Advice on a PeeCee

[mikeymike]

One other thing, is any dust collected in strange patterns in the heatsink?

- edit - also, is the amount of dust on the heatsink about the same as on the motherboard / inside the case generally?

[kevh100]

Eeek! Dust-Circles! That must mean that aliens unplugged the CPU fan!

Kev

[mikeymike]

Not quite :-)  If there is a circular dust pattern on the heatsink, usually along with dust clogging up the heatsink in a consistent pattern, then the fan has been running on it at some point in its life.

If the dust is spread around the heatsink as if it were any other unventilated surface, then the fan hasn't been running on it.

If there is less dust on the heatsink than on the rest of the machine's insides, then the heatsink/fan has probably been swapped out at some point.

[Hammer]

I wouldn't pay 2.50 for an AMD K(anything)
I pitched my K6/2-380(working-somewhat) because of the ceaseless irritation it gave me. The K6/2-450 soon followed.

What kind of irritation?

Note that Intel has its dark days e.g. FDIV bug(costed Intel about $500 million), early 1.1Ghz PIII Linux recompiling flaws and "Caminogate".

Happily replaced it all with an ASUS 440BX-LE board from ebay (cost me $45us with postage and celeron 667)

Such a setup would be considered matured i.e. I still have P6 microcode patches to fix some issues with the early P6s. 440 series chipset was based from on SOHO server targeted Pentium Pro based system (Socket8/i450 KX).

Timeline...
i450GX/KX (PPro) -> i440FX(PPro/PII) -> i440LX(PII) -> i440BX(PII/PIII) -> i440ZX100/66(PII/PIII)  

[DethKnight]

What kind of irritation?

Mainly crashing of software. Also th 3dnow/mmx issue at the time was still being sorted out.
But when I switched to the BX440/celeron , 99.8% of all the problems went away. (yes I retained all other parts in the xfer, vid-card,net-card,ram..etc) The remaining .2% I'd have to say were WinME related.

...Intel has its dark days...

won't dispute that , they may have returned, thus the dropping of prescott for Pentium M.

Such a setup would be considered matured

Aye, but its been going strong since the day I got it, its always powered on. runs Win2kpro/Slackware a.t.t. Neither of which have crashed yet.

[spirantho]

I find it really annoying when someone blames the CPU for their problems with their set up... it gives perfectly good firms a bad name and helps the monopolistic ones succeed. For instance, in this case, you blame AMD for your shaky setup when chances are it was the _motherboard_ that was flakey, or you weren't using the latest BIOS or drivers, or something.

Whatever, we have a K6-2/500 in the other room running Windoze XP Pro perfectly happily - it's been running 24/7 for the last 5 years or so.  At home I have a K6-2/380 running Win98 - it also runs 24/7 as it's my ADSL gateway. Again, it runs wonderfully (a decent Tyan Trinity Mobo helps).

It is no co-incidence that these machines are running decent motherboards, decent RAM, decent HDs etc.

Either way it is _not_ the CPU that is at fault.

[No, I'm not an AMD fanboy - though I do use an Opteron as my main machine - I just hate to see a good firm done down when it's not their fault, especially when Intel are such a shady company with their tactics.]
That's my final comment... this is an *Amiga* site after all.

[Hammer]

Mainly crashing of software. Also th 3dnow/mmx issue at the time was still being sorted out.

What type of crash?

3DNow/MMX shouldn't be an issue except for timing loop issue (K6 issue) and JPEG/MPEG distortions issues i.e. any chip upto 1.2Ghz and prior to July 2001.

"the testing methods in past production cycles of the AMD-K6®, AMD Athlon™ and AMD Duron™ processor families did not detect a small number of processors that exhibited a minor manufacturing issue that could potentially cause the distortion of JPEG images or MPEG audio/video.  The issue is not design related and has been addressed through additional manufacturing tests AMD has implemented." - AMD spokesman Damon Muzny, July 21, 2001.

Such issues are not applicable to "Athlon XP", "Athlon 64", "Athlon 64 FX" and "Opteron" and "Geode" processors.  

Another issues are
1. Microsoft's wayward 3DNow optimizations in DirectX 8.1 runtimes libraries on AMD processors. Refer to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;321178

PS; Only applicable to Windows XP(pre-SP1 or pre-DX9).

2. "Hangs or Slow Performance on AMD System with VIA Chipset"
Refer to http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;274629

But when I switched to the BX440/celeron , 99.8% of all the problems went away. (yes I retained all other parts in the xfer, vid-card,net-card,ram..etc)

Note that, Windows has built-in support for Intel chipsets.

won't dispute that , they may have returned, thus the dropping of prescott for Pentium M.

Intel wouldn't be dropping Prescott core due to EMT64 considerations. It's still questionable if Dothan core contains the EMT64 extensions.

PM(P6+) vs A64(K8) battle royal would probably duplicate the earlier PIII(P6) vs K7 entanglements  i.e. clock speed (and factored in IPC issues) yield per die process.

For multiple "thin and light" X86 benchmarks refer to
http://www.vanshardware.com/reviews/2004/04/040405_efficeon/040405_efficeon.htm

It contains
 
TM5600 @600Mhz
Efficeon @1Ghz
Crusoe @1Ghz
VIA C3s @1.33Ghz
P4 Celeron @2.4Ghz
Athlon 64 3200+ @2Ghz
Mobile Athlon XP  1800+ @1.5Ghz
AMD Geode GX2 @366Mhz

[DethKnight]

I find it really annoying when

not that it matters now, and not that I care now, but it took several months of trying to fight thru the wierdness, (I was at the time an AMD fanboy). Im certain AMD chips are far better now, but I realise commodity PC hardware is cheap enough to pitch/recycle when there is a need for something different.

(the problems followed the chip to other mainboards)

If my current setup starts to flake out, I'll pitch/recycle and get a replacement.

[ACEFNQ]

You see you shouldn't waste 25 (whatever pommie money) on a new motherboard.  You should spend it on a good shovel and use it go and bash whoever gave you the machine and then use the shovel to bury the it.  The thing probably comitted suicide anyway.  Now naff off, this site is reserved for Amiga/MOS people who hate each other, take your old platform arguements elsewhere buddy, we're busy.



Joking
ACE

[JaXanim]

Blimey!

I ask for a little advice and end up thumping somebody! Easy to see  how wars start, eh?

Anyway, back to dust patterns.
There was no dust pattern of any kind. No rings, no swirls, no alien traces at all. Inside, it was clean. I said it was hardly used and that's what I meant.

So, as far as I'm concerned, I got my advice and I've hopefully been put on the right track. Thanks everyone. If the latecomers wish to argue about the things PeeCee users argue about, please feel free to continue this thread wherever it takes you.

Many thanks,

JaX

[Holley]

Let us know how you get on ;-)

PCs cause stress because instead of a Guru meditation they have a General Protection Fault, or in Linux a Kernel Panic ... I'm convinced it's a military conspiracy.