62 MAXIMUMPC SEPTEMBER 2007
how 2 IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE, ONE STEP AT A TIME
AGP PLZ
I recently read your article on 19 awesome
upgrades (June 2007), which included a section on
AGP upgrades.
In the article, you stated that the best Nvidia
card for AGP customers is the GeForce 7800 GS.
XFX has since released both a GeForce 7900 GS
and a 7950 GT. Do you still recommend the Radeon
card for a final AGP upgrade? I am running an Abit
AI7 Rev. A2 mobo with a 3GHz Pentium 4 CPU, 1GB
of DDR400 RAM, and an XFX GeForce FX 5600 vid-
eocard. I would like to extend the life of this com-
puter as long as possible because I will be building
a new system from the ground up when this one is
no longer useful.
—Franklin DillyThe GeForce 7950 GT wasn’t available
in an AGP configuration when we wrote
that feature, so I can’t speak from
hands-on experience. I can tell you that
PCI Express cards based on the 7950 GT
have been faster than those based on
the X1950 Pro. If you can afford to wait,
however, you might want to see if AMD
releases an AGP version of the Radeon
HD 2900 XT. ATI has aggressively sup-
ported the older bus architecture. The
company hasn’t announced plans to
come up with such a beast but hasn’t
ruled it out either.NEED FOR SPEED
I recently bought a VisionTek X1300 XT. The
box said that the card ran at 500MHz, but when I
used ATI’s Catalyst Control Center, it showed the
card was running at 601MHz. I am wondering if
Catalyst is displaying the correct data.
—Cameron J.VisionTek bills its Radeon X1300 XT as run-
ning at a core clock speed of 500MHz; I doubt
it overclocked the card. The Catalyst Control
Center user interface is a bit confusing when
it comes to figuring out what speed the GPU
is actually running at. You’ll see four numbers
under the heading GPU Status: Requested,
Current, one number at the top of a slider con-
trol, and another below it.
The Current number shows the clock
speed at which the GPU is currently running.
If you’re not running any benchmarks, this
number will be low because the videocard’s
driver throttles the GPU down to save power
and reduce fan noise. The Requested number
shows the speed at which the GPU will runwhen it is under load.
The numbers above and below the slider
show the minimum and maximum potential
clock speeds. If you unlock the GPU using
Overdrive, you can move this slider up and
down and test various clock speeds. You should
be aware that unlocking the GPU can potentially
void your warranty, so tread carefully.TWEAKIN’ THE JUICE
A few months ago, I purchased an EVGA 601 moth-
erboard. I also bought two EVGA 8800 GTX cards
and run them in SLI (sometimes). To round out my
personal Dream Machine, I have 2GB of Crucial
Ballistix PC 8000 RAM (running at 1,000MHz) and
an e6600 processor overclocked to 3.5GHz.I had bought some Dominator 2x memory, only
to have POST problems. Crucial memory worked
best, or so I thought. It eventually died. I RMA’d the
memory and motherboard, but when I got new parts
the PC was unstable. I then tried “tweaking” it. I
eventually found that I needed to set the voltages
manually. Once I did that, I had no problems whatso-
ever. Any ideas if this makes sense?
—Brian ThompsonOverclocking is fun,
but there are risks,
and it sounds like you
ran right into them.
While automatic over-
clocking can work
sometimes, most peo-ple get the best results by setting everything
by hand. Taking your proc from 2.4GHz to
3.5GHz would generally mean you need more
voltage, and usually it needs to be set manu-
ally. As always, remember that overclocking
does have its risks, including the possibility
of blowing up your CPU, motherboard, or other
components.TWO CORES OF I LOVE YOU
I love Maximum PC! About 20 percent of the con-
tent I understand, but no other magazine helps me
understand computers and applications like MPC.
Keep it coming!
Recently, I gave my wife my four-year-old
Gateway 400VTX with a 1,792MHz x86 proces-
sor. I upgraded to a new computer with
XP Media Center Edition and installed my
2003 Office Pro software. My Gateway MX
6960 has a dual-core Duo T5600 with 1GB
of RAM. The improvement has not been
that impressive. Question: Do I need a bet-
ter processor than the one I bought? Do I
need to do something to better utilize the
dual cores? I use Publisher, PowerPoint,
Office, and large server-based systems
for real estate and property records. I give
presentations and have two websites. What
do you think?
—Art HudsonYour old notebook PC had either a Celeron
or Pentium 4—both are dogs compared to
the 1.83GHz Core Duo T5600 in your new
machine. In almost every application, the Core
Duo should be significantly faster than a low-
clocked P4 or a P4-based Celeron CPU.
The applications you use would hardly
push a dual-core CPU though. Your problem
may relate to spindle speeds. If your old
notebook used a 7,200RPM drive but your
new box uses a 4,200RPM hard drive, you
may be confusing the sluggish hard drive for
poor processor performance. Try running mul-
tiple apps at once. Your dual core should be
much faster at doing two or more CPU-inten-
sive tasks, such as watching TV and encoding
a video, than an old P4. The Doc thinks you
made the right decision by giving away your
old box.When you overclock, you’ll likely need to
increase the voltage a little bit, but do
so in small increments; anything drastic
might smoke your parts!Ask the Doctor
Diagnosing and curing your PC problems
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done. Troubleshooting fun. Troubleshooting fun. Troubleshooting fun.
Troubleshooting fun. I work at Maximum PC, answer all your questions, if you
email them: [email protected], [email protected]. Ding,
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