Thanks Raj; On Tue, 2007-08-14 at 10:42 -0400, Raj wrote: > > William Case wrote: > > Hi; > > I have installed M2NPV-VM motherboard with an integrated NVIDA 6150 > > GeForce graphics chip; and a Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor. This > > replaced a 5 year old Intel GB850 board and chip (plus an ATI Radeon > > 9600 graphics card) that was fried by a dysfunctional power pack. I > > currently have Fedora-7-i386 installed > > > > My main criteria was to select the most up to date board etc. I could > > get that a small pension cheque would allow for. > > > > Frankly, I haven't seen much improvement over my old board, cpu and > > graphics -- and in some instances things seem slower. I don't use high > > end graphics i.e. games. > > > > * In practiacal terms, what difference should I be seeing? > > * How can I tweak things to get full value from my new > > installation? > > You could try the proprietory nvidia drivers, the seem to work better > for me than the regular nv driver. Initially, the nv driver worked well enough. Based on the principle "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" I left it alone. But now I think I will try the nvidia driver for a few days at least to see if there is a difference. Haven't tried 3-D Beryl yet. I'll do that on nv and then on nvidia. > If you want programs to load faster, you probably need to upgrade to a > faster drive. Or if you're memory-constrained, perhaps adding more RAM > may help. How much RAM do you have right now? I have 1028 Mb, i.e. 1 Gbm, of Ram. That's where I thought I would see the most difference. > If you have >=512M, you > could turn on fedora's read-ahead scripts and tune them to your system - > they enable pre-caching of files at boot time, which helps with faster > booting and program load. I think they are already on. I used to have 640Mb of RAM. How would I check? > > > > * Should I install the Fedora-7-x86_64 (64-bit), for ordinary > > desktop usage? Or, are too few applications ready for 64-bit > > yet? > > no, don't, there's a lot of browser add-ons that are just not 64bit > ready yet (flash, sun java to name 2). and I personally haven't seen a > performance difference between the 32bit and 64bit systems for general > desktop usage. > I'll stick with you. Various people swear by, or condemn (for not being ready), 64bit in the few mailing lists I belong to. > > * My CPU fan seems to be making more noise than before. Should I > > replace it in the future? Is there a cost vs quietness rule of > > thumb? > > Try and blow out the dust on the cpu fan/heatsink with some compressed > air and see if it helps :) > The whole interior was cleaned before I installed the new board. The CPU was also brand new as was the fan that came with it. I suppose I am asking the subjective question "If I find the new fan sound annoying, will the cost of replacing the fan be worth the slight/large noise reduction?". Have people replaced fans and then been able to give a sigh of relief? > > I will be glad to supply more info if it will help the discussion. I am > > calling it a discussion because, unlike on other occasions, I am not in > > desperate need of help; I would be interested in several opinions and > > exchanges; this is meant as a chat that doesn't take other people away > > from regular work. -- Regards Bill