Originally posted by sammorris:

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Low price does not necessarily mean low quality. For a PC on that budget I trust HP and Dell above anything else, prebuilts included, since to match the prices you have to resort to ebay stuff.

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Originally posted by Estuansis:

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I like to be nitpicky and I personally couldn't stand XP straight to Vista. But going back to XP for a long time then to 7 was a different story. They've done a lot to improve the interface and functionality without compromising performance. And with aero turned off the 32 bit version actually performs BETTER than XP. I have several testimonials from both noobs and experienced performance enthusiasts and the general consensus is that Windows 7 is the perfect blend of new features and performance.

And as for some general things I've done to improve performance further:

- Turn off the indexing service and disable it in HDD properties to reduce thrashing(slows searching from instant to a few seconds, whatever)

- Turn off the Nvidia stereoscopic service(if applies)

- Adjust the boot settings in MSconfig to detect all 4 cores when booting instead of after loading

- Turn my power settings to always on and just turn off the monitor after 10 minutes.

- Keep startup programs to a bare minimum and start them as needed. Don't leave background processes running when not in use.

- Schedule nightly defrags and do a cold boot every week or so to clear the memory and load up fresh.

- Run CCleaner clean up and registry scan daily. Also lets you edit your startup programs.

- Disable the hibernation service and delete the hibernation cache file(saved 4GB of HDD space and some nasty thrashing waking up)

Just these tweaks alone helped a lot with general responsiveness and cut down the terrible disk access from booting and loading files.

Also remember to leave Superfetch on as that helps considerably with responsiveness and program load times. It is much different from indexing in that it actively takes up RAM in order to speed up the OS and gives the RAM back when needed.

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Originally posted by theonejrs:

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Rob,
The big point I was trying to make was Will's running at 3.93GHz, yet it performed poorly! It would do the clock speed, but no grunt to go with it. With his new board, it clocks just as good, but performs well doing it!

Russ

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Originally posted by cincyrob:

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i remember his mips was even way lower than mine was and he was running 3.9 andi was only at 3.83ghz.

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 MB Intelligent Tweaker(M.I.T.) 



Robust Graphics Booster ..................: Auto

CPU Clock Ratio ..........................: 8

Fine CPU Clock Ratio......................: +0.5 

CPU Frequency ............................: 3.93Ghz (463x8.5)



Clock Chip Control 

Standard Clock Control 

CPU Host Clock Control....................: [Enabled]

CPU Host Frequency (Mhz) .................: 463

PCI Express Frequency (Mhz) ..............: 100

C.I.A. 2..................................: [Disabled]



Advanced Clock Control 

CPU Clock Drive...........................: 900mV

PCI Express Clock Drive...................: 800mV

CPU Clock Skew (ps).......................: 0ps

MCH Clock Skew (ps).......................: 0ps



DRAM Performance Control 

Performance Enhance......................: Standard

MCH Frequency Latch......................: Auto

System Memory Multiplier ................: 2.00D

Memory Frequency (Mhz) ..................: 963

DRAM Timing Selectable ..................: Manual



Standard Timing Control 

CAS Latency Time.........................: 5

tRCD ....................................: 5

tRP......................................: 5

tRAS.....................................: 15

Advanced Timing Control [Press Enter] 

tRRD.....................................:  4

tWTR.....................................: 4

tWR......................................:  6

tRFC.....................................: 62

tRTP.....................................: 4

Command Rate (CMD) ......................: 2T 

Channel A 

Channel A Timings Settings 

Static tRead Value......................: 9



Channel B 

Channel B Timings Settings 

Static tRead Value......................: 9



Motherboard Voltage Control 



Load-Line Calibration.....................: Enabled

CPU Vcore...............1.225V..........: 1.268v

CPU Termination.........1.200V............: 1.300V

CPU PLL.................1.500V............: 1.450v

CPU Reference...........0.760V............: 0.760

MCH/ICH 

MCH Core................1.100V............: 1.300v

MCH Reference...........0.760V............: 0.740v

MCH/DRAM Reference......0.900V............: 0.750v

ICH I/O.................1.500V............: 1.350v

ICH Core................1.100V............: 1.300v

DRAM 

DRAM Voltage............1.800V............: 2.1v

DRAM Termination........0.900V............: 0.750V

Channel A Address Vref..0.900V............:Auto

Channel B Address Vref..0.900V............:Auto



Advanced Settings 

Limit CPUID Max. to 3.....................: Disabled

No-Execute Memory Protect.................: Enabled

CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E)...................: Disabled

C2/C2E State Support......................: Disabled

x C4/C4E State Support....................: Disabled

CPU Thermal Monitor 2(TM2) ...............: Enabled

CPU EIST Function.........................: Disabled

Virtualization Technology.................: Disabled

__________________

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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To an OCZ SSD, more specifically.

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