Upgrade

[Guest]

I currently have a K6iii 400 with Asus mobo, 128 MD RAM, ATI AIW 128 video and 7200 RPM Quantum drive. I am debating upgrading to a Duron or Athlon. But I just want to get an idea of how much of a real world performance improvement I would get. I have gone to stores and played around with some Duron systems and they 'felt' slower than my K6. Of course these were demos, unlikely set up properly and probably with cheap components.

If I go to a Tbird 900 would my system boot twice as fast?
I don't overly strain my system - no heavy duty games etc.
Mostly web surfing and business. But I would like an improvement since it takes 1 1/2 minutes to boot into w98 and 45 seconds to boot Linux to a KDE desktop. I want faster.
Will the upgrade give this to me? It will cost me over $500 Canadian and I won't waste the money unless I will get a significant performance gain.

I am looking at an Abit Raid mobo + Tbird or Duron.

Thanks

 

[Guest]

All you want is to boot faster? thats quite a lot of dough for 1 minute faster. You could try just partitioning your drive and you should see an increase in boot time and save your money go with Duron and upgrade later when prices drop even further since your not using to much power anyways

 

[Guest]

there is a very big differnce the FPU of the K7 series is three times the speed of the K6 clock 4 clock so go figure.
the abit motherboard aparently has b\very limited room for the best heatsink.
I wont get a A7V pro (without the ATA 100 not worth it) and a duron or thunderbird and Overclock it with a good heatsink
One of the best not $100 hsf is the http://ocz.safeshopper.com/9/5904.htm?346
if you are in the US buy your processor and fan from this company they are pre unlocked and get that fan. they pre test the CPU to 950-1100 Mhz so wat are u waiting 4 RAM is cheap. Hurry up

 

[machow]

I am a loyal AMD fan. So go with AMD.


Smart guys are not smart; they only see things in different perspective.
1st <b>member</b>!

 

[Guest]

My athlon 550 boot isn't much faster at booting windows than my parents cyrix 233. A fast hard drive and lots of memory will help speeds, but you already have 128 meg and a 7200 rpm HD. One of the best ways to boost windows speed is to reinstall windows and get rid of all the extra junk that may be cluttering the windows registry. Like all the little things in the task bar that you really don't need. Also check your BIOS for settings like quick posting enabled and disable the auto detects for IDE HD's when there are none. Your web surfing is mostly limited by your modem speed and phone line quality. Unless you have some huge database or spreadsheet you won't see much real world business app change. How fast can you type a letter anyway?

 

[machow]

One way to minimize booting sufferings is to put your computer in sleep mode. It will boot within 15 secs MAX. hopes this helps.


Smart guys are not smart; they only see things in different perspective.
1st <b>member</b>!

 

[Diablo]

If you want faster boot times you may want to look at the abit KT7-RAID (I have one in my system...) and use the stripe feature (RAID0) this will speed up disk read access, but don't expect miracles!!! Windows is a slow system when it comes to booting, certainly if your system is fully equipped (if you don't know what I mean, Install win98 with only your VGA card in it...it FLIES
then add you sound card...boot time degrades
then add your nic...boot time nearly DOUBLES
then add your scsi adapter...see above
then add another nic (yes i have 2 nics)...go get some coffee when you start up your puter)
All I have to say is that boot time is very system dependend
and a small portion of it can be speed up by a faster cpu+MB and faster HDD's, so don't waiste your money if you ONLY want faster boot times....(of course you can buy always buy a solid state HDD (access time = µsecs) but you have 2 pay premium $$$ for it)

😎 Visit me at <A HREF="http://casemod.tripod.com" target="_new">http://casemod.tripod.com</A> 😎

 

[Guest]

True, a clean install of Windows runs faster, but it can be a hastle if you have a modern system and you are installing an older version of Win9x that doesn't support all your hardware devices out of the box. It can be a lot easier to use optimization programs like Norton System works to defragment the hard drive, optimize the registry and swap file. Also you can configure you windows boot by Start->Run and entering msconfig. -- I had to use this to disable some lines in my autoexec.bat file that kept reverting back to an old version. Basically my system wouldn't boot due to an IRQ conflict with the SB16 DOS emulator from creative and my hard disk controller card. -- It lets you select exactly what loads at start up with Win9x. Also delete unnecessary items from the startup folder under Start->Programs. Norton system works can decrease load time if it is configured to load the system moniter when you boot. It is a valuable tool though for optimizing the swap file and registry. Also it allows for faster defragmentation than Windows could ever hope to accomplis. I went from at least 4 hours to only 45 minutes on an average. I noticed after installing Win98 that boot time was a lot faster before I configured a file sharing LAN. If you are using an ATA66 hard disk with an UDMA 33 hard disk controller it may settle for an even slower transfer rate making the ATA66 unbearably slow. I ended up getting a controller card for my K6-2 system when I got my Maxtor 7200 2 GB drive. The boot time was twice as long as with my slower hard drive. With the proper hard disk controller the boot time was improved. Though the speed of the hard drive will show the biggest improvement, an Athlon has a faster frontside bus(due to double pumping), as well as a more recent hand drive controller.

*Note waiting for a AMD-761 based mother board with DDR RAM would be worth your while.

 

[Rop]

My new system is a Tbird 800 with a Abit KT7. A friend has a Duron 650 on his system. They are bothe great procesors. But in your case i would get a Duron with a good MB and probably intall Winblows ME. Why ? cause it does boot faster then win98SE. I currently run Linux and Win98SE and my system takes a bit longer to boot then my friends. Though mine is the faster system in games etc.

But since you are not game intensive i would save the money and probably get a DURON.


Why do I use LINUX ? Cause its the BEST OS
Why do I use Windows? Cause its the BEST Nintendo..

 

[corvetteguy]

:lol: just thought i'd drudge up a very old thread to see how people react, and screw with them cause i'm bored- how bout those new thunderbirds :lol: