Hey - am hoping you guys can help here pleez.

i got this CPU on this motherboard:

AMD Athlon XP, 1917 MHz (11.5 x 167) 2600+
Gigabyte GA-7VT600(-L) (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 3 DDR DIMM, Audio)
and Motherboard Chipset = VIA VT8377 Apollo KT600

I use the 'putor for Gaming and DVD durning only. The set up is ok
for gaming but the DVD burning seems to max out the chip for hours
maiking the machine virtually impossible to use at this time.

I'm looking for suggestions about where to go next with my hardware
pleez; can you recommend a change to mother & chipset & cpu
(or a mix of keeping and changing?)

thanks in advance

:retard:

Yeah,it's getting a bit old.You'll have to upgrade for gaming very soon
too.Look into the dual core cpu's like the X2 4200+.You'll need to upgrade
just about everything though.Can't recommend specifics without knowing your
budget.

"mrgreenfelduk" <no (AT) spam (DOT) invalid> wrote

On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 19:31:06 GMT, no (AT) spam (DOT) invalid (mrgreenfelduk)
wrote:

If it were a car, I'd say you should keep front and rear plates and
replace everything in between.
;-)

NNN

On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 19:31:06 GMT, no (AT) spam (DOT) invalid (mrgreenfelduk)
wrote:

?? Before you do anything else, make sure that you're using DMA mode
on your DVD drive. I'm currently running with a very similar
processor to you and have little trouble burning DVDs while doing
other stuff in the background. Sure, it slows things down, especially
if I'm working on the same hard drive as the data files for the DVDs,
but it's by no means "virtually impossible to use". Web browsing,
e-mail, word processing, reading newsgroups, etc. are all very much
functional, even when burning DVDs at 8x or 16x.


Check in Device Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers -> Primary (or
Secondary) IDE Controller -> Advanced Settings.


This should show you what DMA or PIO mode you are currently using. If
any of the devices are set to a PIO mode, change the "Transfer Mode"
to "DMA if available".

Really there isn't much point in trying to upgrade either motherboard
or processor alone here. The fastest motherboard for this chip is
only going to get you a few percent here and there. The fastest
processor your board will support (AthlonXP 3200+) will give you a bit
more of a boost, but at a rather high cost, $180 or so.

If you're looking to upgrade, you're probably going to have to bite
the bullet and do a fairly major overhaul. Motherboard + processor
are the first step, but you might also need new memory, video card and
power supply, depending on what options you select.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 06:07:03 -0400, Tony Hill
<hilla_nospam_20 (AT) yahoo (DOT) ca> wrote:


Tony, I think the original poster is actually talking about resizing a
movie from DVD-9 to DVD-5. Many people do this as an all-in-one
process, using software like Nero Recode or DVDFab or CloneDVD or
similar. They then refer to this process as "burning a DVD", when in
reality writing the DVD is only the last step in a multi-step process.
Depending on just which software they are using, and the options they
give to the software, this re-encoding process can consume 100% of the
cpu for anywhere from 0.5 hours to 12 hours.

Back before both AMD and Intel started selling multiple cpus in one
chip, I used to recommend a separate PC for this job. In particular,
I recommended a Celeron 1.8 or 2.0 ghz cpu (the really crummy one,
with 128k cache), overclocked to 3.0 ghz. Movie encoding (or
re-encoding) software is very dependent on cpu speed, and is one of
the few things that will really work well on the older, cache-starved
Celeron cpus.

Nowadays, of course, multiple cpu computers are easy and cheap to buy
or build, so that is my present recommendation.

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 06:07:03 -0400, Tony Hill
<hilla_nospam_20 (AT) yahoo (DOT) ca> wrote:


Tony, I think the original poster is actually talking about resizing a
movie from DVD-9 to DVD-5. Many people do this as an all-in-one
process, using software like Nero Recode or DVDFab or CloneDVD or
similar. They then refer to this process as "burning a DVD", when in
reality writing the DVD is only the last step in a multi-step process.
Depending on just which software they are using, and the options they
give to the software, this re-encoding process can consume 100% of the
cpu for anywhere from 0.5 hours to 12 hours.

Back before both AMD and Intel started selling multiple cpus in one
chip, I used to recommend a separate PC for this job. In particular,
I recommended a Celeron 1.8 or 2.0 ghz cpu (the really crummy one,
with 128k cache), overclocked to 3.0 ghz. Movie encoding (or
re-encoding) software is very dependent on cpu speed, and is one of
the few things that will really work well on the older, cache-starved
Celeron cpus.

Nowadays, of course, multiple cpu computers are easy and cheap to buy
or build, so that is my present recommendation.

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 06:07:03 -0400, Tony Hill
<hilla_nospam_20 (AT) yahoo (DOT) ca> wrote:


Tony, I think the original poster is actually talking about resizing a
movie from DVD-9 to DVD-5. Many people do this as an all-in-one
process, using software like Nero Recode or DVDFab or CloneDVD or
similar. They then refer to this process as "burning a DVD", when in
reality writing the DVD is only the last step in a multi-step process.
Depending on just which software they are using, and the options they
give to the software, this re-encoding process can consume 100% of the
cpu for anywhere from 0.5 hours to 12 hours.

Back before both AMD and Intel started selling multiple cpus in one
chip, I used to recommend a separate PC for this job. In particular,
I recommended a Celeron 1.8 or 2.0 ghz cpu (the really crummy one,
with 128k cache), overclocked to 3.0 ghz. Movie encoding (or
re-encoding) software is very dependent on cpu speed, and is one of
the few things that will really work well on the older, cache-starved
Celeron cpus.

Nowadays, of course, multiple cpu computers are easy and cheap to buy
or build, so that is my present recommendation.