Thursday, March 26, 2009

YAAAAWN!

Doing some PC work tonight. Since I built the PC I use for audio/video recording and editing a couple of years ago, technology has some pretty big strides, so I'm upgrading it. Going from an AMD Opteron 185 @2.6GHz on an "EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra" motherboard to an Intel Core 2 Duo @3.0Ghz. on a "GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS5" motherboard.
The Intel processors perform video encoding MUCH faster than the AMD's, and the newer motherboard has a faster memory bus, so encoding HD video should take about half the time it does now.
I'll also be going to a different video card, as the one I bought is killer for gaming, but is NOT on the "approved" list to use with my Matrox RT.X2 video capture card, and the software squawks when I run it.
I'll take the "old" parts, put them in a new case that came today (Lian Li all aluminum!), and have a pretty speedy machine to sell to a friend.
Back to work......

8 comments:

  1. Hoo boy... I remember those days... Research, search, find, figure out what did and didn't work, and have a PILE of parts left over before I finally got it ALL working together!!!

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  2. I'm pretty good at doing the homework before I buy the parts. The issue with the video card was that I bought it not bothering to check the Matrox website, so that one's on ME!
    I'm in no hurry to get the A/V box running again, so I'll have plenty of time to figure out which card I want to use.

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  3. "Doing some PC work tonight. Since I built the PC I use for audio/video recording and editing a couple of years ago, technology has some pretty big strides, so I'm upgrading it."

    Sorr6y, but that was the only part of your post that made any sense to me, apart from the bit at the end about selling something to someone.

    My teenaged boys laugh and say that I am severely technologically-challenged. When my wife was in MN at a nursing conference, I didn't watch TV for a week, because I couldn't figure out which button I had hit on either of our remotes to make the TV stop doing what I wanted it to do.

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  4. yuk yuk! I was a 'geek' or 'nerd' way before the term was invented. My neighborhood had no one my own age to play with when I was in grade school, so I wound up either tinkering down in the basement, with my nose stuck in a book, or out hiking around the fields near my house.
    Guess I'm lucky that tech things just come naturally to me.....

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  5. I have an Opty185 on ECS KV2 Extreme board but would like to upgrade the mobo to pciexpress. I'm thinking about Epox EP-9NPA+ULTRA. Could you tell me if this board supports Cool'n'Quiet with Opteron 185? KV2 does, but Asus AN32 Sli Deluxe doesn't so I want to make sure before I get that Epox. Please advise.

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  6. According to the User's manual, it *does* support Cool'n'Quiet.

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  7. Thanks for fast respose.

    Manual of AN32 Sli Deluxe also states the board supports C'n'Q but - according to my very experience - it does not apply to Opteron 185. I talked to Asus customer service about this and they told me that Opterons as such do not support Cool&Quiet! Go figure. Bit of luck my current ECS mobo has no idea. That's why I'm asking you as a former user of Epox+Opty185 combo. What's your *experience*?

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  8. That's a good one. I know there's a BIOS setting that I left at the default of "Auto", but I don't recall if I had to load any special drivers or applications to allow Windows to activate the CnQ feature.

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Keep it civil, please....

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