Ever heard about the way AMD produce their Sempron™ CPUs? Actually it's DualCore Athlon XIIs, artificially throttled. What the actually do is block a Core and part of the L2 Cache.
Now that I needed a new PC, I've looked into those Semprons and how to unlock the second core. Seems that all (or most, anyway) Boards with an AMD790GX Chipset and an AMD SB750 Southbridge support unlocking those beauties.
Here's the Setup / Cost :
- EUR 30 - AMD Sempron 140 @ Athlon X2 4400e - Boxed (not silent,granted)
- EUR 70 Radeon 5670. Ordered 3 times, all deliveries faulty : got the GDDR3-based card instead of the GDDR5 one. Finally, I give up.
- EUR 35 Any 4 Gigs of DDR2 Ram @ 800MHz.
- EUR 30 Hitachi 500 GB HDD, model HDS721050CLA362.
- EUR 50 LC Power LC6480S power supply (wouldn't wanna miss the cable management)
- EUR 30 Silverstone PS05 case
- EUR 40, used : Asus M3A78-T
As you see, this is not a machine fit for ultimate gaming but a good one for working on and performant enough to even do some serious 3D calculus.
Showing posts with label Hardware. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hardware. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Fun with Windows 7 64bit (I) - Atheros / Attansic L1 Gigabit Ethernet
I recently installed Win 7 64bit and, guess what, whatever I usually do with my PC won't work. My favourized Sequencer works in 32bit environment only, my Scanner is declared incompatible, I can't even install an official Apache webserver!
Well, worst things first. My network was unsatisfyingly unstable and slow. Copying files from another PC reproducably resulted in a system freeze. Driver update. No freezes, but a performance of 5.x MB / sec, which is, how can I put it, bullshit.
So, the driver that works with my onboard Atheros L1 Gigabit Network card is the one located at the following link: http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?model=M3A&os=25&SLanguage=en-us
The board, besides, is an ASUS P5K.
Well, worst things first. My network was unsatisfyingly unstable and slow. Copying files from another PC reproducably resulted in a system freeze. Driver update. No freezes, but a performance of 5.x MB / sec, which is, how can I put it, bullshit.
So, the driver that works with my onboard Atheros L1 Gigabit Network card is the one located at the following link: http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?model=M3A&os=25&SLanguage=en-us
The board, besides, is an ASUS P5K.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
First impressions of the Intel D945GCLF (Atom) Desktop Mainboard
My old AMD Geode NX1750-based energy saver machine (I posted about it here) has for some reason passed away - the mainboard keeps on crashing. May it rest in peace.
I took a look around to find out what's current in the energy saving market, just in order to decide whether repairing would be worth it, but in the end i opted for a completely new solution based on an Intel Atom CPU.
Since I always intend to keep investments as small as possible, I chose the Intel D945GCLF all in one solution, containing Mainboard, CPU and Video Card - the smallest solution offered by Intel. I would have preferred the D945GSEJT which is using a better CPU, the far more energy efficient notebook chipset and allows using external 12V adapters (which are all passive and more energy efficient), but it's about twice as expensive. I also try one further energy optimization : I exchanged the system HD with a Notebook drive. All storage comes as PNP USB devices. I could tell myself this will reduce the system energy consumption, but that would be fooling myself, I guess.
The new system brings along two major aspects of optimisation for me :
-I can now use cheaper RAM modules (DDR2 instead of DDR)
-I have a bootable S-ATA Controller, which makes HD replacement rather easy. IDE / P-ATA Disks are supported as well, I currently use an 2.5" IDE disk. I intended to buy a PCI-pluggable controller for the old machine, but that would have been as expensive as the whole new system (~ 55 Euros).
I can't seem to find my ammeter, so I don't realy see the difference in energy consumption. There's a review on the internet that displays some measured values : A system with a 2.5" Disk and DVD-drive supposedly consumes somewhere around 25-30 Watts idle and about 45 Watts in a burn-in-test-scenario.
Debian 5.0 Windows 7 RC1 runs smoothly on the system, which is meant to be online somewhere close to 24/7. No driver trouble - everything was installed using the netinst DVD image (I only had to tweak the xorg.conf to add a few resolutions) using standard settings.
Of course this system is not perfect, and here's the drawbacks (those that I have come to notice so far, at least):
- audible chipset cooler. I resent that, but I'll have to live with it. That's the skinflint's price for saving at the wrong end. If your main goal is absolute silence, use a D945GSEJT instead. This will mean ZERO noise, but it costs a penny more.
- Low peak performance of the CPU. Firefox with five tabs (running on debian) is about as much as I would give to this hardware. For working, this is useless. For numb tasks like Server-, Router- or Download-Solutions this will do just fine.
UPDATE: Windows 7 (RC1) runs a lot better than Debian 5. No performance problems, even with ~10 Tabs in FF :D
All in all, I really enjoy this kind of hardware :)
I took a look around to find out what's current in the energy saving market, just in order to decide whether repairing would be worth it, but in the end i opted for a completely new solution based on an Intel Atom CPU.
Since I always intend to keep investments as small as possible, I chose the Intel D945GCLF all in one solution, containing Mainboard, CPU and Video Card - the smallest solution offered by Intel. I would have preferred the D945GSEJT which is using a better CPU, the far more energy efficient notebook chipset and allows using external 12V adapters (which are all passive and more energy efficient), but it's about twice as expensive. I also try one further energy optimization : I exchanged the system HD with a Notebook drive. All storage comes as PNP USB devices. I could tell myself this will reduce the system energy consumption, but that would be fooling myself, I guess.
The new system brings along two major aspects of optimisation for me :
-I can now use cheaper RAM modules (DDR2 instead of DDR)
-I have a bootable S-ATA Controller, which makes HD replacement rather easy. IDE / P-ATA Disks are supported as well, I currently use an 2.5" IDE disk. I intended to buy a PCI-pluggable controller for the old machine, but that would have been as expensive as the whole new system (~ 55 Euros).
I can't seem to find my ammeter, so I don't realy see the difference in energy consumption. There's a review on the internet that displays some measured values : A system with a 2.5" Disk and DVD-drive supposedly consumes somewhere around 25-30 Watts idle and about 45 Watts in a burn-in-test-scenario.
Of course this system is not perfect, and here's the drawbacks (those that I have come to notice so far, at least):
- audible chipset cooler. I resent that, but I'll have to live with it. That's the skinflint's price for saving at the wrong end. If your main goal is absolute silence, use a D945GSEJT instead. This will mean ZERO noise, but it costs a penny more.
- Low peak performance of the CPU. Firefox with five tabs (running on debian) is about as much as I would give to this hardware. For working, this is useless. For numb tasks like Server-, Router- or Download-Solutions this will do just fine.
UPDATE: Windows 7 (RC1) runs a lot better than Debian 5. No performance problems, even with ~10 Tabs in FF :D
All in all, I really enjoy this kind of hardware :)
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Apple iPhone - yikes!
Apple finally presented their iPhone, a completely touch-screen powered mobile phone with integrated mp3 player and video/photo player. Nice Gadget, and apple stocks have risen by 8% in a single day... to sad i don't have any :(
anyway, check this out:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/
anyway, check this out:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
PC-Silence : AMD Geode serves the purpose well
I needed a CPU for my Audioputer, which i record tunes from my Piano with and edit some MIDI.
The goal was to have a low-power, low-noise computer that has enough power to run i.e. cubase or reason without being more than slightly audible.
I found out about The Geode Series (AMD), with a mere 14-25 Watts for a 1750+ (@1400Mhz) the probably perfect solution for my purpose. Reports on the web said it should be possible to cool the cpu passively, so i took an interest.
Finally after all parts arrived (... after lots of ebaying...) I assembled the following into a nice, small machine:
*AMD Geode NX1750+ CPU (Socket A)
*Asus A7N8X Motherboard
*512MB Kingston Value Ram @266Mhz (...the geodes FSB)-->added 512, so it's a gig now.
*some dvdrom
*Maxtor 160GB 8MB Cache HDD
*seasonic 200Watts Power Supply
*matx case
*creative soundblaster card (nothing special) -->replaced by M-Audio Audiophile 2496
*GF2, 64MB, TVout
Big Drama: The CPU is recognized as An Athlon 800, since the board doesn't support it. More research had the following result:
For the Geode, only a few Boards work properly!
So i exchanged my A7N8X for a ASRock K7S41GX (there is also a non GX version, offering 400Mhz FSB instead of 333, but Geode operates at 266, so go for the cheaper one) and found it working smoothly. Noiseless cooling is achieved by active cooling:
*2 60mm 12V Case Fans @5v
*12V CPU cooler @5V
Everything fine. Windows MCE works properly and I am happy to have a silent beast standing in my room. One drawback nevertheless: The case is not all good for HDDs, since they get pretty hot in their place...
Summary: Geode rules, what a pity so few boards support it.
The goal was to have a low-power, low-noise computer that has enough power to run i.e. cubase or reason without being more than slightly audible.
I found out about The Geode Series (AMD), with a mere 14-25 Watts for a 1750+ (@1400Mhz) the probably perfect solution for my purpose. Reports on the web said it should be possible to cool the cpu passively, so i took an interest.
Finally after all parts arrived (... after lots of ebaying...) I assembled the following into a nice, small machine:
*AMD Geode NX1750+ CPU (Socket A)
*Asus A7N8X Motherboard
*512MB Kingston Value Ram @266Mhz (...the geodes FSB)-->added 512, so it's a gig now.
*some dvdrom
*Maxtor 160GB 8MB Cache HDD
*seasonic 200Watts Power Supply
*matx case
*creative soundblaster card (nothing special) -->replaced by M-Audio Audiophile 2496
*GF2, 64MB, TVout
Big Drama: The CPU is recognized as An Athlon 800, since the board doesn't support it. More research had the following result:
For the Geode, only a few Boards work properly!
So i exchanged my A7N8X for a ASRock K7S41GX (there is also a non GX version, offering 400Mhz FSB instead of 333, but Geode operates at 266, so go for the cheaper one) and found it working smoothly. Noiseless cooling is achieved by active cooling:
*2 60mm 12V Case Fans @5v
*12V CPU cooler @5V
Everything fine. Windows MCE works properly and I am happy to have a silent beast standing in my room. One drawback nevertheless: The case is not all good for HDDs, since they get pretty hot in their place...
Summary: Geode rules, what a pity so few boards support it.
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