THECARMACK23
03-02-2003, 10:16 AM
DISCLAIMER: Neither I or the author of the article linked below is responsible for any problems you may have tweaking your settings. Please read the article several times to become familiar with the tweaking programs' functions. I have only been able to try this on my 8887. It stands to reason the 5660 and 8886 will also benefit since they are based on the 845 chipset too. I had no problems tweaking my machine but since hardware is never exactly alike your results can and/or will vary. Remember I am NOT forcing you to do any of this. If you are not comfortable with the risks of adjusting settings that are not normally found in the Sager bios then hit the "back" button on your browser and forget you ever saw this. *Adam didn't want me to post this information until I verified MY machine was stable. Well, I ran Prime95 and 3dmark overnight so I'm happy with that.*
:banana: With that out of the way here is the article that explains what to do... I suggest you print it for quicker reference.
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Guides/intel845d/index.html
First let me say that the performance benefits I achieved were SMALL. I consider it more of a victory to gain access to settings that SHOULD be in the bios anyway. Listed below are benchmarks I ran. Since I only ran synthetic benchmarks it's possible regular applications could show a larger benefit. FYI to obtain a 256 meg agp aperture you need to set REGISTER B4 to all zeroes. If you don't know what I mean read the article again.
*Benchmarks were each run twice to make sure the score was accurate
8887 128mb M9 -latest driver from Sager
2.4 GHZ P4
768 meg memory (256 Sager, 512 Crucial)
Win XP SP 1
memory timings shown are represented in this order CAS-TRCD-RAS-TRAS
Sandra 2002 memory scores
*1845
*1845 2-2-2-5
1825
1825 2.5-3-3-7 (default)
7146 3dmark 2001 265-400 overclocked M9 -optimal performance ati driver setting- no vsync 2.5-3-3-7 64 meg aperture (default)
7164 3dmark 2001 265-400 overclocked M9 -optimal performance ati driver setting- no vsync 2.5-3-3-7 128 meg aperture*
7164 3dmark 2001 265-400 overclocked M9 -optimal performance ati driver setting- no vsync 2.5-3-3-7 256 meg aperture*
*7239 3dmark 2001 265-400 overclocked M9-optimalperformance ati driver setting- no vsync 2-2-2-5 256 meg aperture*
A small boost for sure. If you scroll through each register there are other settings that are not explained in the article. I'll do some more digging in the Intel chipset info section to see what else can be changed. The info can be found through this link under product information...
http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/845e/
The idea here is to get performance that you were not meant to have by the manufacturer. On one hand I can understand that Sager doesn't want the inexperienced newbie blowing up their $2000-$3000 machine. On the other it's incredibly frustrating to not be able to change a simple memory timing. I had been used to doing that for years so it was impossible for me not to pursue a solution.
I hope you at least learned something from this. Please post suggestions or anything new you might find that could help get us even more performance! :)
Thanks for your time.
:banana: With that out of the way here is the article that explains what to do... I suggest you print it for quicker reference.
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Guides/intel845d/index.html
First let me say that the performance benefits I achieved were SMALL. I consider it more of a victory to gain access to settings that SHOULD be in the bios anyway. Listed below are benchmarks I ran. Since I only ran synthetic benchmarks it's possible regular applications could show a larger benefit. FYI to obtain a 256 meg agp aperture you need to set REGISTER B4 to all zeroes. If you don't know what I mean read the article again.
*Benchmarks were each run twice to make sure the score was accurate
8887 128mb M9 -latest driver from Sager
2.4 GHZ P4
768 meg memory (256 Sager, 512 Crucial)
Win XP SP 1
memory timings shown are represented in this order CAS-TRCD-RAS-TRAS
Sandra 2002 memory scores
*1845
*1845 2-2-2-5
1825
1825 2.5-3-3-7 (default)
7146 3dmark 2001 265-400 overclocked M9 -optimal performance ati driver setting- no vsync 2.5-3-3-7 64 meg aperture (default)
7164 3dmark 2001 265-400 overclocked M9 -optimal performance ati driver setting- no vsync 2.5-3-3-7 128 meg aperture*
7164 3dmark 2001 265-400 overclocked M9 -optimal performance ati driver setting- no vsync 2.5-3-3-7 256 meg aperture*
*7239 3dmark 2001 265-400 overclocked M9-optimalperformance ati driver setting- no vsync 2-2-2-5 256 meg aperture*
A small boost for sure. If you scroll through each register there are other settings that are not explained in the article. I'll do some more digging in the Intel chipset info section to see what else can be changed. The info can be found through this link under product information...
http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/845e/
The idea here is to get performance that you were not meant to have by the manufacturer. On one hand I can understand that Sager doesn't want the inexperienced newbie blowing up their $2000-$3000 machine. On the other it's incredibly frustrating to not be able to change a simple memory timing. I had been used to doing that for years so it was impossible for me not to pursue a solution.
I hope you at least learned something from this. Please post suggestions or anything new you might find that could help get us even more performance! :)
Thanks for your time.