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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: LTBH who wrote (1006)6/2/1998 6:15:00 PM
From: Spots  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 14778
 
No, he's saying the total allocated memory, as shown in the
NT task manager (which gives memory allocation by process)
is approximately half of the total memory the performance
monitor shows to be in use.

Question for Dave. Are you displaying the Virtual Memory
column in task manager/processes page? For me, that
column adds up to the total memory
in use. If that exceeds or approaches your total available
virtual memory as shown on the performance page of the
task manager, then it's quite possible you don't have
a large enough swap space allocated for the normal
processes you're running. Of course, you may also not
have enough physical memory.

For instance, on my computer I have at the moment 80216k
committed and 118848k available (the latter being physical
memory plus total swap space). The 80216k is what the
virtual memory column of task manager adds up to. The
memory column adds up to roughly half that (a little less).

I have about 15mb free real memory available on my system
at the moment, so I don't have memory pressure. If you
have low available physical memory (as shown on the
performance tab), then adding more will be a real boost.

I suspect that Networm may well have fingered it, though.
Check your Commit Charge Total (on the performance page)
against your Commit Charge Limit. If the total is
anywhere close to the limit, your immediate problem is
not enough swap file space. Increasing that will increase
your ability to run apps, though real memory will
certainly affect the apps performance.

BTW, Metastock is notorious for gobbling virutal memory.
If you run Metastock and your Limit is less than 100,000K,
you're essentially hosed from the first chart.

Spots



To: LTBH who wrote (1006)6/2/1998 11:52:00 PM
From: LTBH  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 14778
 
Overclocking, Its Results, and System Buses

In the last day or two someone asked about the damage that could be caused by overclocking. I actually typed in a post twice to have SI hang me up. Anyone notice SI being very sluggish at times?

Anyway, I'll respond again now, although I may not remember all the questions that were also asked.

I am currently typing this on an "old" 150 OC to 166. I have been OC since the days of Atari 400 and 800s in one manner or another. I OC the ISA bus (but not the CPU) in my 386 from its original 6 MHz to 10 MHz and achieved a very large increase in system thoughput.

However, I do not recommend overclocking. I do not recommend OC if you are not HW inclined. Most folks want to drive a 300 to 400. If you must OC then do so modestly. A max of 25% and a recommended moderate 10% is better.

There are two ways one overclocks. The first is by changing the multiplier. If the multiplier is changed then there is no effect on any of the buses (pentium and newer). The other way is to change the clock frequency. This will effect all the buses.

The front bus (FB) is an INTERNAL data path between mem and CPU and runs at 100MHz in BX mobo. The PCI bus is an IO bus which runs at 33 MHz and 66 MHz in the near future (all new IO then). The ISA bus is a legacy IO bus originally speced at 6 MHz and later upgraded to 8 MHz.

Lastly theres the Intel marketing gimmic that requires users to buy bigger faster CPUs. Its called the AGP. The AGP sideband/sidebus is an internal bus between the mem and this vid card slot. The use of this slot offloads the mem requirement from the vid card (making the card cheaper) to the mobo and in so doing greatly increases the processor load. This bus runs at 66 MHz, 112 and 166 MHz depending on the mobo/chip set.

Since the HD plugs into a PCI slot, whether you have a 100MHz FB or not bears no relationship to the HD.

What can happened if you OC:

You can't boot
HD corrupts files
The CPU fries
The HD heads crash
The mobo tantalium caps ignite burning the mobo and any RAM or cards near them
The electrical fire causes toxic gases to be released
The fire goes unnoticed too long and involves the work space

Most common problem is the HD or vid card won't work. If its the HD then you have boot problems worst case and data corruption best case.

I have had HD problems when initially checking out an OC setup for the first time. I have never fried anything.

But it can and does happen. I have seen production HW with tantalium caps where the caps burnt up or exploded. I have had failure analysis run on same and stopped production use since the product was extremely high reliability equipment. (In this case OC wasn't the root cause, nor was equipment OC but temperature was involved)

Bottom line. When I assemble my new PII system later this month, I won't be overclocking. The major advantage of OC is NOT because the CPU is running faster but because the IO bus is running faster. However todays PCI bus and associated IO usually don't OC very well and you can't OC just the bus anymore, its all or nothing.

The other major increase comes from mem running faster. However the change in architecture in the PII decouples any advantage here. So why decrease the life of your components from heat and electrical overstress?

Networm