slkh

Again my old advice Not the right time to get a Dual CPU motherboard. Recent news mongering around saying that Athlon motherboard 760 can run the processor asynchronically. (Meaning, stick in a 750 Mhz, and a 850 mhz on the motherboard, it will work!!!!)

How about Asus CUR-DLS dual processor motherboard? http://insanehardware.com/reviews/hardware/cur-dls/

Appologize for the duplicated postings. No idea why it happens. It is true that Supermicro P6DGU isn't the latest board available in the market. Not saying i840 platform, it definitely beat the GX chipset in performance. But the price tag that come with it, I mean the RDRAM, is really scaring people off. While in theory, i820 suppose to beat any BX/GX chipset. But in practice, it wasn't so. While i840 with dual channel of RDRAM suppose to really push the performance gap further. But the price of RDRAM which is expected to lower in somewhere around 2164, really make it the options for the richie rich I thought GX chipset was for the Xeon? It wasn't any older than the BX chipset as far as I know. And it does support 133 Mhz FSB, with overclocked AGP bus. If you don't bother about the overclocked AGP bus, it smoke out even i840 in terms of performance For the time being, I don't think it is time to buy any dual processor motherboard because the 760 platform is just around the corner, probably already sampling to the taiwanese manufacturer. That will be my next upgrade.

Supermicro P6DGU with onboard SCSI support. A RAID Port if you need RAID support. Overall stability, I give 9/10 Overclockability, 5/10. Limited bus speed. Board Layout, 1/10 (Worst I have ever seen, with IDE channel at lower left of the board, and the board is HUGE. No way of getting it on Midi tower, need extra long cable (1m cable) if you are going for Full Tower Case) BIOS support = not very good, problematic ACPI support. Features: 8/10

Supermicro P6DGU with onboard SCSI support. A RAID Port if you need RAID support. Overall stability, I give 9/10 Overclockability, 5/10. Limited bus speed. Board Layout, 1/10 (Worst I have ever seen, with IDE channel at lower left of the board, and the board is HUGE. No way of getting it on Midi tower, need extra long cable (1m cable) if you are going for Full Tower Case) BIOS support = not very good, problematic ACPI support. Features: 8/10

Supermicro P6DGU with onboard SCSI support. A RAID Port if you need RAID support. Overall stability, I give 9/10 Overclockability, 5/10. Limited bus speed. Board Layout, 1/10 (Worst I have ever seen, with IDE channel at lower left of the board, and the board is HUGE. No way of getting it on Midi tower, need extra long cable (1m cable) if you are going for Full Tower Case) BIOS support = not very good, problematic ACPI support. Features: 8/10

I seems to get about 20% performance hit on Quake 3 Arena if I enable SMP mode. Shouldn't it increase the performance instead of decreasing it? My settings are 1024x768x16 (FSAA) on Nvidia Driver 5.22 (detonator 2) Geforce DDR Even I successfully make Quake 3 Arena run, the possibility of it running is very small. I manage to get to the white screen, and it freeze, I need to shut it down and run again multiple time before it will actually run. I don't know what setting I have missed out. But seems like nobody have ever mentioned about this problem before anywhere else. Care to help?

Q3A(1.17) Demo 1, 1024x768 32 bit colour, bilinear, everything else max out: r_smp 0 = 62.2 fps r_smp 1 = 52.8 fps Q3A(1.17) Demo 1, 1024x768 32 bit colour, trilinear, everything else max out: r_smp 0 = 61.7 fps r_smp 1 = 54.3 fps (Improve compared to Bilinear???) Configuration: Dual Cel300A@464 Mhz Supermicro P6DGU 384 Mb SDRAM @ CAS 2 CL Geforce DDR @ AGP 2X 18.2 Gb Quantum Fireball KA 6.4 Gb Seagate Medalist Pro Windows 2000 Pro with all Updates installed. SB Live Nvidia reference Driver 5.30 (W2K) Notes: Performance degradation somewhere around 16% (or 12% if Trilinear). Slight improvement over the previous few beta. Let's hope Nvidia will continue to improve the driver and push additional 30 fps or so to SMP users. FSAA performance still sucks... Note 2: Anyone realize that the demo actually ran faster on SMP mode on, but slow down quite a lot when rocket is in use?? [This message has been edited by slkh (edited 27 June 2000).]

Windows 2000 Nvidia Reference Driver 5.30 is available for download at http://www.reactorcritical.com/ Welcome any comments or precautions on the new driver.

Driver from yoru manufacturer usually coupled with a few fancy options, while Nvidia Reference Driver (official/unofficial) usually are better than the manufacturer's driver in performance wise.

Appologize for not stating clearly in the beginning. LLion is correct, it is an Unofficial Nvidia Reference Driver. So far so good, no stability problem on this driver. But SMP still get 20% performance hit.

Wrathchild, I have successfully reinstalled into a new directory instead of the Program Files directory which solve my problem when I use the /max /realtime options. Probably because of the space between the program files. However, the performance hit still applies. Approximately 10 fps drop from 61.0 fps My settings are Celeron 300A@450 Geforce DDR 1024x768x 32 Trilinear Max out all the setting available on screen. May I know what is your settings?

I tried lowering down the apperture size, yes I agree it does help a bit. At some time, I heard the audio, but my screen is not refreshing, but later it continue to run fine. I believe if I have not lowered the apperture size, it could have lockup my system. Thanks for the tips. However, by setting realtime, I still can't 100% able to launch Quake without a hang. Could it be I haven't have a full installation? However, the performance hit still applies at all time. Anyone successfully break the barrier?

I tried your tips, it didn't work. I run DNetc, is that the culprit? I sometimes disable DNetc, it run, but sometimes it doesn't run even I disable it. So what should I do now?

Wrathchild, I keep getting a lockup no matter what sort of setting I use, Realtime, normal, above normal etc, etc. It was pretty unstable on my system, sometimes it runs, sometimes it doesn't. Take me a couple of time to rerun Quake and shut it down from the Task Manager to get it to run the intro screen. But once I get it running, the benchmark performance shows about 20% "DEGRADATION" instead of improving the performance by 20 or 30 FPS under 1024 mode. [More info from Games section under 20% performance hit on Quake 3 Arena when enabling SMP] Anymore tips?

I have this problem, but not to that extend. I admit that the Windows 2000 driver for Sblive isn't matured enough. I get occcasional cracking sound, but wasn't often enough to make me complain. Maybe once a week or twice a week is what I encounter. I do not use any Environment Audio, perhaps, that could be the answer? The other thing I found buggy about the player that came with Liveware is that it skip a few second of audio from time to time.

While even if I disable FSAA support on OpenGL, the performance hit when enable the SMP support still applies. I find it a bit weird. Could this be the reason Nvidia disable the SMP support? So far, I haven't have any problem with all the official or beta driver on uniprocessor, but I am very upset about the SMP support and the performance was bad.

Officially announced by nvidia that their 5.22 does not support smp. well, maybe the next official release might?

For those who say they can't use this driver but can use that driver, etc, etc.. I used to have this problem and after much of the experiment I finally found out that the reason behind this is that the previous driver have not been cleanly uninstalled. Another possibility is that when the install wizard ask you Do you want to Search for a suitable driver for my device or Display a list of the known drivers for this device so that I can chooose a specific driver. Be sure to choose the latter one. I have problem if I choose the first option, it somehow seems to be using a mixture of both the new and the old driver.. ending up with lots of problem, eg: Opengl lockup in games, garbage screen, purple screen, yellowish screen, pinky screen, extraordinary slow motion benchmark result, etc, etc. While if I choose the second option, it would use a new driver. And they always works better than the older version. Hopefully this is a piece of information that might help you guys that have such problem. Sources that can be look up for on totally uninstalling nvidia driver is from http://go.to/geforcefaq

I haven't got any driver that works stably on SMP machine so far. Usually it lock up my system after a few games, sometimes, a few minute it just lock up my system with continuos repeated sound. The most stable SMP driver I know of is 3.81. Still not stable enough if you are really into a deathmatch.

The black colour 56 kbps modem from USR has some heat dissipation problem. The speed get slower and slower when the heat built up. While if you disconnect and leave it for five minutes you will get a fast connection again. I am not sure if this applies to you. But if you only get this type of problem in Windows 2000 and not Windows 98, then it probably be the driver problem

Not out yet 5.0.0.9 works fine for me.. 5.0.0.3 isn't, it just close the whole program whne I try to CD to CD copy.

It is advised to install Windows 98 and Windows 2000 in a seperate partition. Because both of them share the same Program Files, hence you will likely experience some problem with some commonly shared file. For example, IE5 works on Windows 2000 but not Windows 98. Or the other way round because the files have been conflicted with different version of it

I regard the inability to boot any partition above 8 Gb limit as the BIOS limitation rather than the Operating system limitation. This holds true for every operating system. Their boot partition must be at the beginning of the disk (I mean the start of the partition [Where the boot sector will be stored] must be before 8 Gb). This is the BIOS limitation. [Like what you said sector/tracks/cylinder, etc] After bootup, the addressing mechanism is transfered to the Operating System. Operating system take control over all the location of the files. They are stored in the FAT (File Allocation Table). Files are located according to their clusters -- not by sectors. While I am in Pure DOS prompt [boot from bootdisk], the address of each file is located using clusters [under DOS control]. I shouldn't have any problem accessing any files in my partition (This include files above 8 Gb). Now, all above that I have mentioned is theory. Talking from experience now, I don't remember I have any problem deleting/editing/moving files above 8 Gb location from Pure DOS. I think CUViper agree with me as well, not having any problem with 8 Gb limitation under DOS. I personally haven't install my Windows at any location above 8 Gb [The starting location above 8 Gb, I mean], because I know there is no chance my partition will boot up just by merely setting Active boot partition from FDISK. That is again BIOS issue here, coz Operating system not loaded up yet, computer still doesn't know what is a cluster.

Nova, I agree with what you say about NTFS partition. NTFS is superior FAT32 in SOME case, no doubt. The lack of bootdisk support is quite a major drawback infact. Well, at the very least, I still want my core files (NTLDR, BOOT.INI, NTDETECT.COM, etc) files to be in FAT16/32, the rest of them can be in NTFS. I know two working Windows 2000 is a good solution. Just in case, the boot.ini screw up, you might end up not able to boot either of them I have two working Windows 2000 too, if either one of them is dead, I can restore them back from my CD under 7 min, 10 min at most. If boot.ini is dead, I can restore them in under 1 min, instead of reinstalling everything if they are in NTFS. You mentioned about bootdisk FAT32 not able to access any files above 8Gb, I do not quite agree infact. I would have agree with you if you say FAT32 partition above 8 Gb is unbootable. But hey, that applies to NTFS partition and ext2 partition as well Long File name support from bootdisk? Not so interested, I am only interested in ability to access to my core files (boot.ini) incase it screw up