Introduce Yourself

[vaughan]

Welcome to the team Karl. I think you will settle in nicely here amongst friends. Have fun now, ya hear!

[Danish Dynamite]

welcome to team karl

[Bender10]

Hello Karl. Welcome aboard!!

[Lagu]

Hi Karl and welcome. Interesting story and yes I agree, AMD is the most stable PC I ever had.

Lagu

[S. Starbuck]

A big hello to AMD Users!

My name's Stewart Starbuck, and I've just started crunching for seti@home these past few days.

I'm an undergrad at Plymouth University (UK) doing my first year of BSc Computing.

I've had an interest in computers for nearly as long as I can remember, my first being a then third-hand BBC Micro, and of which I have many fond memories of playing Elite.

I've since owned a number of computers, my current being my second self-build. (Which naturally contains an AMD CPU!)

As well as having an interest in computers I've also been interested in astronomy, which lead me to find the s@h project about a year ago. However, as my computer then was very underpowered and expensive to run, so I decided against using it to crunch work. With my current one however I'm quite happy to leave it going 24/7.

I'm a supporter of free software, and so run Linux on my computer (Arch if interested) and support free software projects wherever I can.

Now AMD, that's an good question... For a short while before building my current computer I had a Compaq laptop. This had an Intel P4 (Northwood) cpu. Now this thing was really hot in my laptop. I had to buy a cooling dock for it, as the fans built into the laptop itself could not keep the thing cool enough when the cpu was at full load for more than about 15 minutes. When planning my own build I knew I wanted to find something that ran much cooler than that old chip did, and through my research this led me to AMD. (That and a few other factors, such as already being a fan of ATI before they were bought by AMD, and several friends insisting I go the AMD route.)

So to finish off, here are some quick specs about my current computer:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ BE (Recycled from my first build, although currently underclocked and undervolted due to motherboard issues)
Motherboard: GA-MA78GM-S2H Rev1.0 (Broken sensors, SATAII port and it's instance on not delivering correct voltages means this is soon to be replaced.)
Graphics: None - Just use the Radeon HD3200 in the 780G chipset
RAM: 1GB A-Data DDR2-800
PSU: Enermax Modu82+ 425W
Case: Lian Li PC-V350B
OS: Arch Linux

Now some time next year I'm going to make some changes, namely the motherboard and cpu. My plan is to then look for two mini-ITX boards. Onto these I will put the 5000+, as well as a Sempron 3000 I have kicking about. I'll then use these as dedicated crunchers for s@h.

Phew, think that's about everything. Any questions, just ask!

[Ramjet]

A big WELCOME TO OUR TEAM STEWART ! Always glad to have another dedicated AMD user aboard.

[NeoGen]

Welcome aboard Stewart!

I first started on Distributed Computing on the old Seti@Home project several years ago, before boinc came along.

[Danish Dynamite]

welcome to AMD users Stewart
from what i have read 5000+be is a very good over clocker i hope you get your issues with mobo sorted, i am wondering what bios version you have ?

[Frederic Brillouet]

Welcome Steward! I have the 5000+ BE in one machine as well, hope you will be able to get a good clock with the new mobo, let us know how it goes!

[S. Starbuck]

Thanks for the welcome everyone

welcome to AMD users Stewart
from what i have read 5000+be is a very good over clocker i hope you get your issues with mobo sorted, i am wondering what bios version you have ?

That was the original reason why I chose that one, because of it's overclocking potential. I'm using the latest BIOS, F5.

It does just about work, at least enough to do the things I need with it for uni, but it is annoying not being able to use the full potential of the cpu. As for the upgrade I'm undecided if I should replace it sooner, with another AM2+, or wait until AM3 comes along. (That would mean CPU upgrade as well, but as mentioned I'll setup the 5000 as a dedicated cruncher.)
Any suggestions?