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trippling disk i/o will half boot times.

http://overclockers.com/tips00806/

and trippling CPU speed will NOT half boot times, but maybe reduce by 1/3, showing that boot times are more dependent on disk i/o than CPU speed.

in a typical setup, CPU time is a MAJOR bottleneck, only to be matched by device initialization, which has little to do with cpu speed.

in fact, a k6-2 500Mhz machine will boot windows xp nearly as fast as a athlon xp 2500. the athlon xp machine takes about 2/3 the time as the k6-2 500Mhz with the same hard disk

i find the 1st 1/2 of your post completely incorrect, and the second 1/2 quite true.

Yep, Thermal Design Power. In addition, why run a Pentium M 1.6 at 24 W when you can run it at 15 W?

One way to fix this for http://www.overclockers.com/ is to enable Adblock for Firefox, and then block all those silly little animated adds in their webpage. That should solve the problem for you, at least partially.

Some sites like http://www.overclockers.com/ just locks the browser up.

No prob here; top doesn't even register any CPU usage. Unless there's some Flash or Java that's on the page (which I have blocked) I don't see anything wrong.

Personal compile of Firefox 1.0.4
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050703 Firefox/1.0.4

I wish I knew what the problem was. I love Firefox and have been using it for a while, but lately it has been taking huge amount of cpu time, many times sitting at 99% till I kill it. The same thing is happening on my parents computer and I have no extensions installed.

Some sites like http://www.overclockers.com/ just locks the browser up. Firefox people, please fix this! Then I won't have to click on the blue e!

That's not a bad idea. The only problem is that typical window air conditions only put out chilled air in bursts, during their duty cycles. The rest of the time, they just recirculate room air (to allow it refridgerant time to recompress, I believe). So during the recirculate part of the cycle, your PC would get room temperature air. Depending on your system, that might be ok, or disasterous.

I've heard of people who pump air from cool parts of their house into their PCs. Here's one link:

http://overclockers.com/tips1121/

Tom

thats what i was thinking...

http://www.overclockers.com/tips1133/ is where i seen it

You all are way behind the curve. Someone has been there and done that. See the article from overclockers.com.

I have seen people praising AMD for not having DRM, and these people seem to forget about AMD's Presidio which is the same as LaGrange, which is the same stuff Intel is doing with these mobos...

http://www.overclockers.com/tips00664/

outdated article but explains my point

I did not say that added stability was actual but if you want to see some references to chip set related problems okay.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q270715/
http://www.overclockers.com/tips59/
http://www.tech-report.com/news_reply.x/929/
http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2002-October/008407 .html
http://pcbuyersguide.com/hardware/motherboards/VIA -Problems.html

I do not think that any of these problems are current but they did or do exist. While Intel motherboards are almost never the fastest or most feature rich they do tend to be super stable. I like AMD. I plan on using AMD in my next server and I use use AMD at home for most of my boxes. I do not think that AMD is any less stable than Intel but that the combination of an Intel CPU and motherboard has a track record of stability that AMD + a non AMD chipset lacks. If you read my post you would understand that I am saying AMD needs to make a chipset and motherboard so it like Intel can be a one stop shop. There motherboards should be reference boards. Not the fastest, not the most cutting edge, but super stable.

There is a section of the server market where stablity is the number one metric and an Intel CPU on an Intel Motherboard has earned the reputation as the ultimate in stablity in the x86 market. If you want to see really stable look past the x86 to the Sparc and Power lines. For stability they make the x86 look like... Well the x86.

You, sir, are correct. One of the most insightful explanations that I have read can be found here, in an article entitled "Dell and AMD." Worth a read, even for an article that is two months old.

Here's an interesting story from Ed Stroligo over at Overclockers.com arguing for technology in education. I think he does make some good points, but without good teachers, all the technology in the world is useless http://www.overclockers.com/articles1208/

But if you're naive about the net and you go online maybe once a month...then you're a raw piece of meat in a pool full of sharks.

I am one of those naive that really don't have a clue what hardware review sites to trust. My comfort is that I am probably far from alone, in this matter.

To assist me and other naives(sp?), please join this silly poll and review the following sites (regarding credibility) with a scale ranging from 1 to 10, where 1 is "No credibility at all" and 10 is "Perfect credibility, these guys wouldn't post a biased review for world domination":

About PC Hardware Reviews
Ace's Hardware
Anandtech
Ars Technica
Beyond 3D
Cnet Reviews
Dan's Data
Dev Hardware
Extremetech
Firingsquad
[H]ard|OCP
Hardware Analysis
Hardwarecentral
Hardwarezone
IT Reviews
OcPrices
Overclockers.com
ProCooling.com
The Tech Report
The Tech Zone
Tom's Hardware
TrustedReviews
Viperlair
Xtreme Resources

If you know only a few of them, give your opinion on those.

Maybe someone with the right facilities could set up an independent poll?

Thankfully I saw this earlier today from a less biased source, here.
It really goes far beyond the usual "omgwtf gta is teh violent!!111 rockstar is murderers!!1111 hysteria!!311 lawsuites!!1 hysteria!!!1" drivel -- it addresses the whole phenomenon of ever escalating violence and other 'indecency' in all forms of media (GTA itself was only mentioned in passing), parents' lack of time/resources to properly deal with it, and actually addresses the underlying societal concerns regarding the whole issue.
I don't know about you, but the vibe I got from it was "parents have the responsibility of caring for and raising their children, and deserve to have access to the tools they need to do so", which I can't help but agree with, not the usual "won't somebody please think of the children! censor it! censor it!" bullshit.
I also can't help but not be very surprised at /.'s misreporting of it.

For something under 5 bucks, try making a power supply fan muffler. I made one out of cardboard and masking tape and covered the inside with $1.99 roll of adhesive-backed weatherstripping from Home Depot. It really cuts the whooshing-air noise down to a low hum, and only raises the inside case temperature 1 or 2 degrees.

Also, here is an interesting read. I don't see the date on the article, but the wayback machine has it on Mar 2001, so it was probably written right at the peak.

I just ordered the parts to build a PC, and the hardest part was finding a case that didn't look like crap.

Actually, all else being equal, higher clock speed *does* mean higher temperatures, not just for Intel, but for everyone. IIRC, it's a linear relationship, too.

Not really.

Yes, really. It's basic physics - higher frequencies require higher energy, which means more power, which means more heat. The fact that laptops with power management slow their CPUs to save battery life ought to give you a clue: by saving power, they're also saving heat, and they do that by slowing down their CPU. Another place you see this effect is in CPU over-temperature safeguards - when the CPU temperature gets too high, the clock is slowed down to reduce the power consumption and therefore temperature.

There's some confirmation of this here: "Heat above spec can come from two areas: 1, Heat due to increased frequencies and 2, Heat due to increased voltage. Increasing bus speeds (frequencies) increases heat linearly"; and here: "There is a direct relationship between a processor's clock speed and the amount of power it consumes, and a similar relationship between power consumption and the amount of heat given off by a PC."

The clock speed is simply how fast a crystal vibrates.

So in reality it is possible to build a CPU with high clockspeeds that runs really really slowly, for example one with a 6000 step pipeline.

You could probably make one of these run cool too because there would be few transistors to deal with in the chip. The real relationship is between transistors and heat. The more transistors there are producing heat the hotter the chip is going to run.

This article reminds me of a previously defiled G5 found at
http://www.overclockers.com/tips1133/.

Obscene. (something about failing to learn from history and repeating it).

http://www.overclockers.com/tips1166/

I have received a lot of positive feedback about how useful people have found this, and you can find it linked from many respectable sites around the web.

I still think the PC'd G5 hoax was a lot funnier because of the fanatical response it drew from Mac fans, including causing what appears to have been severe depression. This article came out just after the PowerMac G5 was released.

(OK, gotta be honest, I'm one of the Mac fans who was bummed over this one.)

This is not something new. The 1986 Chevette radiator for $19 at Autozone is the most commonly used radiator for DIY water cooling on a budget.

http://www.overclockers.com/tips1022/

Try using evaporative cooling, like a nuclear cooling tower for your PC. That'll get it a few degrees below ambient, but you have to keep refilling it.

Actually, it's less efficient than H2O, as the thermal conductivity and thermal capacity is considerably worse in anti-freeze. The only reason to use it is in sub-zero chillers.

I think people use anti-freeze for the anti-corrosive (and a lack of understanding of its thermal properties), but there are better solutions for anti-corrosion. I use 15% Hy-perlube in my system - and in my car!

with some water additive for your distilled water, you don't have to worry about corrosion or rusting.

Actually, some systems have two types of metals (copper, aluminum) which can cause galvanic corrosion, so an anti-corrosive is a good thing. Also, there is the bacterial issue, so it's good to have something in there to kill the nasties, lest they take over your PC and use it for evil.

I agree why use water when you can do this:http://www.overclockers.com/tips1156/

I've been doing my own water cooling systems for a few years now and have come to the conclusion that if you aren't a complete idiot you'll never have any trouble.

Here's my first project:
http://www.overclockers.com/tips1009/index.asp

I finished my second last September and have been using it since. I built the whole case from stainless steel tubing. One side of the case is pressurized for water distribution and the other side is a reservior. Here's a pic:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/zackbass1/IMG_0023compr essed.jpg
The great thing about is that I'm able to run my little 2.4C at over 3.4Ghz (I built it in Sept 2003, so it was a big deal) completely silently. The radiator is large enough that it doesn't need any fans. The only noise that comes from the case is the hard disks spinning.

Now I should note that they aren't "raising" prices in that everything will cost more. Instead, the next time they release a processor, instead of putting it at the top price point and moving everything else down, they will introduce a new higher price point for it, and everything else stays the same. Very sneeky.

Check it out at Overclockers.com

clicky: Bong Cooling Dude, I'm stoned... So are you! *snicker* Bong is such a wierd word. Boong. Booooonggg. hehehe lol

Fair use is never mentioned in the Constitution (not even mentioned in any copyright law until 1976). Rather, it originated in the courts during the nineteenth century as a means by which producers of intellectual property could make limited use of the work of others (and allow somewhat freer use for nonprofit educational purposes).

There's one flaw in your logic tho. Studio masters aren't the same 16-bit 44.1KHz sampling rate as cds (and iTMS). They're typically closer to the 24/96 or sometimes even 24/192 of DVD-A. Hence, you still have a brief 2nd generation of downsampling the original master before they encode it to AAC. Also, since it's a lossy algorithm, it doesn't matter how many lossless generations precede it. It'll still be missing data that my FLACs (and CDs) have.

The artifacting you mention in CDs is (assuming no physical media damage) primarily the result of the aforementioned downsampling, which is present in the iTMS files too. Take a new CD off the shelf, take it home, open it, rip it immediately with cdparanoia (or another ripper that uses the paranoia libraries, such as CDex), and you'll have everything but media manufacturing defects mitigated. That won't be very different from a file downsampled and encoded directly from a digital master.

Now, does this mean anyone can hear these differences? I've never bothered to rip anything to AAC, and I haven't used iTMS yet (for a variety of reasons), so I can't comment directly on it, but, I can compare my own experiences with mp3 and ogg vorbis, and extrapolate based on other people's findings with AAC. With mp3, I can hear a difference between 192kbit (and at higher bitrates when poorly encoded) files and the source wav. It's difficult with Ogg Vorbis at quality 6 or higher. Based on someone else's opinion, it seems I'd be able to tell with iTMS too.

A lot of people don't have ears as sharp as mine, and a lot of people care less about how their music sounds. They're entitled to their opinions, and so am I. They may be willing to pay for lossily-encoded music. I'm not.

(* Well, ok, I've linked to page two for a reason, flip to page one after you've finished your heart attack)

This is offtopic, but...

You keep hearing that they're faster because people don't like to admit they spent too much for inferior technology. Yes, arguably the x86 instruction set is inferior to newer, better engineered ones. But the newest offerings from Intel and AMD eclipse the G5 in speed. Apple failed to follow Spec guidelines when they released their benchmarks, thus allowing them to claim the performance crown unfairly.

Read about it if you're unconvinced. This news has been floating around. I like Macs, but please don't spread lies for Apple. They're efficient enough without you.

I see this a lot on Slashdot, and I try to always call people on it. I think people are just uninformed, but I also think the general Mac bias here influences it as well.

Forgot link to the actual article
http://www.overclockers.com/tips00579/

Easy there cowboy.

If this guy is right (which I think he is) then RETAIL DESKTOP PC SALES means desktops sold at your typical bricks-and-mortar store, eg. Best Buy, Circuit City, etc., and NOT mail order. So Dell's numbers were not taken into account.

Go into a Best Buy and you see lots of cheap Athlon machines, so I think it makes sense. Heck, those eMachines love AMD.

here

Cool running, Fast, Silent

Picking two of these options are only necessary in a less-than-optimal fan-based cooling system. Perhaps you should add some other options to it:

cool running, fast, silent, big/small.

I remember reading on overclockers.com about a guy who used a lot of copper pipes to achieve great passive heat dissipation. He had no fans in his system except the PSU. The copper tubing setup sat in his garage. It was as long as a common compact car and roughly 2/3's as wide. Very cool.

Check it out

For a second there, I thought smaller pot meant 1gram and larger meant 5grams....

but yea...pretty ingenious. Only problem, u need water. If you're stuck in the middle of the Sahara or Gobi desert without water, you're diary products are screwed.

Of course, using evaporating water for cooling isn't a new idea. Nuclear power plants use them, some HVAC systems use them, and it's also used to cool computers. It's just that using it in such a simple implementation for this sort of application (cool/cold storage of perishable food) is pretty original; only necessity would have made it so.

Now, use alcohol and you might get a pot-freezer.

Take a Mac apart sometime. The stuff has brand names on it.


I would but I don't think my Inbox can handle the load.

is this a joke? Could a person this stupid really exist? There was a story about a guy who replaced $3000 worth of dual processor G5 Mac with $300 worth of PC parts that turned out to be a hoax so that's why I'm doubtful. Could this just be another prank to get hits? I mean the story did end up on slashdot, and I know it's the Wall Street Journal but I've learned no one is above scams for advertising dollars.

That's a good strategy. An efficient heatsink with a quiet fan can go a long ways. I installed a Thermalright SP-94 (all-copper with heatpipes) with a 92mm Panaflo M running at 8V. It keeps my P4 3.0C (overclocked to 3.5 GHz) pretty cool and pretty quiet. My GF Ti4200 is passively cooled with a Zalman heatsink. My current power supply is pretty quiet, but I fixed my old one up by removing the airflow-restricting punched vents with a Dremel and replacing the cheapo loud fan with a quiet Panaflo L. Also added a direct intake of airflow right about the CPU / HSF in the side of a case with an 80mm Panaflo L running at 7V.

It's amazing how quiet this system is. It's even quieter than my previous PIII system was at half the speed. Up until recently, it was much quieter than my wife's HP Celeron 800 system. (We just finished modding that together to quiet it down...)

Really, if you're willing to put in a little bit of elbow grease and research here and there, you can wind up with a high-performance system that's quieter than most OEM systems.

Oh, as for hard drive noise that was mentioned above, the trick to try is to mechanically isolate the hard drive from the case, such as by suspension. See www.silentpcreview.com and www.overclockers.com for some ideas. :) -- Paul

Rather than trying to quieten each individual component, this guy made a surrounding box which has a sound baffle so that everything is silenced.

He does seem to consider the importance of airflow as well, since what point is there in putting your shiny new G5 in a soundproof box if it cooks itself?

Sorry to dispute this, but I'm happy to let you know that your wishes may come true, as per this story in The Inquirer. Obligatory quote:

CHIP FIRM Intel will this week announce details about a new wave in desktop computing using the Centrino bundle.
The wonder is it didn't do it earlier, we ran a crusade for this.
The chip firm is likely to announce it this week.

And Overclockers.com speculates that the whole thing basically means putting the M into desktops without all of the other Centrino crud.

If anyone's anger has no measure, it is the wrath of internet zealots who believe that code should be free to all (open source)

Mac users who think that a dual G5 was turned into a PC have much more anger

Or MS is getting ready to take over the PPC-based OS market as well. Once a version of XP Embedded is written for the PPC, how hard would it be to port a full version over? This may be good for IBM, but it's yet to be seen whether Apple will find anything to celebrate over.

Then again, Mac fanatics are crazier then most Mujahideen soldiers. Just look at the response to someone ripping out the guts of a dual G5 and replacing it with an AMD. MS would have to step very carefully in this arena...

I knew we hadn't heard the last of this Andy creature.

And if you're wedded to x86, there's always this solution.

there's no code in wine that simulates the processor/real hardware

True that, but what about other solutions for running PC software on your Power Mac G5?

If you've got a strong stomach visit Overclockers where you'll find the ultimate desecration of "The World's Fastest Personal Computer". The site may or may not be down by now... to the perpetrator: "Just wait till your father gets home my boy!"

Unbelievable waste of a nice computer.