Computers (General): March 2007 Archives

   Not long after flashing a Geforce 5200 AGP video card for the Mac, I may get a chance to see if a PCI version will flash as easily. I'm quite confident that it should be successful. I'll just have to wait and see.
   In related news, the video card that I'm going to use in my gaming PC still hasn't arrived. The bastard probably shipped it the cheapest method he could. Ass. Even my book that I ordered still hasn't arrived. Cheap ass bastards.

   Although my attempts to flash it directly in the Mac failed, the Geforce 5200 was successfully flashed using the time honored method of simply using a PC to do the work. It seemed to take forever to get everything just right on the PC being used for flashing but once started it worked the first try.
   My last attempt at flashing (aside from the Radeon 7000s I flashed back a couple of years ago) failed. Mind you, I don't think many people have had success with a 'ole Geforce 4 MX440. I didn't really expect that one to work and it didn't. Nevertheless, now that I've got my feet wet again I think I'm going to try some others.
   In other news, I gave my B&W G3 a good dusting out. It took me several minutes in order to get every little spot, but it looked quite a bit cleaner afterwards.

   I've begun looking into video cards for both my sister's B&W G3 and my Dad's G4. My goal isn't really getting them able to play games but more able to run Quartz Extreme, and maybe Core Image on the G4. I've found that just having Quart Extreme makes a world of difference. Not only does it make the UI smoother and sometimes more responsive, but it also lowers UI overhead as the GPU is handling a good portion of the work. You've probably already heard about this when QE came out with 10.2 a couple years back. So, I'll continue.
   I've mainly been focusing on the Geforce 5200 for the G3, as it seems to be a good card that has a high chance of flashing success. I'm pretty sure you can get Core Image working on it over the PCI bus (for the PCI version, duh), although I haven't heard good things about this. As for the G4, I'll probably go for a 5200 as well. I would have tried to get a Radeon 9800, as they flash very easily from what I've heard, for the G4 and give it some gaming power. I've pretty much already got my hands on a AGP GeForce 5200, though.
   I haven't yet gotten my hands on the AGP, for the G4, or the PCI, for the G3, versions of the 5200 yet, but I hope to soon. I'll have to post on my success, or failue, in the flashing procedure for both of the cards. I hope for the best.

   For about 3 hours this morning, I was deep into rearranging my second room into a type of 'Media' room that would house all my computers and the TV. It was a success. Sadly, the previous desk that my Gaming PC resided on had to be completely disassembled in order to quicken things up. Other than that, the move went well.
   I know that I have more important things to do but I enjoy the little things such as this. I'm a procrastinator by nature and I enjoy it.

   I successfully overclocked the FSB on my Gaming PC to 186MHz (372MHz Effective). It seemed to work fine. So, I decided to give it to run through by letting Seti@home run fullspeed on it for a bit. I came back and tried to rouse it, in order to make sure it was still working, and the monitor reported that there was no video signal. Since I have the display to sleep eventually, this means that the CPU crapped out after the display had gone asleep.
   I'll probably try lowering that until I get a good stable FSB frequency. On the other hand, I could change the ratior the DDR-400 ram is set at. I think it may be getting too high even for it. I'll see, tomorrow.

   Well, it seems that my Dad ordered some upgrades to his G4. On top of a 1.2GHz G3 with 2MB L2 cache, he also got a stick of 512MB RAM to bring the G4's total to a good 1GB. Both of these upgrades together should make for a nice experience. It will still be lacking Quartz Extreme, though. So, I plan on buying and flashing a good video card for the G4. Maybe just a Radeon 9200 or something. We'll see. Oh yes, we will see. (Whatever that means)

   The new heatsink my brother bought me for my Gaming PC's processor is working quite well. In fact, it is about 15 to 20 degrees cooler than the previous one. It is also a lot quieter.
   I may even think of overclocking it some more since the chip is being cooled so well.