Okay. I’m going crazy with my friend’s PC. I brought him over a 300W Enhance power supply. Not sure on how good Enhance is, but it should’ve worked, really. His machine is STILL FREEZING UP, randomly in normal use, and ALWAYS when trying to run Serious Sam 2. I’m very certain it’s not the game, as regular Windows use causes lock-ups. It must be power or memory… as the video card starts to “work”, it freezes. Maybe the PSU just isn’t pushing enough juice to the card? ARGH!

Michelle and I saw The Two Towers tonight… it was fantastic!

Okay, my best overclock has been 9.5x204…. for now, I’m leaving it at 9.5x200, as I got higher 3DMark scores with it.

I have also done a real good job with my new glowire, for now. I love it.

I am getting some absolutely CRAZY results doing these 3DMark2001SE tests.

I’ve been running these tests all day. So now, finally, at 9.5x200 (4-2-2-2), I get my highest score.

The computer show was dirty as hell. I didn’t want to break it to Chris and Scott, because I wanted them to experience it for themselves. We had a joke going that most people that go to computer shows wear trenchcoats and high-tops. Well, we saw a guy with a black pleather trenchcoat with brown workboots. It was a riot!!! The only good thing about the show was that I got some good web development books, 3 for $50.

So, I got the XP1800+, put it in, ran my first 3DMark2001SE at 10x180 and I almost bested my highest score that I had with the XP2000+, and this was at a much lower FSB.

So, now, I get this thing to do a 3DMark at 10x195, 1950MHz… get this, the damn thing is coming in lower by almost 400-500 points when compared to when it was running at 1800MHz. Could there be a point where the FSB is actually hurting my score? Do I need to just keep it at 180 and tweak the multiplier? This is madness!!!!

Getting ready to go to the local computer show. Been a while. Maybe I can find a nice case. I’m kind of getting sick of the Fong Kai 320.

I got my XP1800+ today. AIUGA stepping, factory unlocked! I thought it would be, but I’m happy that it’s verified. Also, this TBred is kind of neat, as the core is smaller than my Palomino’s, and the core doesn’t have writing on it anymore. Instead, they have a black rectangular bar that has all the information on it. Apparently, it’s a week 49 2002 chip, if I’m reading the 0249 properly.

The holiday party at the shop was a damn good time this afternoon. Good eating, drinking, and socializing!

Oh yeah, we’re going to local computer shows tomorrow. Haven’t been to one of those in years. Should be fun. Me, Chris, Scott, and hopefully Dino will come.

Finally launched the new Vintage King Audio site: VKA. Looking good, and they love it.

On to more important things. I should be getting my XP1800+ today. I have learned that DirectX9 is out today, so I’m downloading it now from M$FT.

I still can’t get my memory to run any better than at 3-3-3-2 settings with my Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. I’m hoping someone at nForcersHQ forums will let me know what I’m doing wrong.

Today I’m off to a holiday party at my sister-in-law’s work. Should be a good time. It’s a “shop” environment, so I bet we’ll have lots of fun. I’ve never been to a holiday party at a shop. I’m excited.

Hoping to see LOTR: The Two Towers sometime soon. I also want to see that Schmidt movie with Jack Nicholson.

Oh yeah, got HDTV from Comcast the other day. It kicks ass!!! I was all ready to watch my Thursday night NBC shows last night, and they were all reruns, and to top it off, the rerun of ER wasn’t even in true HIGH DEF!!! It was from last year though, so maybe that’s why. Anyway, enjoy your weekend, kiddies.

Yesterday was a busy day. I worked at Vintage King all day, updating their site as we prepare for a launch, hopefully today!

I swung by Scott’s after work and unlocked his XP1600+. Let me tell you. I don’t know what it is, but his rig was able to come within 300 3DMarks of my score, and at 16 MHz LESS FSB, and even 50+ less on the CPU MHz. Good for him!!! However, I couldn’t let that rest, and I updated my drivers this morning to 41.09, lowered my desktop resolution to 1024x768 and lowered the refresh rate to 60Hz. I was able to break 14,000 3DMarks finally!!! My 3DMark 2001SE Score.

Also last night, I went by Kenny’s to upgrade his computer from an Athlon 500 (running at 600 with the help of a golden finger tool) to an Athlon XP1600+. He also went from a Voodoo3 3000 to a GF4 Ti4200. I tried Serious Sam 2 on his box, but it kept freezing up. I believe the 250W power supply is suspect. Kind of sucks, as I wanted him to see what kind of games he’ll be able to play now. Oh well. We’ll get him squared away. I also sold him a 40GB IBM Deskstart 60GXP I had laying around…so that was nice, for both of us.

Tonight, I realized that I can change my Direct3D settings to be “best performance” instead of “best image quality”. Doing this, I was able to get my 3DMark score up to 13,933. Just a chin hair away from 14,000… my first main goal. Tried upping the video clock from 330 to 335, no eh eh… I did manage to change my ram timing from 3-3-3-2 to 3-3-2-2 (I think).

Been working diligently getting product photos and information up for Vintage King Audio. Their site sure is getting somewhere over the past few months. I can’t wait until it’s done though, so I can rest… or will I miss it?

The other night, I overclocked the BeJesus out of my system. I am currently running stable at 9.5x194 (1844). I ran it through 10 cycles of the Sanda Burn-in wizard. It’s nice to finally have a motherboard that 1) Takes high speed ram (PC3200), 2) Has a locked PCI bus (33MHz), 3) Has most everything onboard, except for video. I have been having quite a good time with it lately, as I LOVE to push it, and LOVE to run benchmarks. I was able to accomplish this by “unlocking” my Athlon XP 2000+. I got the kit from www.highspeedpc.com. What this does is allow me to run my CPU at other multipliers instead of its 12.5 that it is set at. I’m thinking that my XP2000+ sucks for overclocking, as I’m not even getting a 200MHz overclock (stable) with it. Kind of pisses me off.

Off to help Michelle with dinner. I set up the marinade earlier.

Okay. Changed directory to blog. www.computerninja.com/blog

I am trying different configs for this. I moved it to the weblog dir, as I didn’t want it in my root directory.

I helped a friend install phpBB 2.0.3 today. She loves it! Besides that, I’m working on a client site!!