SERprise
New Member
I just purchased a new motherboard(Biostar N4SLI-AN), 2 gigs of ram(2x1gb PQI Turbo), a 6800GS video card, and 4 Hitachi 7k80 sata II drives. When I installed my new parts, it was a big enough pain trying to get the RAID drivers to install, I am just thankful that I installed Xwindows on my linux box so I was able to fairly easily find a solution for that(took about a day). Well now that I got this up and running I can't even get it to run where it is suppose to at stock speeds 
.
well here is my problem, the ram I purchased had good reviews online so I decided to get it since it is cheap ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141236 ) and the stock timings are suppose to be 2-3-2-5 according to Newegg and I don't know what number means what.. I tried changing a few and my computer wouldnt boot so I had to just reset cmos. I guess I don't really understand ram to know how to do this.. I've always left it on auto and it had the correct timings. My options Biostar's bios gives:
cas# Latency 2, 2.5, 3
Min RAS# Active time 2T-7T
Ras# to Cas# delay 2T-7T
Row Precharge Time 2T-7T
Row to Row delay 2T-4T
before I upgraded my bios I think I only saw 4 options to change but now there is 5... What numbers go where??
Another thing is my ram is specified at 2.6V and my motherboard only gives the options of 2.7V-2.9V, so what do I do??
This next question is more of advice than a problem, I just want to know how I can get the most out of my sataII raid 0 setup. I have it set at 64k stripe, I've also read something about a cluster?? what is that, how do I change it, and what should I change it to? Should I leave it at 64k stripe? What about NCQ?? I've read that it is a pretty good feature and my board does support it, along with my drives.. Should I turn it on or leave it off?? If I should turn it on, where do I see this option?? I appologize for all of the newb questions... I am not very good at PC's yet, I am trying my best to learn though, I'm new to this crowd if you can't tell
(all important files get saved on my file server so the raid 0 risk doesn't bother me)
BTW, anybody curious about sataII raid 0 setups... some reviews are all for it, some say it is no performance gain at all, some say it is worse than a single drive... but I ASSURE you, it works
here is a few shots of some benchmarks, and not only does it show in the benchmarks, I actually load Battlefield 2 maps on servers with a 15 second wait time before the round even starts. The only upgrades I did since my old Gigabyte NF4 4x board was in there was the hard drives and video card. I had the 2GB of ram in my old PC too since I recieved it before anything else, I went ahead and threw it in. I had a single WD1600SE sata drive in that machine and those are rated at some of the best performance wise, yet it couldnt even come close to my new setup.. I cut the load time into atleast 1/3 the time as before. How many other A64 3000+ Venices at stock timing and what not can load maps like that
Single WD1600SE
4x7k80's
my 4x7k80's @32
One other quick question, once I get this all up and running correctly.. Say I do decide to overclock for the first time, where should I start?? any advice on #'s to try?? I have 2 intake, 2 exhaust,and a side fan in my Chieftec Dragon case. I have the Zalman alcu cooler for the A64's on my CPU and the copper VGA cooler they have as well on my video card, and all HS's are applied with Arctic Silver 5, in the very beginning(back in Jan-feb) when I first put my A64 PC together I was planning on actually overclocking, but lack of knowledge has scared me from actually attempting it. Well do you think it is worth it?? will there be noticeable differences?? my cooling is good isn't it?? Thank you ALL who actually read this whole novel lol... sorry bout that, and I appreciate ALL reccomendations and replies.
-Cory
.well here is my problem, the ram I purchased had good reviews online so I decided to get it since it is cheap ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141236 ) and the stock timings are suppose to be 2-3-2-5 according to Newegg and I don't know what number means what.. I tried changing a few and my computer wouldnt boot so I had to just reset cmos. I guess I don't really understand ram to know how to do this.. I've always left it on auto and it had the correct timings. My options Biostar's bios gives:
cas# Latency 2, 2.5, 3
Min RAS# Active time 2T-7T
Ras# to Cas# delay 2T-7T
Row Precharge Time 2T-7T
Row to Row delay 2T-4T
before I upgraded my bios I think I only saw 4 options to change but now there is 5... What numbers go where??
Another thing is my ram is specified at 2.6V and my motherboard only gives the options of 2.7V-2.9V, so what do I do??
This next question is more of advice than a problem, I just want to know how I can get the most out of my sataII raid 0 setup. I have it set at 64k stripe, I've also read something about a cluster?? what is that, how do I change it, and what should I change it to? Should I leave it at 64k stripe? What about NCQ?? I've read that it is a pretty good feature and my board does support it, along with my drives.. Should I turn it on or leave it off?? If I should turn it on, where do I see this option?? I appologize for all of the newb questions... I am not very good at PC's yet, I am trying my best to learn though, I'm new to this crowd if you can't tell
(all important files get saved on my file server so the raid 0 risk doesn't bother me)BTW, anybody curious about sataII raid 0 setups... some reviews are all for it, some say it is no performance gain at all, some say it is worse than a single drive... but I ASSURE you, it works
here is a few shots of some benchmarks, and not only does it show in the benchmarks, I actually load Battlefield 2 maps on servers with a 15 second wait time before the round even starts. The only upgrades I did since my old Gigabyte NF4 4x board was in there was the hard drives and video card. I had the 2GB of ram in my old PC too since I recieved it before anything else, I went ahead and threw it in. I had a single WD1600SE sata drive in that machine and those are rated at some of the best performance wise, yet it couldnt even come close to my new setup.. I cut the load time into atleast 1/3 the time as before. How many other A64 3000+ Venices at stock timing and what not can load maps like that Single WD1600SE
4x7k80's
my 4x7k80's @32
One other quick question, once I get this all up and running correctly.. Say I do decide to overclock for the first time, where should I start?? any advice on #'s to try?? I have 2 intake, 2 exhaust,and a side fan in my Chieftec Dragon case. I have the Zalman alcu cooler for the A64's on my CPU and the copper VGA cooler they have as well on my video card, and all HS's are applied with Arctic Silver 5, in the very beginning(back in Jan-feb) when I first put my A64 PC together I was planning on actually overclocking, but lack of knowledge has scared me from actually attempting it. Well do you think it is worth it?? will there be noticeable differences?? my cooling is good isn't it?? Thank you ALL who actually read this whole novel lol... sorry bout that, and I appreciate ALL reccomendations and replies.
-Cory
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