insight % tips and tric s

t the bugs and flaws

10 POWER TIPS FOR Willamette or North-

INTEL-BASED SYSTEMS y crop up. Newer BIOS wood can also mean signif8 While the newer NorthThe right installation will pave the way for erformance boosts. wood Pentium 4 processors trouble-free operation and let you harness the built around the 0.13-micron

perThread or ?

fabrication process are more full potential of your PC. Keep in mind the not Int process technol

popular than their older 0.18following tips while buying and installing an el s new 3.06 GHz micron Willamette counteror now incorporates a ogy called HyperIntel-based processor parts, the latter is still available in the mar et. The Willamette

1 Keeping your cool just a dab too much thermal , which enables the processors draw more power

Since processors are con- paste and it will ooze out. Also process or to perform far better and therefore generate more tinuously stressing on ma e sure there are no air nning multiple appliheat. Also, the Northwood faster speeds, cooling becomes bubbles. simultaneously. Howprocessors integrate twice the an important issue gift your s comes at a price and amount of L2 cache (512 KB) processor a rated heatsin and 3 Power to run uld opt for it only if as compared to 256 KB intecooling fan combination. Due to additional power d the high performgrated by the Willamettes. Most processors come with r executing multiple requirements, all Pentium when ru cations ever, thi you sho you nee ance fo tas s. confirm

in tow, but you may require a +12 V rail to run correctly. if your motherboard Intel supplies drivers for

the heatsin and cooling fan 4 processors need the extra You will also need to 9 Special drivers

iron ou that ma updates icant p

6 To Hy

Threading

better cooling solution, espe- Therefore, ma e sure the s HyperThreading. the new 800-series cially in the case of the Pen- power supply for your new chipsets (including the 845, tium 4 processors. processor has the necessary stion of memory 845-DDR and 850 chipsets) current scenario four-pin +12 V connector that called the Intel Application

support

2 How much thermal goes into the ATX12V conneces users the choice of Accelerator driver another paste? R and RDRAM tor on your motherboard fancy name for the UDMA

If your heatsin is covboth your power supply and in a Pentium 4drivers. These increase the ered by thermal tape, you motherboard should support ystem. DDR memory performance of your IDE don't need to apply any ther- this connector. high data transfer devices quite significantly. 10 mal paste. Otherwise, apply th and is priced They offer better boot times han RDRAM. HowevAM's higher data rate ma es it ideally to demanding applicauch as gaming, CAD ng and graphicsve, texture-heavy appns. Also, RDRAM needs 10 ma e you a few thousand Application sup4 Go for quality and also surpass the 137 GB Don't s imp on the limitation of the IDE drives in motherboard a highthe native Widows drivers. quality motherboard may

rupees poorer, but will guar- modelli port for special antee far greater stability intensi instruction sets licatio

and support for hardware, Intel processors have special

chipset and BIOS. You ll also to be ins talled in pairs, unli e instruction sets such as SSE2 or SDRAM this

get more features such as that help deliver better permore overcloc ing options

7 A que The giv SDRAM, DD memory based s offers bandwid lower t er, RDR transfer suited tions s

the DDR needs t

o be ept in mind uying memory modhese three types of s cannot be used on e system, therefore, your camp with care will not be able to

formance with certain types and integrated peripherals. of data. Ensure that you loo out for applications that sup5 BIOS updates port these special instruction Ma e sure you buy a sets when using a P4 procesmotherboard that offers sor. In some cases, you might regular BIOS and driver need to install specific memorie the sam choose as you change yo while b ules. T

The Pentium 4 s Thermal Heat updates on the company Web ur memory type patches that let these appli-

Spreader protects and site. This spells great support later w ithout also changing cations use the special dissapates heat from its core for newer hardware and helps herboard. instruction sets. the mot

98 FEBRUARY 2003