Motherboard config. question.

[Just Nice]

Could someone out there enlighten me more about my socket 478 motherboard,
please!

Brand: Unknown (a US$79.00 tag).
Chipset: VIA P4M266A.
Bios Model: Phoenix-Award Bios V6 00PG.
Supports Intel P4, 533MHz CPU; Front Side Bus.
Two 184-pin DDR SDRAM sockets.
Claims to support up to 2GB DRAMs; (512 x8/16 DRAM technology)
2.5 DRAM interface for DDR SDRAM.

My OS is WinMe (with the latest updates); 384 Mb of 266Mb DDR266 SDRAM;
Intel P4 2.4Gb processor; 40Gb HD (with 4 partitions)

With regard to that, how could I best optimize my machine, please?


--
"The disadvantage of a wise man is his
reliance upon the less-wise to say that he is one!"

From the 'unquotables' of:-
Just Nice.

 

[Ben]

I did a Google search for P4M266A and came up with this
http://www.via.com.tw/en/apollo/p4m266.jsp and a
number of links to cheapo motherboard makers like
Biostar, ECS and Chaintech. Your board has a VIA chipset with intergrated S3
Savage graphics which is not very fast and doesnt support Transform &
Lighting which is commonly used in current 3D games. If youre not a gamer or
just run older games be happy with what youve got - but if you want to play
Half-Life 2 etc ... then look at spending £70 approx on a Nvidia or ATI
graphics card.

 

[Just Nice]

Ben wrote:
|| I did a Google search for P4M266A and came up with this
|| http://www.via.com.tw/en/apollo/p4m266.jsp and a
|| number of links to cheapo motherboard makers like
|| Biostar, ECS and Chaintech. Your board has a VIA chipset with
|| intergrated S3 Savage graphics which is not very fast and doesnt
|| support Transform & Lighting which is commonly used in current 3D
|| games. If youre not a gamer or just run older games be happy with
|| what youve got - but if you want to play Half-Life 2 etc ... then
|| look at spending £70 approx on a Nvidia or ATI graphics card.

Thanks, Ben. I am not a gamer though, but quite heavy on graphic editing.


--
"The disadvantage of a wise man is his
reliance upon the less-wise to say that he is one!"

From the 'unquotables' of:-
Just Nice.

 

[Just Nice]

||| Thanks, Ben. I am not a gamer though, but quite heavy on graphic
||| editing.
||
|| That video is plenty fast enough for 2D work, the only issue would be
|| if you're editing VERY large images, in which case the 32(?)MB shared
|| memory might cause some lag when scrolling/zooming/etc in magnified
|| modes.
||
||
|| Dave

Dear Dave,

Indeed! I assigned 32Mbytes of shared memory (the maximum) on graphics.
Could there be some other ways to reduce/overcome the lag/stress in future
works? Have you any tips to share?

--
From the 'unquotables' of:-
Just Nice.

"The disadvantage of a wise man is his
reliance upon the less-wise to say that he is one!"

 

[kony]

||| Thanks, Ben. I am not a gamer though, but quite heavy on graphic
||| editing.
||
|| That video is plenty fast enough for 2D work, the only issue would be
|| if you're editing VERY large images, in which case the 32(?)MB shared
|| memory might cause some lag when scrolling/zooming/etc in magnified
|| modes.
||
||
|| Dave

Dear Dave,

Indeed! I assigned 32Mbytes of shared memory (the maximum) on graphics.
Could there be some other ways to reduce/overcome the lag/stress in future
works? Have you any tips to share?

There is no way to overcome it, the zoomed image is essentially
treated as a much larger image, needing enough memory to hold it.
There'd be this same problem with only 32MB of memory on a dedicated
video card.

Of course the best way to increase this onboard video performance is
to run the memory bus at the very highest speed possible, overclocking
it. That can take a lot of testing since you certainly don't want
seemingly random memory errors. Play around with the memory timings
too, checking with Memtest86 can both give you memory throughput
scores and an idea of the ceiling capabilities of the memory, though
if you were to add additional memory you'd then have to retest again
since inevitably more modules will decrease the stable ceiling speed.
http://www.memtest86.com


Dave

 

[Just Nice]

There is no way to overcome it, the zoomed image is essentially
treated as a much larger image, needing enough memory to hold it.
There'd be this same problem with only 32MB of memory on a dedicated
video card.

Of course the best way to increase this onboard video performance is
to run the memory bus at the very highest speed possible, overclocking
it. That can take a lot of testing since you certainly don't want
seemingly random memory errors. Play around with the memory timings
too, checking with Memtest86 can both give you memory throughput
scores and an idea of the ceiling capabilities of the memory, though
if you were to add additional memory you'd then have to retest again
since inevitably more modules will decrease the stable ceiling speed.
http://www.memtest86.com


Dave

Thanks Dave. I will give it my best shot.

--
"The disadvantage of a wise man is his
reliance upon the less-wise to say that he is one!"

From the 'unquotables' of:-
Just Nice.