Upgraded to an AM2 build

[manchestorunited]

I upgraded my cousin's PC yesterday from FRY'S

I installed windows fine on the new hard drive and i still connected his old hard drive which still has windows xp on it and all his other files. When i boot it up it has two windows xp options. i choose the one on the new hard drive and it boots up fine.

My question is how do i remove that old one w/o deleting all the files on the old drive?

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ + ECS C51GM-M $180

Hitachi Deskstar 160GB - SATA $60

PATRIOT 1GB (2X512) DDR2 PC4200 $85

RAIDMAX 400W PSU $30

Put this in my old case and running onboard graphics not looking to run any hardcore games.

Also, i heard this thing can overclock. Should i overclock this?

 

[The_Prophecy]

Easiest way to do that would be to move everything over from the other partition (the one you want to get rid of windows from) to the one you're runing off of now, then format the other partition and move the data you just saved, back over. Yes you can overclock the 3800+ (although you won't be able to OC as much with the ECS board, compared to say.... a Gigabyte or Asus board). I'm always a big fan of squeezing every bit of performance out of a computer that one possibly can. You should be able to at least get it to 2.2 (4200+ equivalent), possibly higher. Don't count on getting it any higher than 2.5 or 2.6 though.... the ECS probably won't handle it.

 

[cd14]

I managed to eek out 2.46ghz on this motherboard CPU combo from Fry's. Not too shabby for $179. I also lowered my VID from 1.36 to 1.28 using this speed. All benchmarks checked out too. Anything 248 or higher on the FSB puts the motherboard in "safe mode." A BIOS message appears and informs you that the CPU speed is incorrect. This 3800+ has a lot more potential, it appears.

The good: the nvidia chipset has neat utils to adjust, the SATA/PCI are locked to 33mhz (good for RAID and overclocking) and the onboard video output is clean compared to some other onbard video (no ghosting/bluriness). There's also a few chipset options if you press CTRL+F1 in the BIOS.

Some odd things though...I have DDR2 533, but the board sees 502 mhz even when set to 533. Using 248 bus, I managed a 614 memory bus though. At first the BIOS wouldn't accept and changes to the CPU/bus settings until I updated it and cleared it. Also software overclocking don't appear to affect it, even though all utils shows a higher speed. But for <$200 it's a good deal. I'll have to compare benchmarks to see how it stacks up.

 

[The_Prophecy]

A BIOS update might solve the issue of the ram being ID'ed incorrectly...

 

[cd14]

Well a little update...got the 3800+ to 2.63 with everything at stock settings...stock cooling, default 1.36 VID, default ram. Could only do this with GenClock (with Service Pack 2)--wouldn't work with SP1a. My 533 Patriot ram is at 656mhz and my Raid setup is still working.

Last BIOS 1.2g. Will Sandra and Prime it. Very nice for a free motherboard!

 

[cd14]

Choke, choke, choke. Will try bumping up some juice. Ram at 400 mhz won't work at this speed. CPU temp at 54c--reboots at 2.63.

 

[cd14]

MB can handle 2.60 for sure on stock settings and fan/heatsink. Trying to reach 2.7 but that would require better cooling and voltage. Stopped at CPU temp of 60c. Was able to get stable 2.64 with CrystalCPUID and GenClock.

I guess with a Zalman 9500 or water I could push it a little more. But performance gain to a 5000+ from this setup is pretty good considering it is an ECS board costing $60.