, a serious upgrade... newegg is the bomb. I recommend all these parts.

My lights are LED, and I have a 350 watt power supply which I think is fine.

Uh... 350 watt is not fine if you add a second video card!  :wtf:

I'd say it's a bit underrated for what you're using as it is.  If you plan on doing SLI, you MUST go to something higher.  Nvidia has a list of SLI approved power supplies.  I strongly urge you to check this out (http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_build.html#certified_powersupplies) before adding a second card!

looks like I didnt make myself clear.
I actually meant to say or you put led tubes behind them or you put neon tubes behind them.
I know perfectly well the difference between leds and neons.

It was that wonderful grammar at work again.  :thumb:

DANGER DANGER!
Fair warning, Audigy 2's eat just as much cpu as nforce onboard, if not more. And have a high rate of failure in heavy-use systems. As an example, I've personally had 3 audigy 2's fail. 3rd warranty replacement I gave up and intended to use my nforce 2 onboard audio as a temporary measure until I found a decent card. Haven't had to pick up a new one as it runs flawlessly.

Beyond just myself, I've had 5 friends/acqaintances return their Audigy 2's for various failures including 100% cpu spikes (in high-end athlon XP's and intel p4's) entirely failed live-drive hardware (creative labs claimed it worked fine twice before replacing) garbled audio, and DOA boards.

I have an audigy 2 ZX , and I never wanna get rid of it again , the sound is just amazing.
hell , I even wanna order 1 for my laptop .

its WAAAY better then any onboard sound I encountered.
only thing buggy is the drivers , specially in doom 3 where your sound sometimes just fell out.
but this is fixed in the latest drivers.

if you have 5.1 or 7.1 surroundsound and you tell the card the exact distance of the boxes and stuff , you can really pinpoint sombody's location in online gaming.
this card has saved my life many times in ET.
 :thumb:

I wish Hercules was still making sound cards.  The Fortissimo series was fantastic.  Can't get them any more, and they cost less than half of what Creative charges.  Creative sucks, they have a high failure rate in anything they manufacture.  Don't even get me started on their CD-ROM drives...  I'd use onboard over a Creative card, or else I'd go for something more professional, like Roland or Turtle Beach.  I'd really have to do some homework though, it's been ages since I've investigated sound hardware and I have no good suggestions.  My Fortissimo 3 is still going strong, and I've never had trouble with it so I've had no reason to research.  Only downside is it doesn't do EAX, but considering the age of the card, and the fact that I really don't care, it's no biggie.

Games Keeper:  My stereo headphones (http://www.akg.com/products/powerslave,mynodeid,186,id,252,pid,252,_language,EN.html) have killed more people than your audigy 5.1 surround sound has.  :D

My headphones:

The Sennheiser HD 600 (My dad's headphones that he doesn't let me use in the Computer :( ) : http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/icm_e..._high-end_04465 (http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/icm_eng.nsf/root/products_headphones_high-end_04465)

And my gaming headphones, the Pioneer SE-M280 (the uncomfortable ones) : http://www.audiotstation.com/wiki/Pioneer_SE-M280 (http://www.audiotstation.com/wiki/Pioneer_SE-M280)

Here's the exact card I'm getting.

http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/FeedBa...N82E16829102178 (http://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/FeedBack/CustratingReview.asp?item=N82E16829102178)

and check out the reviews that say this helps a lot, esp. with on board sound. My on board sound is a shit bag. It locks up in Doom 3, and most of the newer games. I researched it and it is defiantly a sound problem.


I appreciate the advice. :) This is nForce4 we're talking about, a completely different interface. As for CPU consumption, I will just lock the PCI bus speed to 33 MHz, the freq, of what it should operate from. I forgot to mention that I wanted to fix some system instabilities caused by sound problems as well as conserve CPU consumption. I'll send it back if I don't like it.

As for the power supply I think I will purchase a 550W, so I can run SLI.

Thinking about getting this baby:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16817709003 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817709003)

[edit] Damn, out of stock. [/edit]

Here we go:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16817103931 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103931)

Little more pricy, but it's more efficient overall, and is SLI certified.

maybe im not so good in getting the bastard killed , the only thing I say is that it really helped me to locate an enemy somewhere around me.

Good choice.  Can't really go wrong with Antec. :thumb:

Games Keeper:  That's exactly what I was referring to.  I have absolutely no trouble locating people by sound.

gah, I heard that PSU was not really stable, esp at overclocking. So I'm getting this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16817711002 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16817711002)

Heard from where?  I've also "heard" that OCZ puts out utter crap, whereas I've not had problems with Antec.  (Again, hearsay, I've not dealt with OCZ personally nor actually researched them so for all I know they could be top of the line, who can say?)  You better do a little further research before jumping models so quick on opinions.  Look around for actual reviews and stress-tests.  I can only say I've dealt with Antec and Enermax both, and I've had no problems with either brand.

Take a peek:

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10854 (http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10854)

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showth...ead.php?t=76097 (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76097)

Good good, looks like someone (Anandtech) put it through the paces and it did well.  It's always better if you can find out someone else did the grunt work for you instead of "finding out the hard way".  It also appears Kooldrew on the second link you posted is only interested in offering his opinion of SLI and convincing you not to use it rather than helping you find a good power supply.  (Don't you hate it when they do that?)  :rolleyes:

Notice my post back at him.

Ok I finally got my 4GB of RAM, Second Video Card and PSU.

The PSU kicks ass it's no misteak that it is. My CPU temp at stock speed was 22C before, now it is between 17C-18C!, and boy is this thing overclockable! Coupled with the highly overclockable DFI Infinity nForce 4 SLI mainboard, wow! Got it stable 2.2 GHz before the new PSU at a temp of about 37C now it is between 31C-32C, and I'm talking full load! I will play with some more overclocking later.

The second video card totally takes system requirements and stomps them to a pulp. Holy crap! I can run Doom 3 max settings at 1024x768 at an average of 70-80 fps! The core clock of the GPU is 325 MHz and the memory is 450 MHz, clock the stuff to GPU 365 MHz and Memory 500 MHz and times two cards you got 730 MHz GPU and 1GHz Memory and 512mb Video memory!

The RAM is where the problems start. The first thing I had issues with was the POST not reading the correct amount of RAM, saying like 2.75GB or RAM at DDR333 which should be 4 GB at DDR400. So I update the BIOS play with some settings and found if you set memhole mapping to software, POST will then allocate 4GB of RAM, but in Windows it still says 2.75GB. I've been to numerous forums giving me lunicris solutions like, "You got shitty RAM." or "You need a 64-bit OS" That is crazy because there are people who are running crappier RAM with more then 4GB ot RAM in Win XP Home.
If anyone has any ideas, it would be greatly apprieciated. :)

They are from the same company.

What brand of RAM, and what model?  Sometimes it isn't a matter of one ram being "crappier" than another, sometimes there are outright compatibility problems that are specific to a mainboard and RAM module.

You might nose around this forum (http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/index.php?s=) a bit to see if anyone else is having the same problem you are.

I'm not so sure that memory hole setting is correct either.  I'll nose through the manual and see what I can come up with.

Edit:  I did some research.  You won't like what I'm going to tell you.  Aparently the "hardware" setting for memhole is a legacy setting, and it causes the BIOS to allocate a huge chunk of memory for PCI devices, which is why it wasn't showing the full amount of RAM at boot.  The "software" setting gets around that, however there's a catch.  Windows XP SP1 handled memory differently from SP2, so if you had an SP1 machine set up where you could see the full memory in Windows the same as you could in the BIOS.  This is possibly why you know people with XP Home who can see 4 GB of RAM.  However, after SP2 this memory handling changed, and you can't see more than 2.7 in Windows no matter how you have it set up in the BIOS.  You're welcome to experiment with bank and node interleaving if you like to see if you can squeaze more out of it, but I think you're pretty much stuck unless you move to a 64-bit OS.

Oh darn then I will just have to download the trial of WinXp Pro x64 Edition and give it a whirl. And BTW I can change the settings on my hardware memhole mapping now that I updated the BIOS. And I've tried DFI Street, but no one seems to care about my problem.

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread...0987#post260987 (http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?p=260987#post260987)