My G4 (OS 10.5.8) is gradually going slower (getting a lot of rainbow balls) and finally freezes.

My G4 (OS 10.5.8) keeps going slower and slower after boot-up and eventually start getting beach balls after every action, even scrolling until it finally freezes. The CPU is constantly grinding.

Very Important, how much Free Space is on your Hard Drive first of all? Click on the Macintosh HD on the Desktop, then do a Get Info on it.
At the Apple Icon at top left>About this Mac.
Then click on More Info>Hardware and report this upto *but not including the Serial#*...
Hardware Overview:
Machine Name: Power Mac G5 Quad
Machine Model: PowerMac11,2
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (1.1)
Number Of CPUs: 4
CPU Speed: 2.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 10 GB
Bus Speed: 1.25 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.2.7f1
Open Activity Monitor in Applications>Utilities, select All Processes & sort on CPU%, any indications there?
How much RAM & free space do you have also, click on the Memory & Disk Usage Tabs.
In the Memory tab, are there a lot of Pageouts?

Similar Messages

Can't update, do not have permissions

First off, cards on table, I am the sort of lazy person who just wants to switch on my computer and start using Photoshop or my other applications, I have no real interest in the background stuff (at which point I begin to display luddite tendencies)
Recently my old imac ceased to work and, given its age, didn't bother with a repair option. I bought a new imac and asked the shop to remove the hard drive from the old one as indications were that it was OK. While waiting for this I set up the new mac as I didn't want delay in access to emails and the internet so did not use Setup Assistant. On receiving the hard drive I used Migration to transfer my stuff.
At one point in this process a message flashed up, I can't remember the exact wording, but something about not being able to transfer some items as it had an identical account name as the account on the machine I was transferring to. Without thinking of any ramifications I entered a new name and the transfer continued. Some applications appeared on my new machine in a folder assigned to this 'phoney' name but I was able to transfer and activate them using my 'real' account password.
Everything has been working well until I just tried to install an update to one application. On dragging to install I get a message stating I do not have permission to do so. Going to Get Info I discovered that read and write permissions are held by the 'phoney' name I created for migration. Further checks show this applies to some, but not all, of the applications I transferred. Looking at system preferences I see that under 'other accounts' the 'phoney' name is listed (as admin).
Am I correct in thinking that I could install the upgrade by either logging in as the 'phoney' name, or, alternatively, staying logged in as me and trashing the old version of the application before installing the upgrade. (Would this work for all other upgrades for any other applications that 'phoney' has permissions for, I've never understood if an upgrade is always a complete new clean installation or the installation of small alterations to an existing programme) If this method would work would it gradually put 'phoney' out of the system.
Finally (and apologies for this rambling post but as I stated I am in territory I don't fully understand and would prefer in an ideal world not have to bother about – same with my car oil, water and tyre pressure are about my limit of interest) ) is their a simple solution to changing all the permissions over to me and then deleting 'phoney'.
Thanks

If you are dragging and dropping a new application that replaces the old one, then what you can do is first delete the old version, which will require your admin password, and then drag the new version into the Applications folder.
As you say you don't understand if it is changes or full replacement, that would be really important to know right now. However, if you download the update and it is one which to drag from the install disk into Applications, then it is replacing the whole thing. My above advice should fix that case.
If the Application is modifying itself, then you'd need to change the permissions on the app.
My suggestion would be to download [BatChmod|http://www.macchampion.com/arbysoft/BatchMod/Welcome.html] and set the permissions that way. While most apps you drag and drop install get the name of the person who dropped them, you can use root:admin as the owner:group. What you want is for the owner to have read, write, execute permissions, and group and others (everyone) to have read and execute. You also want to apply to enclosed and files.
You can drag the app to the BatChmod interface and it will show you the permissions and owner. What you want to see is
owner: group: everyone
root (or your real user name) admin
R W X R X R X

IBook Mac OS 10.3.9 not booting, even crashing in single-user mode

Yeah so about 2 weeks ago my iBook started crashing, then wouldn't properly re-boot. Gradually, it would start crashing after being on for less and less time until now it gets just past the apple symbol and then freezes on a blue screen.
I've been using the online help but now it's even freezing during single-user mode, meaning i can't even perform fcsk!! I can't even boot up on the Mac OS X CD to re-install the OS. Anyone got any idea what's wrong or what I can do? Thanks, Rob

What, exactly, is preventing you from starting up from the Mac OS X install disk?
Have you added any RAM yourself? You might try taking it out to see if that helps. You might also try to run the Apple Hardware Test. Depending on which bundle of install disks you got, it may be on the Mac OS X install disk or it may be a separate CD of it's own. It should be marked "AHT" and a version number on the disk. Put that disk in the drive, restart and hold down on the "option" key. This will give you a Startup Manager that should allow you to select the hardware test and continue (click the right arrow to continue). If you can't even get that far, then you probably have a hardware failure and you'll need to take your iBook in for service. What is your location?
-Doug

Using Refine edge with Quick Selection......

I think I'm doing something wrong, because I can do a quick selection, but when I hit the "Refine Edge" button and make a change to the selection, my change doesn't "take"...
I have an image, one layer (background), absolutely normal, boring image (for example, a white swan sitting in the blue water). I go in with Quick Select and select PART OF
the swan. I have areas that aren't selected, and areas that are selected and shouldn't be. So, I need to refine my selection. I subtract and add bits of selection with the
Quick Select tool, but leave a big piece of the swan's body NOT selected, and a bit of water SELECTED. So, I need to go in with a tool and refine the edge of my selection...
SO, I hit "Refine Edge" from the tool bar and select "Overlay" for my view mode. I can now see what's selected, and know what I'd like to change. And, I have a red overlay
so I have a visual guide to changing things....
Go to the "Refine Radius Tool" and paint over an area I want ADDED to my selection (a piece of swan immediately adjacent to my original selection)... It runs red, like I'd expect.
I release the mouse and a second later, the red goes away, but the selection has NOT been changed. I've tried this directly from the Quick Select tool. I've double-clicked the
background layer and changed it so it's not background any more - made no difference. I've created a layer mask on the no-longer background layer (the mask contains my
Quick Selection just fine). I've then used the Mask panel to specify "Mask Edge" and again tried the "Refine Radius Tool" to add an area to my selection. Again, it turns red
while selecting, then stops being red when I let go, and the area I selected is NOT added to the selection...
I watched a presentation by a Photoshop person who DEMONSTRATED exactly what I'm doing, and it worked. I looked at Martin Evening's CS5 book, and as near as I can tell,
I did exactly what he described... He got a selection, added to the selection, and it worked fine...
I figure I've got something configured wrong, or something else goofed up. What am I missing here?

It's not my intention (intent?) to beat up on the "Refine Edge". I figured when I couldn't get the same pristine results as all the demos that I was doing something wrong, and kept watching more people doing this 'cause I figured I was doing something dumb...
Mostly, I've been trying this on different images over the last couple weeks just to see if I could figure out how to get it to work.
From the responses in here I suspect I'm doing it correctly, but the images I'm trying it on just don't lend themselves to perfect edges without some additional work..... The Quick Select and a bit of edge cleanup is still faster than the "good old days", so its definitely a step forward.
As far as the swans, yes, no matter what I did, I was getting a lot of extraneous selections and wonky edges and stuff. One of these days I'll try pulling an eagle or a great egret out of a clear sky and see how that goes. I suspect it'll work a lot better...
I only fiddled with the rodeo image 'cause I figured it was "like" hair. But my background is pretty busy. With a little additional work I DID get a very, very good selection, and was able to soften the background, and do a gradient so the ground under the horse is sharp, gradually blurring as it moves to the grandstands...
Thanks for all the replies...

Cant download anything on U530 touch ultrabook

Well i bough this laptop 2 days ago, I was so excited about it until.. i tried to download a SONG, and I couldnt. Then i tried downloading sevral games and programs, and it wouldnt download. My download starts at 560 kb/s and it gradually goes lower till it reaches 0 b/s and ruins the download. I though it was a problem with the internet provider, but I tried with other WIFI connections, and the problem is still there. Please is there any solution? A laptop that cant download anything from internet shouldnt be called a laptop

Hi Raufhon1,
Welcome to Lenovo Community Forums!
I’m sorry to hear that download speed is automatically decreasing in your U530 Laptop, I suggest you to re-install the relevant Wired/Wireless drivers. If the issue occurs while using Wireless, please check the issue connecting with wired connection and even if the issue persists, Re-install the browser in the computer and let me know the findings.
Hope to hear back soon
Best Regards
Shiva Kumar
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Ps CC: Quick Mask is unresponsive after using Refine Edge?

Anyone know why Quick Mask is unresponsive after I've used "Refine Edge"
It works fine if I just make a simple selection first.

It's not my intention (intent?) to beat up on the "Refine Edge". I figured when I couldn't get the same pristine results as all the demos that I was doing something wrong, and kept watching more people doing this 'cause I figured I was doing something dumb...
Mostly, I've been trying this on different images over the last couple weeks just to see if I could figure out how to get it to work.
From the responses in here I suspect I'm doing it correctly, but the images I'm trying it on just don't lend themselves to perfect edges without some additional work..... The Quick Select and a bit of edge cleanup is still faster than the "good old days", so its definitely a step forward.
As far as the swans, yes, no matter what I did, I was getting a lot of extraneous selections and wonky edges and stuff. One of these days I'll try pulling an eagle or a great egret out of a clear sky and see how that goes. I suspect it'll work a lot better...
I only fiddled with the rodeo image 'cause I figured it was "like" hair. But my background is pretty busy. With a little additional work I DID get a very, very good selection, and was able to soften the background, and do a gradient so the ground under the horse is sharp, gradually blurring as it moves to the grandstands...
Thanks for all the replies...

Powermac G5 turns off intermittently, have to unplug to restart.

Hello!
Ok where do I start... (This is gonna be a big one!)
I purchased a powermac G5 from ebay to use as a file server and it seems to have all kinds of things wrong with it.
First off it had 4X 256 RAM installed, it appears that one set of ram doesnt work. I know this because on system profiler it showed two of the banks to be empty, I re-seated them in different configurations and in one config the power light blinked 3 times and I got no other response. I looked this up and it said on apple site that this meant the ram was incompatible, so I got rid of it and inserted the other 2 sticks of ram. (then it turned on fine)
For what its worth, the faulty ram was Kingston and the not so faulty* ram was Samsung.
* That ram may be faulty too... Any way of finding out?
** I dont have the restore disks for my G5, only leopard retail)
The mac shipped with tiger, I didnt know the admin password (2nd hand macs..) So I tried using my leopard disk to reset the password on the tiger system.
I also reset the root password which I later found out you are not supposed to do.
I fired it back up into tiger and was presented with a log in screen, my new password didnt work!
I found something about booting into a terminal I believe this was by holding command S on startup and I typed in the following:
mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
shutdown -h now
It said in the forum where I got this that it would create a new admin from which I could delete the old account. That didn't work.
Instead after I did this it booted up to a blue screen and the fans gradually started to get very, very loud!
Rinsed and repeated, tried several different options like resetting PRAM and resetting NVram by going into open firmware etc, no joy.
I popped in my leopard CD and tried to erase and install the OS to leopard (it is a retail version) Before this I did a disk check and repaired permissions / disk, everything.
The first 3 times I tried to install leopard it crashed during the install.... it just went off, and I had to unplug the mac before it would turn on.
Pressing the power button with out unplugging first causes the light to come on whilst the button is pressed, but no other activity.
I tried looking all around for a motherboard/logic board light, couldn't see one, so I assumed it could still be faulty ram... I have read that the G5 is very fussy.
On my 4th attempt at installing leopard I only installed the OS, not the extra languages or the print drivers and it seemed to complete the install process ok.
I set up the mac with my apple ID
(I was pretty chuffed at this point)
So after about 6 mins of usage, the power cut out AGAIN! With the same symptoms as before. It needed an unplug before it fired up again.
As it stands now, it boots into leopard fine, (even though it only has 512K or ram) and it is stable for intermittent periods of time.
I have read that it could still be the ram or the PRAM battery, but before I started buying a plethora of mac inventory I would like to hear some experts on the situation.
Any ideas on how to fix this?
Specs are:
Powermac G5 1.6Ghz Single processor
512K Ram
80G HDD
Ethernet
Added 3rd party Bluetooth Module <(this was disconnected until I got it to boot into leopard, as was the ethernet)
If anyone actually takes the time to read all of this, then actually responds you deserve a medal!
Thanks in advance,
James
(it just cut out literally right now as I finished typing!!! grrrr)

***UPDATE***
So I have been doing further research and came across this really useful, yet unformatted web page listing the exact problem I have.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/Dual_Core_G5_Shutdowns.html
It makes for an interesting read for anyone owning a G5 who is experiencing random shutdowns, or switch offs!
From all the discussion on that page I found out that there is a reduced performance mode under energy saver preferences, so I have checked that and for most people that seems to have done the trick. I however have yet to find out!
Also in that discussion an apple engineer apparently said that the G5 can try to draw more power than is available causing an immediate shutdown. sounds weird.
Ok, one more thing....
My system log shows this very often:
--last message was repeated 29 times
power-mac-g5 kernel [0]: Fan Failure!
This seems to repeat every 30 seconds.
Forgive me for sounding moronic, but can anyone tell me what this means?
you see.... it sounds obvious, but I have shined a light into the mac and I can see all the fans going round. the one in the front and the 2 at the back. Also my istat pro widget shows all the fans at some sort of speed, and some vary in accordance to processor heat, as one would expect.
I seem to be getting to the route of this problem... maybe!
I have copied this from another thread (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2806982?start=15&tstart=0)
I thought I better had paste it in here for others looking to find an answer! ... the quest is ongoing for now. If you link over to that other thread tho its interesting and all relevant for people with this problem!

Noticed a gradual shading on my iPhone

I notice that on a white background my iPhone gradually goes to a very light off white color. Hardly noticeable. Also the exact opposite of a dead pixel, a slightly brighter area.
Will Apple replace the iPhone with this problem?

well, they can send you a temporary phone while yours is being serviced.

Images scrolling across screen gradually increasing in speed?

Any way to do this?
I have a photo mosaic and i have each individual image used to make it up.
I want to make a video clip of the images gradually increasing in speed across the screen eventually forming the final image.
thanks.

So theres no way to make the images scroll across the screen then? at all?...
Seems like imovie can't do anything...just want some images scrolling across the screen.
Im guessing i will have to use something more high tech like final cut?

WRT54GS v.7 - Internet browsing gradually slows down when assigned an IP address.

After assigning an IP address to a PC connected via wire to WRT54GS v.7, internet browsing gradually goes to a crawl and practically stop working. When the address is assigned by DHCP, there are no issues.
Is this a known issue with the router? Are there any pitfalls to avoid when assigning an IP address with WRT54GS v.7? Any pointers on this is greatly appreciated!
Message Edited by wootman on 03-13-2009 08:03 PM
Message Edited by wootman on 03-13-2009 08:04 PM

Browsing should not go down if you assign static/manual ip address on your router...If it is working fine with the DHCP assigned IP Address i would suggest you stay with the DHCP assigned address...

1 hour clip in time-line goes gradually out of sync

Hello,
I captured a one hour mini-DV tape to a G4 Powerbook as one clip in FCP 4.5. As it plays in the timeline, it gradually goes out of sync and eventually goes way out of sync. Why would this happen? The tape itself plays fine in the camera and as it was captured it appeared to be in in sync all the way through. Thanks.
Jonathan

Mini dv does not lock the audio to the picture, so over a period of time you'll get sync drift. Check to see that your sequence settings for audio match the camera's. FCP defaults at 48k. if you shot at 32k (12 bit), than on a long capture your audio will drift out of sync. You can create a sequence that is 32k, that might help but it looks like you'll have to move the audio track possibly in sections to get it back into sync.

A rant about C with a question at the end. :P

C is okay. It's just really hard to understand.
So this is my rant about it. It starts out by listing where I've been in terms of programming and then lists my difficulties with C itself.
I discovered C many years ago. I'm not too sure how. All I know is that for many years I've wanted to know what this C thing was all about, but had no way or knowledge of how to. I didn't really know anybody before I got the 'net last year, so asking someone else was out of the question. Plus, I wouldnt've known what question(s) to ask.
As I became more proficient with the whole technology thing, I began to go to the local libraries nearby and use their free internet access to look stuff up. But I didn't get the idea to do any research about C, most likely because I didn't have the mental capacity to plan well and my access was once or twice weekly at best. Plus, the only computer I had at home was 66MHz and ran DOS, and I only knew BASIC around that time which I was comfortable and content with, so wasn't looking for a new language. I think I knew about assembly language but didn't pursue it if I did.
A couple of computer upgrades later, I finally got the 'net at home and began to see the convenience of being able to spontaneously look something up when I wanted to as good, rather than weird. Ideas gradually began to pop into my head that I'd run off and look up, and one day C became one of them. So I did some research on C and finally began to learn what it was: an incomprehensible mess of manually managed memory and low-level trickery. Since I knew a fair bit about assembly language now I decided C was worse than asm (and I had no chance of learning asm back then), and left it at that.
Being the BASIC coder I was (pun intended), I found the syntax and concepts over my head by several miles. But the fascination never died, and kept poking at me again and again. And I just had to keep forgetting about it.
I moved on from QuickBASIC, which I'd been using for just about everything, to FreeBASIC, which was in such a beta state when I tried it, I disliked it enough to move on and discovered PHP.
PHP has been called the BASIC of the 21st century, and I can understand why. There are typically at least 10 ways to do something whether in principle or method, multiple functions do the same or an equivalent task, and overall it just doesn't look like a good language. But beyond all that, PHP made sense to me. As I went along many of the things I expected to perform in a given way performed in said way, which was a huge confidence boost. The model it followed might have been convoluted, but something inside my head "clicked" when I saw PHP, so I liked it, since I could understand it easily.
But recently, I found myself hitting too many walls. I wanted to get into graphical software development, and none of the graphical extensions PHP had available would work for me. PHP-GTK did work but prevented PHP from outputting anything as an Apache module, without throwing a single error anywhere. PHP-QT wouldn't compile on my system. PHP-TK did compile, but both segfaulted when any tk_* function was called and also exhibited the Apache module issue.
So I decided then and there that I needed to switch languages.
The problem was, my current machine happens to be so slow that a GIMP operation that executes in 6 seconds on the lowest generation AMD CPU from 4-5 years ago will execute in 38 seconds on mine. I have no idea why; the machine is, after all, 2.66GHz.
Although PHP is pretty snappy on my system, I don't know how other languages would fare and don't really want to risk the experiment; I want to switch to a language I know will be as fast as, or faster than, PHP. So I decided that a compiled language would have to be it, since I regarded PHP as the fastest language I knew. I was probably wrong, but whatever.
So I set my mind to understanding C. I'd asked around online before, and someone took pity on me and explained the basics of C and I did my best to understand them. This was great for a couple of days, but didn't last all that long unfortunately. So I asked around again, dreading their responses, and with good reason too: most of the tutorials I read often left me boggled and flew over my head at one point or another, which didn't help.
But I got some dreaded tutorial links, and did my best to read them. It took me a couple of weeks to finally convince my brain to understand the point of a language that utilizes variables that doesn't contain any data, but instead references to other variables. I eventually grasped the why, but am still having quite a hard time understanding the how.
So then, after that initial hurdle, I moved onto other topics. Or rather tried to. I quickly discovered that C interconnects some of its issues so deeply that it's hard to learn one thing at a time, move on and learn the next thing - how I best learn. I don't create paths very well by reading information; I create those paths by staying away from information and letting it slowly process in my mind. But to actually remember it in the first place, it needs to make sense, and C doesn't make sense because things are so interconnected and... we come full circle.
To be honest, after about a fortnight of trying to understand pointers, I still don't understand them. I've read what is probably the best the web has to offer about pointers. Has it helped? Not really.
Either the documentation:
- is too terse and I have to slow down, risking losing interest in what I'm reading
- skips over vital points or assumes I know Pascal or some other language
- is hard to understand or is poorly written
- puts segments in the wrong order, so I don't understand everything something might depend on before I reach that something
...and in general I either give up on reading the documentation, give up on C or just cry. I've done the 3rd a few times, the 2nd quite a few times and the 1st pretty much as many times as I've read documentation.
So what are my issues with C?
Let me address the two I can think of right now:
Pointers aren't addressed "simply"; if I declare a pointer to int named x I have to use *x to access what x points to, rather than use *x to get x's location, like one does with non-pointer variables where & is used to get an address. It'd be nice if we used &x to get x's value if x wasn't a pointer and *x to get x's value if x was a pointer, rather than use this convoluted scheme.
Also, I've heard that it's a common misconception that C handles arrays natively. Elsewhere, I've heard that strings are merely arrays of char. I can understand the 2nd, but what do I do with the 1st?
I do understand that if I say printf("%d\n", x[1]) I'm effectively saying x++; printf("%d\n", x), but I don't understand how this fully works. For example, let us consider the following code:
char *filename = "<insert file here>";
int i;
struct stat filebuffer;
int status;
FILE *handle;
handle = fopen(filename, "r");
status = stat(filename, &filebuffer);
char *buffer = malloc(filebuffer.st_size);
for (i = 0; i < filebuffer.st_size; i++) buffer[i] = fgetc(handle);
printf("%s\n", buffer);
You'll of course notice the array notation. Do I understand why if I replace said notation with something to the effect of...
buffer++
buffer = fgetc(handle);
...the program segfaults? No. Likewise, I don't understand why the...
buffer++
*buffer = fgetc(handle);
...in the loop does work, printf("%s"...); causes segfaults and printf("%d"...); does not.
Another thing I found is that declaring a char *, filling it with data, and then using memcpy on said char *, the program works fine, but if I declare for example char x[1] = "hi"; the compiler will shout at me for not allocating enough arrays. Only while writing this did I realize that the 2nd element is for the null byte.
Suffice to say that C confuses me. To bits. Although I have written a 500 line program in it (579 to be exact). All said program does is display a message on the screen via Xlib, but I managed to figure out how to make a word wrapping engine using strsep and how to use XDrawPoint XDrawLine to not only create a nice UI but also let me define various UI "styles" which can be loaded at startup.
Said program uses a very big helping of "if it doesn't work stab it until it does", so not only do I not understand how a lot of it works, it probably wouldn't compile under anything except gcc. Which is from a theory perspective quite a problem, IMHO. Almost every 2nd variable is typecast to this or that type.
So put simply, every tutorial or introduction to C hasn't made a lot of sense to me. Maybe I learn slowly; I'm hoping it's that, because I can't see anything besides assembly language which would be faster than C. I plan to learn asm after I've mastered the very basics of C, but I may end up having to learn the other way around if I expect to get anywhere.
Like I said in the title, I have one actual question in this post. So here it is:
Are there any fun, easy reading tutorials out there that don't visually look like they came out of 1992 and read like http://poignantguide.net/ or http://learnyouahaskell.com/?
-dav7

dav7 wrote:Pointers aren't addressed "simply"; if I declare a pointer to int named x I have to use *x to access what x points to, rather than use *x to get x's location, like one does with non-pointer variables where & is used to get an address. It'd be nice if we used &x to get x's value if x wasn't a pointer and *x to get x's value if x was a pointer, rather than use this convoluted scheme.
Pointer syntax is extremely unfortunate. The best part:
char *a; // It's a pointer.
*a; // It's a character. Good move, guys.
Also, I've heard that it's a common misconception that C handles arrays natively. Elsewhere, I've heard that strings are merely arrays of char. I can understand the 2nd, but what do I do with the 1st?
Insofar as C has arrays, C strings are character arrays. C arrays are just a promise that the system won't mess within a certain set of memory addresses. Array syntax is a concise way to calculate and dereference a specific location in memory, relative to an address that you hope is the beginning of some memory you reserved. array[n] = *(array + n), right? Personally, I would have left out the subscript notation entirely. Regardless, any time you choose to use brackets, you can mentally substitute in an explicit addition and dereference there. You're saying, "Give me the number stored at the memory address I have just calculated, which I know by my science holds something I put there intentionally, and not garbage at all."
One more clarification with regard to pointer arithmetic is necessary: when you add 2 to an int*, the resulting address is actually 2*sizeof(int) bytes after your base address. Same for a double*: 2*sizeof(double).
I do understand that if I say printf("%d\n", x[1]) I'm effectively saying x++; printf("%d\n", x), but I don't understand how this fully works.
It's not the same! First of all, in example #2, you're passing a pointer to an int. In example #1, you're passing an integer, since [] dereferences pointers for you. Any time you use those brackets, it's as if you had typed an asterisk yourself. Second, in example #1 you're not messing with x. In example #2 you're incrementing x by four bytes (the likely size of one integer). Doesn't make a difference in this short example, but if x ever gets used again it will be very significant.
Another thing I found is that declaring a char *, filling it with data, and then using memcpy on said char *, the program works fine, but if I declare for example char x[1] = "hi"; the compiler will shout at me for not allocating enough arrays. Only while writing this did I realize that the 2nd element is for the null byte.
Looks like a counting problem. Arrays are indexed from 0, but sizes are specified from 1 on up. Your "char x[1]" has only index [0]. To hold a two-character string, you'll need at least size three (char x[3]), so that x[0]='h', x[1]='i', x[2]='\0', the null terminator.
Suffice to say that C confuses me. To bits.
Any time you get confused by pointers or arrays (which are the same thing), take a step back and think about what's happening in terms of memory addresses. Draw it out on paper if you think you're making a mistake. In some languages you can ignore low-level details like that and write perfectly fine programs, even though you won't be able to optimize them without knowing how your code maps onto the machine. But in C, everything that looks like a high-level feature is just shorthand for setting a few bytes to different numbers, and the abstraction is so leaky that you can't get by without understanding it. Types are just a way for the compiler to catch dumb mistakes (some people believe this is helpful) and to automate some math, like the pointer arithmetic above. In a running program there are no types, so when you're trying to figure out what a program is actually doing, you need to consider what the types are shorthand for.
If you're having trouble "thinking like a programmer", by which I mean sanity-checking your use of syntax and stepping through a program so you know what it does, you might want to get up to speed in a different language, or by working through a book on algorithms.
Last edited by pauldonnelly (2008-11-03 22:54:12)

Timed loop and CPU usage

Platform is WIN_XP Pro and machine is a P4 at 2.5Ghz with 512 Mb ram.
LV7.1 + PCI 6229
I am using 50ms Timed loop for running a state machine inside it
and also a whole lot of other things like reading / writing
DAQMx functions; file I/O functions and such. As the
project involves a main and sub-panlel set up local variables
could not be elimnated fully and there should be something like 150 of
them. But not all are accessed always - maybe about 15 of them at any
given time depending on the SM staus.
Problem :
Once started the "Finished late" indication is off and
the actual timing alternates between 49 to 52 ms. The CPU
usage is around 25%.
But as time goes by, the system gets unstable : After 15 minutes
or so, the Finished Late indication is always ON and the CPU usage is
gradually tending towards or exceeds 100%.
Obviously the machine control timing now gets affected and things slow
down badly. Closing the application ands restarting repeats the above
cycle.
I am at a loss to understand what is happening ? WIll
breaking down the single Timed Loop to multiple ones help ? WIll
that be an efficient way of parallel threading ?
I can post the code but its quite large and will do it as a last resort.
thanks
Raghunathan
Raghunathan
LV2012 to Automate Hydraulic Test rigs.

Hello,
It sounds like an interesting problem. It would be worth some experimentation to figure out what's going wrong - attempting to decouple major "pieces" of the code would be helpful. For example, you could try breaking your code into multiple loops if that makes sense in your architecture, but perhaps you could even eliminate all but one of the loops to begin with, and see if you can correlate the problem to the code in just one of your loops.
Another concern is that you mention using many local variables. Variable read operations cause new buffer allocations, so if you're passing arrays around that way, you could be hitting a problem of forcing your machine to perform many allocations and deallocations of memory. As arrays grow, this can be a bigger and bigger problem. You can use other techniques for passing data around your block diagram, such as dataflow if possible (just simple wires), or queues where dataflow can't dicatate program flow completely.
Hopefully looking into your code with the above considerations will lead you in the right direction. In your case, removing code so that you can identify which elements are causing the problem should help significantly.
Best Regards,
JLS
Best,
JLS
Sixclear

Neo4 Overclocking Guide

This guide is intended to help those people who have K8N Neo4 (nforce 4 based) boards. It will provide some general background information, but a lot of things will be specific to this particular series of motherboards, and in general it is assumed that the user is at least moderately familiar with the basic concepts of computer hardware and the concepts and risks associated with overclocking. As usual, I am in no way responsible for any losses/damages resulting in whole or in part from the use or misuse of this information, or in short, "overclock at your own risk". It should also be noted that I have the Neo4 Platinum, so things might be slightly different for those of you with the SLI or other variants of this board, though I would strongly suspect that most of the overclocking features will be pretty much the same. Anyways:
The Basics:
Okay, for those of you who are new to the overclocking crowd, here is a quick overview of some of the essential bits of knowledge. A very complete and thorough introduction and general overclocking guide is also available at https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=40413.0 for those of you who need extra help.
CPU Speed - If you don't know what this is, then I wonder what you were hoping to attain by accessing an article about "overclocking". The main aim of overclocking is to increase the CPU speed beyond what it is originally specified to run at. The CPU speed is equivalent to the product of your FSB speed and the CPU multiplier.
FSB - FSB is short for "frontside bus". Historically the FSB essentially controls the speed at which the CPU is able to communicate with the rest of the system, and this is pretty much still true for the Athlon64, although the impact of higher FSB speeds is somewhat diminished, as we will see later. On the Neo4 (and most any other board) the FSB and various multipliers/dividers are responsible for determining the core CPU speed, the memory speed, and the HTT speed. You PCI-E bus is locked, so raising the FSB will not cause your video card and other devices to become unstable. Additionally, there is no need to worry about an overclocked FSB screwing up the built-in SATA/IDE controller (the nforce one at least, I haven't tested the SiL, although it should be fine as well).
HTT - HTT (or sometimes just HT) is short for "HyperTransport Technology". Not to be confused with the HyperThreading feature on Intel's P4 processors, this is the communication link between an Athlon64 processor and the PCI-E bus, as well as everything that hangs off this bus, including the SATA/IDE controllers and so on. Basically, everything except for the RAM talks to the CPU via the HTT bus. The speed of the HTT bus is determined by taking the product of the FSB speed and the HyperTransport multiplier, and it provides an extremely large amount of potential throughput, so much so that once its speed is above about 800 MHz, there's very little to be gained by pushing the HTT speed higher.
Memory Clock - The memory clock refers to the speed at which the RAM modules are operated. The memory clock is determined by taking the FSB and applying a ratio to it. Generally speaking, a higher memory clock is better, although there are tradeoffs in terms of latency if memory timings (CAS latency, etc.) have to be loosened in order to get the memory clock higher, or if a ratio other than 1:1 is used (which will be necessary for high overclocks unless the RAM you are using is of extremely high quality).
PCI-E - The PCI-Express bus. This provides connectivity for your graphics card(s) and other add-in cards. The default PCI-E speed is 100 MHz, and this is locked on the Neo4 so that increasing the FSB does not increase the PCI-E speed. You may manually increase the PCI-E speed if you wish, although this is not at all recommended.
vcore - This is an abbreviated way of referring to the voltage that is applied to the CPU. Generally speaking, a higher vcore will provide stability at higher clock speeds, the tradeoff being additional heat, which may or may not require a more robust cooling solution, depending on how high the vcore is being pushed, the quality of your thermal interface compound, and the thermal characteristics of your individual CPU (some just overclock better than others). For the 90 nm Athlon64, the default vcore is 1.40V. The default is slightly higher for the 130 nm variants.
vmem - Similar to "vcore", this is a shorthand way of referring to the voltage that is currently being applied to the RAM modules. Again, an elevated vmem will generally give you improved stability at higher memory clock speeds. Memory specifications vary from manufacturer to manufacturer in terms of what voltages are supported (for instance, my RAM supports from 2.55V to 2.95V), though the default voltage is usually 2.65V. Vmem, vdimm, and vram all refer to the same thing.
Purchasing:
For anyone who happens to stumble across this guide while in the process of looking for some new hardware, I thought I'd list some of the things that are important considerations when you are buying a system with the intent of overclocking it.
The CPU - For most people, the main point behind their desire to overclock is that they want to be able to get a cheap CPU, and then run it at the same speed (or faster than) of a CPU that costs much more (possibly one for which the price premium has not come down on yet). When choosing which CPU to purchase, there are a few aspects that are especially relevant to overclocking (I'm going to assume that you've already decided to use an AMD CPU, due to the reduced overclockability, thermal problems, and generally poorer performance in most areas despite having higher raw clock speeds that all of Intel's current P4 models offer). Arguably the most important feature (when looking at the current Athlon64's anyways, which are very good CPU's and which you have to use if you want the Neo4) is the manufacturing process used. This denotes the size of the smallest individual feature on the chip (smaller is better). Your two choices right now are 90 nm and 130 nm. The 90 nm carries a fairly small price premium (about $10 for the 3000+/3200+ models), but is *much* more overclockable due to the fact that it operates at a lower voltage (and thus generates less heat), and also uses a more "mature" revision than the 130 nm parts. It is *strongly* recommended that you make sure to get a 90 nm CPU if you are in the market for a new socket 939 Athlon64. The next thing to consider is the default CPU multiplier. This is the one reason why it might be preferable to get a 3200+ over a 3000+ chip (generally speaking, all the 90 nm Athlon64's have about the same upper limit on their overclocked core speeds, until you hit the still very expensive 3800+ and FX variants, so it doesn't make sense to buy a more expensive CPU when you're not getting any extra overclockability out of it). The multipliers on the Athlon64 CPU's are "half-locked", meaning that you can run at the default multiplier (9x for the 3000+, 10x for the 3200+), or any multiplier that is smaller than the default, but you cannot select a multiplier that is higher than your default multiplier. Thus, getting the 3200+ over the 3000+ gives you two extra multipliers (10x and 9.5x) and, all things being equal, will let you achieve a higher clock speed before you are forced to run your RAM asynchronously and pay the latency penalty for doing so, although your max clock speed will likely be about the same as it would if you had gotten the 3000+ instead (so if you have cheap RAM that's not giong to overclock well at all, there's very little reason to go with the 3200+ unless a RAM upgrade is planned in the near future). So, for overclocking purposes my recommendation is a 90 nm Socket 939 Athlon64 3000+, or if you have high performance memory and want to get the most out of it, the 3200+. Both chips are competitively priced and should overclock at least to 2.4 GHz, if not higher, on stock cooling (spend the extra $10 for the non-OEM variant and get the HSF that comes with the chip, it works as well as many more expensive third-party air-based systems and is well worth the extra $10), and of course both offer the attractive feature-set of a socket 939 Athlon64 (dual integrated memory controllers, 64-bit support, dual-core processors on the future upgrade path, etc.).
The Motherboard - The motherboard is an important part of overclocking as well. There's not much point in getting a highly overclockable CPU and then pairing it with a mainboard that was not designed with overclocking in mind, and this is one area where the Neo4 really shines...it has superb overclocking support. Probably the most important feature to have if you indend to overclock your CPU by 20%+ (which should be easily attainable on either of the recommended CPU's above) is that the board have locks that prevent the overclocked FSB from overclocking parts of the system that can't handle the extra speed (like the PCI/PCI-E bus, for example), and long story short, the Neo4 has these (unlike the Via-based K8T Neo, which had no locks and which limited SATA users to overclocks of no more than about 225 MHz because any high than that and the SATA controllers would start to become unstable and kill your HDD data...working locks are a very good and important thing if you are overclocking). The next important feature is to choose a board whose BIOS lets you control the options that are important for overclocking. Again, the Neo4 does excellent here, letting you pick your memory divider, memory timings (and some very obscure ones at that), CPU multiplier, FSB speed, HTT multiplier, CPU voltage, chipset voltage, RAM voltage, and so on without complaint. The MB also has a handly little button on it that will clear the CMOS with a single press (no more screwing around with those annoying jumpers) in case you screw up and the system won't POST. The board also has some extra cooling hardware installed in the form of a passive heatsink near the rear I/O panel, but mostly it's the presence of functional locks and the wide range over overclocking related BIOS features that make it attractive from an overclocking perspective. Aside from this, it has a very nice feature set in general, including 8 SATA ports and 2 IDE channels (for a total of up to 12 drives), two gigabit ethernet adapters, firewire, 7.1 channel audio, and the additional selling point that nvidia's unified drivers tend to be much easier to install than most companies' drivers.
Cooling:
Okay, one last thing to consider before the overclocking starts. Cooling is important in general and especially if you are going to be overclocking. While a 90 nm Athlon64 performs rather admirably from a thermal perspective even when only stock cooling components are used, some simple modifications can drop your idle/load temps by 5+ degrees, which can give you a bit more overclocking headroom and which in any event will make your CPU happier.
Case Fans - The first thing you want to do is make sure your case is adequately ventilated...in general a single 120 mm exhaust fan will do the job just fine. If your case does not support fans this large, use at least two 80 mm fans, either both as exhaust, or one as exhaust and one as intake (if they perform differently, use the more powerful one as the exhaust fan to avoid overpressuring your case). If noise is a concern, the Vantec Stealth (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-999-614&depa=1) series of case fans are affordable, come in a variety of sizes, perform quite well, and do not make much noise at all (though you might want to consider doubling up on the 120 mm's just to be on the safe side). This can lower your CPU temp by about 2 to 5 degrees over a poorly ventilated case configuration using the same CPU fan.
CPU Fan - As I mentioned earlier, the default CPU fan that comes packaged with the retail Athlon64 chips is perfectly acceptable for overclocking use in my opinion. The only complaint I have is that the thermal compound that comes preapplied to the HSF is fairly cheap and does not perform that well. I *very strongly* recommend replacing it with Arctic Silver (http://www.arcticsilver.com/as5.htm) before ever installing it on your CPU. To remove the default thermal pad, you can use a razor blade to get most of it off, and then hot soapy water (or denatured alcohol I've heard) to remove any remaining reside. Be sure that the HSF is free of any cleaning residue and also of any moisture before going to install it on the CPU, and then just apply the Arctic Silver and then complete the HSF installation, and you're good to go. Arctic Silver is relatively cheap (the tube you'll get will do several CPU's, and it doesn't go bad), and by replacing the thermal pad that comes on the stock HSF with it, you should be able to reduce your idle/load times by at least 5 degrees, and with this plus the added reduction you get from having a well ventilated case, you should have enough headroom to pull off some pretty aggressive overclocks.
Overclocking:
Finally, on to the good (and Neo4 specific) stuff. Hopefully at this point you have a freshly built Neo4 based system with an Athlon64 CPU that provides a large headroom for overclocking.
Initial Setup - Okay, the first thing you're going to want to do once the system is built and powered on for the first time is enter the BIOS and configure everything to run at its *default* settings. It's not quite time to overclock yet. First, you want to install Windows, patch it to SP2 if necessary, and then install some benchmarking, stress testing, and monitoring software. SiSoft Sandra is a good benchmark suite, as are FutureMark's PCMark and 3dMark lines of software. For stress testing you can use SuperPi and Prime95 (and Memtest86 if you don't mind the tedium of having to reboot in order to use it, which I do so I don't bother with it). For monitoring you can use SpeedFan or Motherboard Monitor 5. At the very least you should install one application from each category, and configure your monitoring software to launch when Windows loads. One you have all this configured and working right, it's time to start overclocking (don't install too much else, in case of the worst case scenario in which an instability causes your HDD to become corrupted, requiring a reinstall of Windows and all the software, which is admittedly very unlikely, but unfortunately possible if you're unlucky enough). For comparison purposes you may want to run some benchmarks and record the results before you start. Additionally, you may want to install something like ClockGen, which will let you tweak your FSB/CPU coltage on the fly and which can make it easier to zero in on a stable configuration without having to reboot every time an instability is found.
BIOS Layout - Just to save some time, I'll describe where BIOS options that we'll be using are all in one place, so that when I reference something you can just look up here and figure out how to find the appropriate setting in the BIOS. Basically, there are two pages that we're interested in for overclocking (note that the Neo4 manual is actually extremely well done, and describes pretty much all of the BIOS options, so you can use it as well). The first is the "Advanced Chipset Features" page. Going "Advanced Chipset Features" -> "DRAM Configuration" brings up pretty much all of your memory related options (divider, timings, etc.), *except* for the RAM voltage. The RAM voltage option is on the "Cell Menu" page, which happens to also contain all the other settings we are interested in, including FSB speed, HTT multiplier, CPU multiplier, vcore, vmem, chipset voltage, etc.. Basically, if it's not memory related, it's on the "Cell Menu" page.
HTT Speed - As mentioned earlier, your HTT speed pretty much has no performance impact on the system once it gets to 800+ MHz, so the very first thing you can do is select the 4x HTT multiplier in the BIOS. Note that as the HTT speed gets above about 1100 MHz, it will probably start to make the system unstable. Therefore, you should keep track of the product of your FSB setting and your HTT multiplier, and whenever it gets to be above 1100, decrement the HTT multiplier to the next lowest setting. at a 4x multiplier, you should be good up to about 275 MHz on your FSB. Because the HTT's impact on performance is negligible, you do not need to worry about trying to maximize its value during overclocking.
CPU speed - Onve you've reduced your HTT multiplier, it's time to find your max stable core speed. To do this first go to the memory page and select a memclock index of 100 MHz. This will run your RAM it half the FSB speed, and the reason for doing this is to ensure that as we raise the FSB, any instability the occurs is a result of the overclocked CPU and not a result of overclocked RAM, so that we can be sure that we have indeed found the maximum stable CPU speed when we are done. Leave your other RAM settings at their defaults, we'll come back and tweak these later. Now go to the CPU page and select "Manual" for the "High Performance Mode" option if necessary to enable editing of the settings. You should disable Dynamic Overclocking (since you are doing this manually) and I recommend disabling Cool'n'Quiet, though you don't have to if you really don't want to. Disable all the "... Spectrum" settings (what these do is kind of complicated, but the manual plainly states that they should be disabled if you are overclocking, so heed its advice). Also disable "Aggressive Timing", as this will decrease your RAM overclockability substantially without providing any real benefit (and may make it unstable even at its rated settings). Now, what you want to do is, leaving the other CPU settings (i.e. vcore and multiplier) the same, start raising your FSB Frequency in 10 to 12 MHz increments, depending on your multiplier (basically you want to raise it about 100 MHz at a time). Some people feel this is a fairly large jump to do at a time, but I've found that the Athlon64 handles it just fine. If you get up above about 2.4 GHz, then you might want to only go by half of this at a time though. Remember to decrement your HTT multiplier as necessary. Basically, every time you raise the FSB, test for stability by letting the system try to boot to Windows. If it is successful, return to BIOS and raise the core speed some more. Once the system fails to boot, you have two options, either raise the CPU voltage (use the "CPU VID" setting in the BIOS to adjust the voltage directly, or the "CPU Voltage" setting to specify how much over the specified amount of voltage to apply...personally I prefer the "CPU VID" route, but it's really a matter of personal preference, and yes, both can be manipulated in unison...one thing I've noticed here is that the "CPU Voltage" settings seem to allow for less variance in the final vcore setting, keeping it very close to the specified voltage at all times, whereas increasing via the "CPU VID" option lets the voltage decrease a bit from the specified value when the system is not under load) and try again (and keep repeating until you have given the CPU as much voltage as you are comfortable with and the system can no longer be made stable), or return to you last stable setting and let it boot. Once you have done this, use your benchmarking and stress testing software to make sure you really are stable at your settings. If the system crashes or the test reports errors, you will either need to raise the voltage a little, or lower the FSB a little (this is where ClockGen can be a big timesaver). While some people swear by Prime95, my opinion is that if you can get through the largest SuperPi test without any errors, your overclock is stable. Monitor your temps while you do this. If you notice that the CPU temperature is getting above 60 degrees, you are running a bit too hot. Generally speaking, about 55 should be considered the threshold of safety here. If you're running hot, you can either decrease the voltage and FSB settings, or get a better cooling solution. Once you have determined that your setting is stable and not overheating your CPU, record your core speed (not your FSB speed, the total CPU speed) and voltage settings for later. You should probably be shooting for a target clock speed of around 2.4 GHz, or more if you have good cooling, or if you are interested in doing a "safe" overclock, just shoot for as high as you can get without raising the voltage.
Memory Speed - Now that you know your CPU's limits, it's time to work on the RAM. First restore your FSB to 200 MHz and your CPU voltage to its default, and specify a CPU multiplier of 6x to make sure that the CPU will not be stressed as your raise the FSB. Go to your RAM page, and manually specify whatever timings are appropriate to your RAM modules. Also be sure to set "1T/2T Memory Timing" to 1T (set the "... Mode" setting to Manual to make the RAM settings editable). Leave the rest of the settings alone, except for the "Memclock Index Value". Here, you have a choice to make. If you have high quality RAM, or your target CPU speed is not too high (like < 2.3 GHz), you can try to run your RAM synchronously, which will give you somewhat better latency. If this is the case, select an index value of 200 MHz (note that on the Neo4, when you select a memclock index what you are really specifying in the ratio at which the RAM operates relative to the FSB...the memclock index option is basically just obscuring this setting. To calculate your ratio, divide whatever the index value is by 200, so an index of 200 MHz is a 1:1 ratio, an index of 150 MHz is a 3:4 ratio, and so on). If your RAM is not of very high quality (for example, it's only rated as PC3200), or your target CPU speed is high, you will likely need to run the RAM asynchronously, so select the next highest index value of 180 MHz. This will let you get slightly higher RAM clock speeds, at the cost of a little bit of added latency (the performance hit isn't much...you'll be much faster running asynch at 2.4 GHz than synch at 2.2 GHz). Now you do the same thing that you did with the CPU, gradually increasing the FSB (you might want to use smaller increments this time though) until the system will no longer boot (remember again to decrease the HTT multiplier if necessary), and then returning to your last stable setting (or increasing the voltage and repeating) and booting to Windows and running stability tests. You do not need to monitor your temps while doing the RAM tests (unless you want to). Generally I find that Sandra's "Cache and Memory..." benchmark works well for detecting memory instability, and you can also use SuperPi, Prime95, or Memtest86 as well. Once you have tested stable, record your memory clock speed (use the formula: memory speed = FSB speed * memclock index value / 200) and voltage and reboot to the BIOS settings menu. Note that while you may be able to attain a higher memory clock speed by selecting a higher CAS latency, it is not generally advisible to do so, as from what I've seen, although memory bandwidth remains about the same as CAS increases (as far as Sandra is concerned anyways), the lower latency provided by CAS2 improves the system score by 5% in PCMark 04, and given that RAM performance scales pretty much linearly relative to the clock speed, unless running at CL2.5 lets you get *at least* 10 to 15 MHz higher than at CL2, it is not worth it overall.
Run the Numbers - Believe it or not the performance of the Neo4 system is dictacted pretty much entirely by the core and memory clock speeds (given identical memory timing settings). The only other real factor is whether the RAM is run synchronously or not, which you just decided in the above step, so all that's left to do now is find the combination of memclock index, FSB, and CPU multiplier that allow you to get as clost to both your target core and memory speeds as possible. If you are running synchronously, your task is simple, just keep your memclock index of 200 MHz, specify your target FSB speed, and your default CPU multiplier (unless your RAM is so good that the CPU is not stable at the default multiplier and the RAM's top FSB speed, in which case drop the multiplier accordingly). If running the RAM asynchronously your task is a bit more difficult (having a calculator for this part will help), basically you have to go through the list of memory dividers (memclock indexes), and for each one calculate the ratio of memclock index / 200, and then divide your target memory clock speed by that ratio to get the FSB needed to attain your target memory speed (for example, if the target is 230 MHz, for a memclock index of 150 we get a ratio of 0.75, and 230 / 0.75 = 307 MHz, so running the RAM at 230 MHz with an index of 150 MHz requires a FSB setting of 307 MHz...pretty good if your target clockspeed is 2.45 GHz, as selecting an 8x multiplier will pretty much hit this exactly), and then go through the available *whole* CPU multipliers (I've heard that the half-multipliers should be avoided, as they cause the memory to get clocked incorrectly) and see if any multiplier times the FSB you calculated hits (or comes reasonably close to hitting) your target CPU speed. Go through all of them until you get an exact (or very close) match, and pick whichever one ends up matching most closely. Note that there is no benefit in this case to a higher FSB speed configuration over a lower FSB speed configuration, provided that both produce the same core and memory clock values, so you should not favor configurations with needlessly high FSB settings unless they produce a better fit than the others. Apply whichever settings are closest, and then apply the appropriate CPU and memory voltage settings that you got from the previous steps. Also apply whichever HTT multiplier will put you closest to 1000 MHz without going over 1100 MHz. After this, your system should be ready to boot, overclocked and stable. Be sure to do additional benchmarking and stress testing to make sure that you really are stable (if you saved your scores at the beginning, compare them to your scores now and marvel at the improvement...and post the results for people to see), and be sure to monitor your temps for a bit to make sure your cooling is working adequately.
Post Overclock Overclocking:
There's not a whole lot to do now, but if you want to try to tweak your memory timings to get a little bit of extra performance, now is the time to do it...just remember to record your stable overclock settings somewhere (*not* on the computer) in case the tweaking forces a CMOS reset and you lose all your settings, and enjoy. Also you can overclock whatever video card you have, a process that's much easier and faster than overclocking your CPU/RAM/FSB.
In Closing:
I hope someone out there finds this useful, given how long it took to write up. Maybe I'll get lucky and this will end up as a sticky...we'll see. And just to start things off, here are my benchmark scores, at stock and at the overclock described in my sig:
Stock:
3dMark05 = 3141
PCMark04 = 3589
Overclocked:
3dMark05 = 3704
PCMark = 4805

Just started ocing the system, I'm new at this so these are where my system stands and the results
--------[ EVEREST Home Edition (c) 2003-2005 Lavalys, Inc. ]------------------------------------------------------------
Version EVEREST v2.20.405
Homepage http://www.lavalys.com/
Report Type Report Wizard
Computer HOWARD-4B304E62
Generator Howard
Operating System Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition 5.1.2600 (WinXP Retail)
Date 2005-09-16
Time 16:14
--------[ Overclock ]---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPU Properties:
CPU Type AMD Athlon 64
CPU Alias Venice S939
CPU Stepping DH-E3
CPUID CPU Name AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
CPUID Revision 00020FF0h
CPU Speed:
CPU Clock 2456.56 MHz
CPU Multiplier 9.0x
CPU FSB 272.95 MHz (original: 200 MHz, overclock: 36%)
Memory Bus 204.71 MHz
CPU Cache:
L1 Code Cache 64 KB (Parity)
L1 Data Cache 64 KB (ECC)
L2 Cache 512 KB (On-Die, ECC, Full-Speed)
Motherboard Properties:
Motherboard ID 03/15/2005-MS-7100-6A61FM4BC-00
Motherboard Name MSI K8N Diamond / K8N SLI Platinum (MS-7100) (3 PCI, 2 PCI-E x16, 4 DDR DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)
Chipset Properties:
Motherboard Chipset nVIDIA nForce4 SLI, AMD Hammer
Memory Timings 2-4-4-6 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)
Command Rate (CR) 1T
SPD Memory Modules:
DIMM1: GeIL CL25-4-4DDR 500 512 MB PC4000 DDR SDRAM (2.5-5-5-9 @ 250 MHz) (2.0-5-5-9 @ 232 MHz)
DIMM2: GeIL CL25-4-4DDR 500 512 MB PC4000 DDR SDRAM (2.5-5-5-9 @ 250 MHz) (2.0-5-5-9 @ 232 MHz)
BIOS Properties:
System BIOS Date 03/15/05
Video BIOS Date 06/27/05
Award BIOS Type Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Award BIOS Message W7100NZ1 V9.0 031505 14:17:53
DMI BIOS Version 6.00 PG
Graphics Processor Properties:
Video Adapter nVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT PCI-E
GPU Code Name NV43GT (PCI Express x16 10DE / 0140, Rev A2)
GPU Clock 299 MHz
Memory Clock 522 MHz
--------[ Power Management ]--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Power Management Properties:
Current Power Source AC Line
Battery Status No Battery
Full Battery Lifetime Unknown
Remaining Battery Lifetime Unknown
--------[ Sensor ]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sensor Properties:
Sensor Type Winbond W83627THF (ISA 290h)
GPU Sensor Type Driver (NV-DRV)
Motherboard Name MSI MS-7046 / 7100 / 7125
Temperatures:
Motherboard 32 °C (90 °F)
CPU 35 °C (95 °F)
GPU1: GPU 56 °C (133 °F)
GPU2: GPU 50 °C (122 °F)
Cooling Fans:
CPU 3444 RPM
System 2637 RPM
North Bridge 7337 RPM
Voltage Values:
CPU Core 1.38 V
+3.3 V 3.34 V
+5 V 5.08 V
+12 V 12.04 V
+5 V Standby 5.17 V
VBAT Battery 3.10 V
Debug Info F 40 31 17
Debug Info T 32 35 157
Debug Info V 56 D1 C6 BD 1C 14 34 (01)
--------[ Debug - PCI ]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benchmarking PCMARK04/score:4684 3DMARK03/score:15075
got any suggestions, Im just trying to learn how to do this, any help would be greatly appreciated

Voice Memos - visually low decibel level

Hi all,
I just bought a brand new iPhone 5s (coming with iOS 7.0.2) and I'm overall very happy with it. But when I opened the Voice Memos app and tried to record something I got a little bit worried that my mics might not be working properly or hopefully it's just a software thing.
First of all, I've already read quite a few threads both here and in the other forums about this app crashing down or not finalizing the recordings properly, I haven't tested it out yet. I have a different concern, when I tried to record my voice at a normal distance holding my iPhone in my hand streched out approximately 1.5 feet away from my mouth and speaking as I usually do (not too loud but kind of just like when having a conversation in a non-noisy environment), the waveform depicted in the app stayed almost flat which according to a scale on the right hand side means less -10 dB (or negative infinity as it would usually be gauged on professional sound equipment). I don't really think it's normal since the waveform is supposed to be useful for editing memos and it seems like the waveform will be visible either if the sound source is loud or close.
I'm particularly anxious for two reasons. Firstly, I often have to record stuff because I'm a student and a musician so I really need my mics to work properly. Secondly, I've had bad experiences with mics on other Apple devices. At some point the mic on my iPad 2 became very insensitive. I almost had to put it an inch away from my mouth for it to be able to record anything. Then I learned that vacuuming the mic helps but only for a while. It couldn't be judt dust or anything because at some point it would suddenly relapse into this condition the following day without gradually becoming less sensitive, it was just a snap and it wouldn't work well. Then something similar happened on my iPod 4th gen but I didn't even try to vacuum it. I dropped both of these devices but this problem appeared on my iPad befor that I believe. So I'm really worried about these mics problems being a seemingly common issue with Apple devices.
So I was wondering if anyone has similar problems/concerns. I haven't tried recording something really loud maybe such calibration will come handy. In my trial of the app I could hear the recorded sound (as if coming from a distance but quite passable). So I hope it's a software calibration rather than a hardware issue. I decided to carry out a test and since the volume of the sound is a difficult thing to reproduce in the exact same conditions I tried to set it up so that some of you might be able to repeat it if you want to compare our results. So I bought 'Blurred Lines' by R. Thicke on iTunes, a popular song these days, playbacked it on my iPod 4th gen at maximum volume (oops just realized I have an iPod volume limit set up at about 75%) placed at various distances from my iPhone 5s so that the iPod's top faces the iPhone's bottom.
Here are the results:
1 foot away - negative infinity
8 inch - almost the same
4 inch - topping at -10 dB
2 inch - -7 dB
0 inch (almost touching each other) - -3 dB sometimes going up to 0.
And by the way in the right hand corner there's a speaker sign which I assume means recording with a bottom mic for calling or the mic that's near the camera. The results are basically the same. And one more thing, when recording videos I get clear sound.
So if you got to the end of this post I know my experiment is kind of complicated, I just like to have this scientific approach. You can try to repeat it if you have time and can set up all the same conditions but otherwise any opinion/information will be very welcome.
Thanks in advance!

For iphon 5 after the last update, to listen to your recored voice memos, you have to tab the speaker symbol on the upper right corner of the file page. You can also use the bluetooth or headphone to listen to your recordings.

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