AlloI have 2x512mb sticks of TwinMos DDR PC3200 RAM and an A7N8X Deluxe mobo. What I'm after is the best possible performance. I have almost no idea when it comes to hardware and all these terms like Latency, CAS etc mean nothing to me. What can I do (BIOS settings?) to make it run at it's best?My system performance is, I feel, not what it should be for a high end system, sometimes it is very sluggish so I'm keen to try to get it running at it's best.Any help or advice appreciated!

Sluggishness is the sign of a bottleneck and it could be in the amount of RAM you have, your hard drive capacity and spin rate, your video card and AGP capability. Bottlenecks vary from one system to another and from one application to another. It just depends on how resources are used and allowed for by the programmers. As for adding RAM, just put it in the beast turn it on and go. The O/S will set your page file for you. If the RAM is compatible with your mobo the beast will start and the O/S will use what it needs to run the programs you use. On my system I have 768MB of RAM and I just happened to have 2 7200RPM 40GB Maxtor hard drives. I put the page file on the number two hard drive which is connected as the master on the number 2 controller. The config for my drives looks like this: controller 0 - drive 0 master, CD-ROM drive slave. controller 1 - drive 1 single. Drive 0 is partitioned into two logical partitions and drive 1 is partitioned into 2 logical drives. On the first partition of drive 0 - this is the C: drive - I have my O/S and operating system related programs (firewall, browser, anti-virus, and so on). On the second partition of drive 0 - this is the D: drive - I have my office software, my flight simulators (msfs and x-plane) and other non- operating programs like acdc, psp, dreamweaver, and so on.On the first partition of drive 1 - this is the E: drive - I have my paging file and my backup file for my C: drive. On the second partition of drive 1 - this is the F: drive - I have all of my download zips and other extraneous stuff that I don't want anywhere else. It is kind of like the attic where all the cobwebs are.I set my page file manually to 1.5GB for no particular reason other than M$ likes to tell you your page file should be about 1.5 times your RAM but I am of the opinion that with over 500 MB of RAM the page file is really inconsequential. I set the upper limit of the page file at 3GB just because there is a space for it in the configuration box.The page file settings can be adjusted in the system function of the Control Panel on the Advanced tab in Win2k - I'm not sure about XP, but it is probably similar.My setup might be vastly different than most and I am satisfied with it. It performs well and that is all anyone could want.Good luck with your upgrade.

Hi thereThanks v much for the reply. I have just the one hard disk. If I were to format would u recommend I partitioned, using one partition for games and one for everything else? Are there any definite advantages of this?I'm sure you are right about a bottleneck somewhere but I've tried and tried to locate it for quite some time with little or no success.I have an XP3000 CPU, RAM as mentioned, a Maxtor 7200RPM 40GB HD & a GF4 Ti4800 gfx card. This rig performs about the same/slightly worse than my previous XP1800, 256mb PC2100 DDR RAM & a crap mobo.I'm thinking a format may help? Can't do any harm anyway.Cheers boss

If you don't know much about memory timings and such, but want decent performance you should just set everything to "aggressive" instead of "optimal" in the BIOS advanced chipset settings. And if your two memory sticks are identical you should of course use them in dual channel mode. This requires that the memory sticks are inserted as described in the manual.- Oyvind

Hi Tom,there is a discrepancy between your CPU and RAM front side bus speeds. The XP3000+ runs at 333MHz (2x166), while PC 3200 RAM runs at 400MHz. Just synchronize those speeds, i.e. set your RAM speed down to 333MHz, and you'll see more fluid performance. Also, to take advantage of the dual channel architecture of your mainboard, make sure the RAM sticks sit in either slots 1&3 or 2&3. In case you're thinking that turning down the speed of the RAM means, the extra money you spent on getting PC3200 rather than PC2700 RAM was a bit of a waste - not really. First, RAM generally doesn't overclock very well, so if you're trying to get some extra power out of your CPU, that extra reserve will certainly come in handy. Also, if you're thinking of upgrading the CPU at one point in the future, you'll need the 400MHz FSB - the XP3200+ already runs at that speed, and it seems likely that the next few AMD CPUs will do the same.As to partitioning your drive, I would do it just for convenience, if nothing else. Theoretically, it should also give you slightly quicker access, but nowadays this isn't really noticeable. The advantage is, that if you need to reformat your Windows drive, FS with all its add-ons can stay intact (But you'll have to un/reinstall those add-ons with activation technology, such as CS or PMDG). If you decide to reformat, make sure you only install the Windows options you really need or want - if Windows starts up lots of unneeded processes and programs, that will certainly hit your performance. Also, disable all those fancy icon/desktop animations, they're not really needed and take up resources. Finally, before running FS, run End-it-All and kill off your unneeded processes, but be aware that doing this may require you to restart your computer after your FS session - End-It-All can be very thorough, and the only way you'll be able to start up certain programs is by restarting.Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg