Here is a few tips to improve your system speed. I do recommend that you back up your hard drive before you install any of these programs, or Bus drivers. As we all know, it does not always work out as we might wish. I am not responsible for problems you may have. You are changing your settings at your own risk.
Drivers
How long has it been since you updated drivers for your sound card, video card, CD-ROM, modem, etc.? If it has been awhile, you should check for updates at the vendor's web site. New drivers can improve the speed of the card and also work out any bugs that the older driver may of had. As far as I know, all the major vendors have web sites, and their upgrades are free. Make sure you download the driver made for your card. You can select it by matching it with the model or make of your installed card.
Bus Master Drivers
Bus master drivers are for Windows 95 only Windows 98 has them built in.
If you have a UDMA or ATA hard drive and you are running Windows 95 you will need to install the bus master drivers from Intel, or from the CD that came with your hard drive. Most motherboard companies, also supply bus master drivers with a new motherboard. This can make a big difference within it self, on my system my average transfer rate went from 9mb to 24mb, just by installing the drivers from Intel. If your CD-ROM is UDMA it can also improve the speed in which it transfers data. You can download Intel's bus master drivers from this site...
http://developer.intel.com/design/pcisets/busmastr/dwnlod.htm
There is also a de-installer, if you run into problems.
Memory
If you have ever tried to run Windows95 on less than 32MB or RAM.you know just how slow it can be.If you want a speed improvement for under $200.00 think about adding more RAM. I suggest you buy PC-100 cas2,Instead of PC-100(100mhz). PC-100 cas2 runs at 125MHz and 8ns while most PC-100(100mhz) only runs at 100mhz and 10ns. Before you run out and buy PC-100 ram or any new ram at all, make sure your motherboard supports it first. You can find this out from your motherboard manual, or the company's web site. There is one thing you should know before you buy any new RAM, Intel will release their Katmai cpu in the first quarter of this year. This cpu could support a 133MHz system bus, and allot of today's memory will not work at the 133MHz bus speed. It may pay in the long run to double check with the vendor if the RAM supports the new CPU and its bus speed. If you don't need more memory now, but you plan on upgrading you motherboard when the Katmai Cpu ships, you may also have to buy new RAM, to go along with the board to get the most out of it (when I say may it does not mean you will have to. But it's a possibility). A good vendor to start with is Advance mega-trends, they have memory that runs at 125mhz cas2 and it should should run at 133mhz if you set it to a cas3 setting,here is the link.
http://www.megacom.com
Modem Speed
If you are not one of the lucky few to have Adsl, cable modem, T1 or a 128 ISDN, don't cry, I don't either. I wish I did but my ISP will not even support Isdn at this time, but they plan to. As of now it's only 56K, or is it???
When Microsoft released the MSdun 1.2 upgrade, and I saw that it would support multi-link, I was very happy (well, for a day or so anyway). I ran out and bought a second modem. A Sportster WinModem 33.6 upgradeable to 56K for $79. I ran home, installed the modem and drivers, and thought I would be in heaven (ha-ha). The modem worked fine, but when I tried to multi-link to my ISP, it would not work. Come to find out, for it to work my ISP would have to be running Microsoft NT server, and support it on top of that. To say the least they don't use Windows NT. So I started looking for a way around this, that's when I ran into Midcore. They have software that multi-links two or more modems to your ISP, no matter what server software they use. Best of all you ISP does not have to support anything for it to work. You can contact midcore at http://www.midcore.com. Now my downloads are not as painful as they once were. There are also a few ways to improved your speed besides buying a second modem. Look in My Computer/Control Panel/Device Manager/Ports(com&lpt)/communications port. Choose which port your modem is on Com 1 or 2, then clink or properties, then port settings. Under (bps) min is set to 921600, you should at least set it to 115200, this will help especially if i t is set to 9600 now. Then look under Advanced tab, in port settings, this is where you select your buffer. Set it as high as possible. Now go to My Computer/Control Panel/Modems in the general tab, go to properties, then select connection then Advanced, make sure these four settings use error controll, compress data, use flow control, hardware RTS/CTS. Update your phone line if you live in a older house and the phone lines were put in a long time ago. When the phone company came to put my second line in I had them run a new line from the outside strait to my modem jack, if you don't ask them to do it, they won't. They will split your old phone line and run a new number off of it.
MTU
Tweak Dun is for Windows 95 only Windows 98 has its own Tweak Dun built in.
What is the MTU setting? It sets the size of the packets transmitted/expected. The internet standard is 576, but since Win95 is configured for a LAN the default setting is 1500. Changing the MTU setting to 576 can have a dramatically positive effect on performance.
For more info on MTU, you can go to http://www.sysopt.com/maxmtu.html
Heat
Heat can damage your system to the point to where it crashes, programs stop working or in a worse case the system is damaged beyond repair. This can be avoided by proper ventilation, case fans, a good heat sink and fan for your CPU and hard drive fans. I myself keep my computer room about 70-f year around, I believe this helps because most people will have there computer in the smallest room in the house. Therefore the room heats up to around 80 or 85 while the rest of the house is between 68 and 72. This may be some of the problems that people have with overheating. Their fans only blow hot air onto their computer and not cool air. If you are in the need of fans or heat sinks, a good place to looks is http://www.a-pro.com. They have a wide range of products for cooling, plus a huge supply of ATX cases (I am in no way affiliated with a-pro. Also I am not receiving money to advertise their site) If you do order from them please tell them where you received the link.
Windows settings
Windows 95/98 can be tweaked to improved its speed, here are a few tips.
Go to My Computer/Control Panel/System properties click on performance, then click on File system, under Hard disk select (network server) and read ahead full this is the fastest setting. Next on CD-ROM select large and quad, or faster. Go back to Performance and click on graphics, set the acceleration to full, this will speed up graphics. Make sure you have the latest driver for your video card!
Microsoft has a utility called TweakUI this little program will tweak your Window's settings.You can do away with the slpash screen in windows 98, There is a boot section,Add/remove section, New, Network, General, Mouse, Explorer, Desktop, My computer, Repair, Paranoia.
What can you expect in the future.
(1) I plan a review of rain and waterfall to see if it cools the CPU as advertised.
(2) I plan to buy a few (USB) peripherals very soon, I will post reviews on them. I do not have any advertising at this time, I will do every thing I can to make this site fun, and a good place for computer info. I will be contacting computer manufactures very soon to see if they will send me parts to review. so please visit the site often.
CPU Review
CPUs that we can expect in 1999 and early 2000
AMD
Q2 As of 4-01-99 AMD has there k6-3/450 chips out. My guess is there will be a 475 very soon. This chip will run on the 95 mhz bus.Next we should see a k6-3 at 500mhz
K-7 uses a 200 MHz front side bus derived from Alpha's bus but machanically compatible with slot 1. Expected to start at 500 MHz using a much improved floating point unit and 128 kB L1 cache, 512 kB to 1MB L2 off chip cache running at 1/2 or 1/3 of the core speed. Later versions are said to support up to 8 MB L2 cache and may be available with a socket interface.
After looking at the photo's you may ask what are the gold pins for. Well there for (SMP)AMD will not use a slow bus for duel processing they will tie the chips together useing the pins at the top of the chip. This should make for a huge gain in overall speed.
Q3 AMD will increase the speed of the K6-3 up to 533/550 533 for the 133 mhz bus and the 550 for the 100mhz bus. The K-7 should increase up to 600 and shortly afterwords go to 700mhz
Q4 By the fourth quarter AMD should go from .25 micron down to .18 this will increase the speed in wich the chips can run at and give AMD more room for adding cache memory on the chips. The K-7 could run at 800 mhz by year end. And the K6-3 could run between 600 and 667mhz and the on chip cache could be increased to 384kb or even 512kb over the now 256kb.The K6-3 will be for low cost home systems and the K-7 will be used for workstations and servers.
Intel
Q2
As of 4-01-99 Intel has there 450 and 500mhz PIII processors out they are built on a .25 micron fab.Intels next chip will run at 533mhz and use a 133 mhz memory bus. And a 550 version for the 100 mhz bus will also ship in the second quarter.
Q3
Coppermine
PIII processor based on a 0.18 um core running at 600 MHz using the 133 MHz bus is introduced. Includes on-die L2 cache. Will increase in speed to at least 667 MHz by the end of 99 and 733 in mid-2000.
Q4
Cascades
PIII Xeon processor based on a 0.18 um running at 600 and 667 MHz increasing to 800 MHz in mid-2000.
Foster
Server chip based on Willamette (might be using the Merced bus) and a bus bandwidth of 3.2GB/s. Cache bandwidths: L2: 8GB/s, L1: 32GB/s. Core frequency 1GHz and beyond.
Willamette
P6 enhanced for speed in a number of ways, for example added decoders, execution units, larger buffers, a longer pipeline, an "instruction trace cache", and at least 1MB cache on the die. Will according to Intel sources be around 30 - 50 % faster than Deschutes at the same core speed. Starts at 0.18 um shrinking to 0.13 later while clock speed moves from 1 GHz and up. May include new bus concepts earlier only found in Dec Alpha etc.
Q2/2000
Merced
The first processor coming out of the HP / Intel cooperation. Introduces the IA-64 architecture, using the EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing) technology. IA-64 leaves the optimization work to the compiler but the compiled code includes information about inherent parallelism. This has the drawback of making compiled code more processor specific (optimization-wise), but reduces the need to fill the chip with logic to analyze and reorganize the code during runtime. It remains to be seen how Intel has been able to balance the architecture. It will also be IA-32 compatible in hardware, although later IA-64 products may use software translation. Merced will include a three level cache,adding a level-0 cache. Expected to include around 3 - 4 floating point units (for 3Gflops at extended precision, and 6 Gflops at single precision) allowing for 6 - 8 parallel instruction for performance three times Tanner while the die size may run up to 300 mm2 using a 0.18 um process. Rumored to start at around 1GHz clock speed with the 128 bit Slot-M bus most likely running at 200 MHz, providing a peak bandwidth of 3.2 Gb/s.
Q2/2002
McKinley
The second generation IA-64 chip, McKinley will likely start around 1GHz. HP is said to be more active in the development of this chip than it has been in Merced. Will roughly double Merced's performance. HP is expected to phase out their own 64 bit architecture in favour of IA-64 some time after this, while Alpha can be seen as one of the angrier competitors. A lower cost version for volume markets will be developed using the 0.13 um process in 2002.
Motherboards
I am posting info and links to the chip makers of socket 7 motherboards, that support AGP, or 100MHz bus speeds. There are alot of alternatives to Intel, when it comes to AGP and the 100MHz bus. Here are a few. I will update this page within a couple of weeks.
VIA
Are you looking fo a 100MHz socket 7 motherboard? VIA has announced their 100MHz Core logic. What can you expect from their new chipset? Well, here are the specs of their new Via Apollo MVP3
KEY FEATURES:
Supports 66 / 75 / 83 / 100MHz CPU external bus speed
PC97 compatible using VT82C586B South Bridge with ACPI Power Management
Includes UltraDMA-33 EIDE, USB, and Keyboard/PS2-Mouse Interfaces plus RTC/CMOS on chip
Single chip implementation for 64-bit Socket-7 CPU, 64-bit system memory, 32-bit PCI and 32-bit AGP interfaces
3.3V and sub-3.3V interface to CPU
3.3V (5V tolerant) DRAM, AGP,and PCI interface
AGP v1.0 compliant
PCI buses are synchronous/pseudo-synchronous to host CPU bus
33 MHz operation on the primary PCI bus
66 MHz PCI operation on the AGP bus
Concurrent CPU and AGP access
FP, EDO, SDRAM, and DDR SDRAM
Consists of the VT82C598AT system controller (476 pin BGA) and theVT82C586B PCI to ISA bridge (208 pin PQFP)
Built-in NAND-tree pin scan test capability
For more info on VIA's products, go to http://www.via.com.tw/default.htm.
SIS
After Successfully working out the highly integrated chipset, the SiS5998 & SiS5582, have recently introduced her first, and most advanced generation, the Pentium AGP SiS5591 series (code name David). SiS5591 is equipped with SiS's unique 553 pin BGA package. It is a dual chip design and has integrated Accelerated Graphics Port. SiS5591 again, demonstrates SiS's R&D emphasis on customer service, it allows customers to easily design on different form factors. SiS5591 adopted two different pin-out simultaneously, so as to be applicable for Baby AT, NLX, and LPX mainboards.
For more information on this board and all of SiS's products, visit their site at http://www.sis.com.tw
ALI
Acer Labs, has released specifications for its next-generation core-logic AGPset--the Aladdin V. Handling up to 1MB of L2 cache, and designed for Socket 7 desktop, and notebook systems, the Aladdin V will support the 100Mhz system bus, that chip makers AMD, and Cyrix are aiming for with their next generation processors. Expect the full AGP 1.0 spec to be incorporated, including support for 1x and 2x sidebands. The chipset will be able to handle 32-entries request queue, and 128 entries table-lookaside buffer for graphic-address remapping table. It will also support pseudo-synchronous PCI-bus access at 33 MHz for bus speeds as high as 100MHz. The new AGPset will also include USB, EIDE UltraDMA, Super I/O, and ACPI power management functions. The M1541 north-bridge chip comes in 456-lead ball-grid array; both the M1533 and M1543C south-bridge devices are housed in 328-lead BGAs. Acer Labs is now sampling Aladdin V to prospective motherboard manufacturers, and expects to start volume shipping in early '98. http://www.acerlabs.com/acerlabs/core.htm I will update this section as soon as I find more info on M1541.
Memory
DRAM
Five technologies are evolving from approximently 1998 to the year 200. SDRAM II (DDR), SLDRAMTM (SyncLink), RambusTM (RDRAM), Concurrent Rambus, and Direct RambusTM. The graph below is an approximate time-line regarding the emergence of future memory technologies.
DDR RAM
Synchronous DRAM II, or DDR (Double Data Rate), is the next generation of the current SDRAM. DDR finds its foundations on the same design core of SDRAM, yet adds advances to enhance its speed capabilities. There are two basic differences to the standard SDRAM: First, DDR uses more advanced synchronization circuitry not present on SDRAMs. And second, DDR uses a delay-locked loop (DLL) to provide a DataStrobe signal as data becomes valid on the SDRAM pins. The controller can thus use this DataStrobe signal, one for every 16 outputs, to locate data more accurately and resynchronize incoming data from different dual in-line memory modules. DDR essentially doubles the memory speed from SDRAMs without increasing the clock frequency. As a result, DDR allows data to be read on both the rising and the falling edge of the clock, thus delivering twice the bandwidth of standard SDRAMs. In addition, DDR moves to a higher frequency by changing signaling from TTL/LVTTL to SSTL3. DDR is scheduled for production in 1998.
Concurrent Rambus
Concurrent RDRAMs use an improved protocol yielding high sustained bandwidth even for small, randomly located data blocks. Concurrent Rambus is for 16/18/64/72-Mbit RDRAMs. This second generation RDRAM includes more efficient utilization of higher, peak bandwidths related to graphics and multimedia applications. As an enhancement to RDRAM, more efficiency is derived from synchronous, concurrent protocol for block oriented, interleaved (overlapped) transfers. This technology transfers data up to 600 megabytes per second, per channel, at a frequency of 600 MHz and improved protocol (>80% efficient). In addition, Concurrent RDRAMs are compatible with past generation RDRAMs. With additional improvements in signaling and clocking, speed will increase to 800 MHz in 1998.
RDRAM/Concurrent Rambus
LG Semicon continued its dominance over the competition today by demonstrating the world's first 64M concurrent RDRAM and unveiling plans to be the first to supply Direct RDRAM for desktop PC main memory in mid 1998. Among the eleven worldwide suppliers of RDRAM, LGS is the first to supply commercial samples of the 64M concurrent RDRAM--the industry's new standard for high-end graphics realization. It is currently in talks with several leading PC makers to supply them with the product when it enters full production in January 1998. "Companies wanting RDRAM now rather than later will come to LG Semicon for a solution," said Duke Koo, Sr. Managing Director of International Sales & Trade Affairs at LG Semicon. "Nobody can match the broad product range of LG Semicon. We are first with the 64M concurrent RDRAM and will be the earliest supplier of Direct RDRAM when Intel begins using it for PC main memory components that are scheduled to ship in 1999." LG Semicon's 18M concurrent RDRAM, the industry's fastest at 700MB/sec, is a core component for today's graphics and multimedia applications. A low power D-RDRAM for use in notebook PCs will see full production in mid 1999. You can Read the full article on LGS at http://www.lgsemicon.co.kr/news/comdex/rambus.htm make sure you read the Press Relese this is a three page article.
SLDRAM
Please go to http://www.sldram.com/ for further info. You may need to download the Adobe Acrobat reader to view Tech notes.
Storage
Ultra DMA
Ultra DMA is a high-speed data transfer feature that allows DMA commands to transfer data at 33.3 MB/s- double the current burst DMA transfer rate of 16.6 MB/s while using the standard 40-pin IDE interface cable. Ultra DMA lets host computers send and retrieve data faster, removing the bottlenecks associated with data transfers - especially during sequential operations. Western Digital's WD Caviar hard drives that support Ultra DMA are able to transmit and receive data at higher rates resulting in greater performance. In addition to speed improvements, Ultra DMA delivers new data integrity capabilities to the EIDE interface. Improved timing margins and the use of Cyclical Redundancy Check (CRC), a data transfer error detection code, help to ensure the integrity of transferred data. Ultra DMA is also recognized as Ultra ATA and Fast ATA-2 and is endorsed by the industry's leading hard drive manufacturers, including Fujitsu, IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, Seagate, Toshiba, Western Digital, and others.
Elements Required to Use Ultra DMA
Ultra DMA compatible hard drive
Ultra DMA compatible BIOS
Operating System Device Drivers
More Ultra DMA Information
1.Ultra DMA hard drives are backward compatible with existing EIDE/IDE hard drives, CD-ROM drives and host systems. Examples: 1) an Ultra DMA hard drive can be installed in a system that supports EIDE or IDE; 2) the latest motherboards that support Ultra DMA also support standard EIDE interfaces. 2.Ultra DMA supported hard drives and standard EIDE/IDE hard drives can be used in the same system. 3.The 40-pin interface cable used on Ultra DMA hard drives must be less than 18-inches in length.
Ultra2 SCSI
Ultra2 (LVD) provides SCSI bus data rates of 80 Mbytes/sec, that's double today's current standard... It's astonishing to note that less then a decade ago, SCSI bus rates were a slow as 3 Mbytes/sec. This increased bandwidth means optimal performance for server environments where rapid response is required and random access and large queue's are the norm. Applications, such as CAD and CAM, as well as digital video and any RAID environment will immediately notice this bandwidth increase as information is moved quickly and effortlessly. Ultra2 SCSI (LVD) Ultra2 SCSI (LVD) increases bus data rates to 80 Mbytes/sec, provides differential data integrity, extends the SCSI bus cable lengths to 12 meters, and provides easy system configuration for up to 15 peripherals. This is a dramatic increase from the Ultra SCSI single-ended cable restrictions of 3 meters with 3 peripherals and 1.5 meters for 7 peripherals.
The low voltage requirements of Ultra2 SCSI allow for the integration of the differential drivers and receivers into drive SCSI controller. The older Ultra design requires separate and costly high-voltage components. As a result, Ultra2 SCSI (LVD) provides the data integrity of high voltage differential designs at the system cost of single-ended I/O. Ultra2 SCSI (LVD) Compatibility. Ultra2 SCSI (LVD) is fully compatible with the existing installed SCSI base. A unique Diff Sens circuit determines the type of SCSI bus the device is being used on and configures the drive operation to the appropriate bus capability.
For device integrity it is important to disable operation of the Ultra2 (LVD) peripheral when installed on a high voltage differential SCSI bus. High voltage differential systems account for less than 5% of the present installed SCSI base so this will not be a problem in the vast majority of legacy systems.
