Second Dual Core System!
It’s been a while since my last blog so this one is due. I bought a new laptop a while ago and made sure I got a dual core and I really do notice a difference in speed. So, after doing some research, I realized that I could get a dual core CPU for one of my other systems as it had a socket 939 motherboard for a measly $70 Cdn. With two GBs of ram already in this system and two spare ram slots remaining, this system will last quite a while with a processor upgrade. The CPU I ended up going with was an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800 which I have read is equivalent to two AMD Athlon 64 3200 chips which is exactly what I had in that board previously.
It is faster, but it was a recent install so I have further testing to do to see how much faster it is. I have it quite optimized though running Arch Linux with a custom 64 bit kernel on their 64 bit OS. I am running Gnome on the desktop and have beryl enabled which runs seamlessly. Switching workspaces appears better than instantaneous if there is such a thing.
The installation went smoothly other than one thing which was my board reverting back to using the onboard video somehow. Also, I have a PCI-e Nvidia card in this box which I had to remove after setting up the bios as my 22″ LCD didn’t seem to detect the signal from the DVI connection. So, I powered off and removed the PCI-e card, connected to the onboard vga port and powered on, changed the bios setting, powered the system off, then re-inserted the PCI-e card, plugged the DVI cable into the PCI-e card, then powered back on and it worked. It was a bit of a hassle and unexpected, but I figured it out.
Linux VS. Windows…
Linux — Prior to installing the new CPU, I recompiled my Linux kernel with the latest version, ensuring I had the correct options for the new CPU in place and downloaded the new Nvidia driver so it was ready to install when I booted back into my system. My kernel booted up fine and I was able to install the Nvidia driver without issue. I would say this took about 10 minutes including the kernel compile and driver install. (The Ubuntu 64 and FC7 64 installs on the same box booted up as if nothing was changed due to using a stock kernel and accompanying Nvidia driver distro package).
Windows — It boots up to the login screen (does not show my username) and just sits there. It will more than likely require a reinstall or I may just ditch it altogether as it is only on that machine should I need to do work for a customer who uses proprietary software. Thanks Microsoft, what versatility!