Zxian

The difference is that SpeedStep is handled by the motherboard drivers, while C'N'Q is handled by AMD's CPU drivers. Neither existed 6 years ago, AFAIK, but support for this type of feature was present in XP, since there were "mobile" CPUs that had similar features. The underlying infrastructure is there, and the drivers do the rest.

Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 Download page The link is accessible to anyone, without WGA checks. The point of WUD is that the updates you download are freely accessible without any WGA restrictions.

Possibly a driver issue, but more likely some form of malware. There's a list of tools in the Malware Prevention and Security forum. I'd suggest you follow the instructions in some of the threads there (regarding recommended cleaning software).

Yea yea... I know 2.7 is a pretty weak overclock, but I just wanted to try it out and see how the system performed. To be honest, for my day to day things, I can't tell the difference. The only place where I might notice an improvement is with Rosetta@Home.

The Ninja is still smaller: Ultra120 Dimensions: 63.5 × 132 × 160.5 mm Ninja Dimensions: 110 x 110 x 150mm It's the width that did me in from my old case with the Ultra120. Had i used the Ninja, it all would have fit. Oh well, the Antec900 is better than the CM RC330 anyways. I pushed my Q6600 to 2.7GHz the other day, and load temps are 52C as measured by CoreTemp. I really can't complain about that...

The Scythe Ninja is second on my list. It's slightly smaller, and probably won't give you as many clearance troubles (it's also shorter). There's quite a bit of space around the CPU socket on the P5B Deluxe, so the Ninja should fit nicely.

@DL - no kidding... Who is that by the way?

Glad to be of help.

Those temps were with no overclock, but I did push it up to 2.8 the other night, and temperatures only rose a couple of degrees. The Ultra120 Extreme is definitely the best air cooler you can get today. As for your case situation - get another case. That's really all I can say. If the case only has support for such a small fan, it simply won't be able to effectively move enough air to cool the entire system. You can find relatively cheap cases that will still support the Ultra120. The main problem you'll probably run into is clearance. The ultra120 is HUGE. I couldn't fit it into the CoolerMaster RC330 case I had originally spec'ed out for my system. Just a word of warning.

ThermalRight Ultra120 Extreme. The only cooler you'll ever want from here on out. I've got it on my Q6600 (also using the P5B Deluxe), and my load temps as measured by CoreTemp are 48C (the highest of the four readings). That's with a Scythe S-Flex E fan (the medium speed) at almost full speed (slightly reduced with a FanMate controller).

Update your BIOS. It will probably reset all the settings to their defaults. Just go back into the BIOS and set your ICH8R back to RAID mode and everything will be fine.

Why waste bandwidth when Microsoft has it to spare. Yes, you can integrate all* the hotfixes with nLite. It's one of the options actually. You can integrate the hotfixes by using nLite or using a batch file. You don't need both. Hope this helps.

I think you misunderstand how WUD works. WUD Update Lists have a list of URL's for the actual download locations of the hotfixes from Microsoft's website. Once you've downloaded them, you can integrate them either using a batch file, or by integrating them with nLite. I use nLite to integrate hotfixes and drivers, but I don't use it to remove anything from Windows. Just because you can doesn't mean you have to.

It's what I'm doing with my new setup. Q6600 with XP. As for the video card - the question is whether or not your CPU or GPU will be the limiting factor in games. Considering you're getting an 8600GT, my guess is that the CPU won't be the bottleneck. I manage to push about 5500 in 3DMark06, but I've seen people get scores over 8000 with an 8800GTS (with the same CPU). Even though I don't really like any of the brands you've posted (are there any other stores you can order from?), I'd go with the 512MB Sparkle. It's a tiny premium for double the video memory.

That's just because nobody's made a Vista x64 UL yet.

I've never noticed any tearing so far with my 8600GT. Are you sure your problem doesn't arise from the lack of bandwidth on your PCI video card?

In order to get UDMA6, both your IDE controller and hard drive need to support it. For being a UDMA5 drive, those results are pretty good.

The difference between learning Windows and learning Linux - there's only one (maybe two) different versions of Windows that you'd have to learn, while with Linux, you have to dig through the instructions for various distros if you don't find what you're looking for. When you search for instructions on "Windows XP", you'll find information about Windows XP. When you search for instructions on "Fedora Core", you'll find some info on FC5, FC6, FC7, and some RHEL. Oh... and not all of the information is the same. The main problem with laying out Linux is a lack of consolidated information, and the fact that for network admins - it's FAR easier to setup and configure a Windows domain.

Linux is not more stable... not by a long shot. There's a reason why Apache's been slipping and IIS has been gaining ground over the past few years, and it doesn't have to do with the fact that Linux is more stable or secure. As a second note - Apache has had more security holes than swiss cheese hit by a 12-gauge, compared to IIS 6 which has...3 in total? None of those are left unpatched either (according to Secunia.com). If someone can find a counter argument, I'm all ears. As for "free" - Linux is not free. I've had to setup a computing cluster at my university, and it's been a royal pain in the rear. Let me just put it to you this way - had the machines been running Windows, I would have had this setup up and running at full capacity months ago, but since it's all Linux based, I'm being paid to learn and configure this along the way. By the end of the whole ordeal, my wages would probably match the academic licences we could have got for one Server 2003 license and 19 XP licenses. The only thing *nix has over Windows - NFS. The ability to mount a network share anywhere as any folder is key. It's so much more versatile than network shares or anything else found in Windows.

Wow... I seem to have stepped on somebody's toes here. I really didn't mean to go there, but in my experience on his forum and on this one, he had a very specific attitude towards things. From what I remember, if you stepped "across the line" so to speak, he wasn't the friendliest of people. I think you've completely misinterpreted my point of view. You have every right to disagree - everyone has their opinions. There's a difference between discussing/disagreeing and arguing. I actually love a good discussion or debate, as long as both sides aren't hot headed and things don't degenerate to "I'm right - you're wrong". At that point, it's a silly argument. By "his methods", I meant deleting files in general. I tried following his guide and I made some progress for deleting this part of Windows, and then removing that one, etc etc. I also used nLite for a while, but I stopped for two reasons. First, everytime I removed something, it broke Windows in one way or another. A program I needed wouldn't install or run, or some functionality that I needed wasn't there. Secondly - I simply didn't have the time. If you've really got all the time to tinker with your system for hours on end - go for it, but I really fail to see the benefit for all of us of having a list of what every single file does. It's a lot of work - don't get me wrong, and I commend anyone who can put in that amount of time on a single project, but in the end... what's the point? What do you gain from knowing that this DLL has that functionality - will that make you work faster, get you a better paycheck, make you a nicer person? I ask a question because I don't have the answer. If you want to go on talking about "mutual respect", don't call people's questions stupid unless the answer is blatantly obvious or has been given multiple times before. Don't call my questions stupid. Bold's original guide was not on "what files do what". It was for "how to slim down Windows XP". As such, nLite does a much simpler job of it. Sure - the user doesn't need to know as much about their system, but it goes back to my above comment - most people don't want to bother. They simply want a computer where you go *click* and it works. I can't imagine any large corporate environment where they'd be insane enough to use nLite or Bold's slimming-down-guide on production computers. You'd spend more time troubleshooting problems than anything else. Again - about his detailed guide - it's definitely impressive. However, I've never needed to consult it for troubleshooting my systems, since I haven't removed any core files anyways. In my experience, things just work better that way. I also think you need to realize that calling someone "strange" isn't being disrespectful. There are plenty of strange people in this world - I'm one of them, and so are many of my friends. Strange is what makes the world interesting.

From what I understand, the limitations in almost all modern games is not the CPU, but your graphics card. I've got the Q6600, and multi-tasking is a breeeeze. I can encode two videos at the same time, and not have my overall game performance be degraded... I'd like to see the E6850 or E6750 do that... Regarding the video card - ATI = crap. Their performance might be a bit higher in some cases, but driver headaches are reason enough to stick with nVidia. I'd suggest a 8600GT or something of the like.

Something like this? http://www.lexar.com/readers/trio.html I had one a while back - worked with SD cards and Memorystick beautifully.

I'm gonna bump this up again, by saying that I've added my Q6600 system to the mix. I can crunch out a four 100 credit work units in 6 hours, so that makes about 1600 credit per day. You can see my recent progress here. I only got eclipse (my new machine) running on Friday night really, so that's how long it's been running for.

I'm not so sure about the "cost effectiveness". I got these two screens for $200CAD each, so with taxes and a replacement policy, that works out to about 7000 pixels per dollar. FPS games will only show up on one screen for me, since I'm not using your TripleHead controller. What kind of framerate do you get, and what card do you have driving your setup? Yes... I got two. They were so pretty sitting on the shelf, so I just went for it.

It'll be interesting when XBMC becomes something we can load reliably on our regular computers. I've got it on my XBox, and it's nothing short of fantastic.