A31 - upgrade to the latest ATI 6.4 (desktop) drivers

[vital-analitix]

Just found an interesting link on another website. This provides a little tool to allow you to install the latest 6.4 ATI drivers that were destined for the desktop.

Performance is better. (less flicker on my screen, somewhere else a 92 % memory bandwidth was reported )

Just follow the instructions and download the drivers from www.ATI.com

http://www.driverheaven.net/patje/

Enjoy

Marinus

[vital-analitix]

Update:

I have reverted back to the original IBM drivers again. Although I had the perception of less screen flicker and some throughput figures with some benchmarking tools showed an improvement an issue showed up.

After I had installed the drivers and made sure everything worked OK I noticed the next day some strange high pitched sounds with certain screen setups. Reverted back - they were gone. Something may be pushing the limits too much and I do not want to damage the GPU.

[zone]

vital-analitix, thanks for sharing your observations,

well, I was observing ATI drivers but... being part lazy (dont [explitive deleted, DO NOT CURSE!, it is unbecoming and reveals a lack of vocabulary] well performing setup)and being part conservative (sayin' [and while i am here, how much trouble is it to use "saying" rather than "sayin'"..?] IBM should know best for any of systems designed *in house* till what point they may kick GPU)... saying that Im glad to be lazy'n'conservative when it comes on gfx subsytem after reading your post.

would be great if we have more feviews here from users of alternative (non IBM) gfx drivers, ATI, Omega etc.

[vital-analitix]

Zone,

glad that my update was useful to someone.

Don't fix which ain't broke they'll say.

It's also my motto, unfortunately I am running into performance issues with my "work" and the setup is barely fast enough to keep up with the datastream. I have a very annoying screenflicker when the machine is running flat out and every little improvement helps.

This is not a gaming machine and reliability goes above anything else. Downtime in the middle of my "work" can have some big $$$ penalties.

When I started to observe the sounds I felt something was not right and then it was a matter of reverting the backups to see where it was gone. Then from the notes that I keep (I put in a small text file every single change I make to the system, an old system administrators / DBA habit) it is easily to figure out which change had a particular effect.

One thing I like a lot (and what I found on this board, thanks to A31pguy) is the Intel Application Accelerator. I do some regular exports of a database and about 100 M datapoints under the 1.8 Ghz B0 step CPU used to take around 27 minutes. With the 2.6 Ghz (D1 stepping) and Intel Application Accelerator installed it now takes 4 min 32 seconds!

Edit: cannot really work out why the 2.2 Ghz C1 stepping CPU takes around 7 minutes. Am suspecting the secret lies in the different microcode as indicated by the different stepping, must be some pre-fetch logic there at work. Whatever it is, it was welcome.

I found references on the web on this particular CPU series that were a very interesting read. There was some project going on trying to figure out how to enable the "hidden" hyper threading in the Mobile Pentium 4-m processors. Some of the processors apperently have it built in, there is mentioning from C0 step onwards on CPU's of 2 Ghz and above. I don't know but seeing the performance increase due to the IAA may well mean that this is true. It is s similar performance increase I saw on my son's PC when I enabled in the BIOS hyperthreading on his PC (was turned off....)

However the difference between going from 1.8 to 2.2 Ghz is bigger than from 2.2 to 2.6 Ghz. My observation is that with the 2.6 Ghz I am starting to run into I/O bandwidth problems (memory?, not HD, did test with even faster HD and no difference in my case. More memory deteriorated the performance, optimal is 378 - 640 Mb here).

But I am happy to have found the 2.6 (new locally and at a reasonable costs) and moving the 2.2 to my backup machine. No regrets.

(Having been trained in electronics an very familiar with Quality Assurance and antistatic procedures I never trust electronics that have been handled by others (secondhand). Not when there are big $$$ on the line. This is why I am not too worried about the lesser performance increase of 2.2 => 2.6 than of going from 1.8 => 2.2. )

Hope this helps

Marinus