NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 1GB Quad SLI

Introduction
While the appearance of graphics cards powered with the Quad SLI technology has been old news for a while with Dell's XPS 600 Renegade along with other various products from manufacturers that have exclusive access to the technology, consumers can now rejoice as well. The GeForce 7950 GX2 is the official name of NVIDIA's retail version of the GeForce 7900 GX2; the dual-GPU card that has been used by PC builders to create Quad SLI configurations for more then a month now. The GeForce 7900 GX2 has been exclusively available to only certain manufacturers and requires highly customized machines to operate the Quad SLI technology.
Recently NVIDIA has changed this with their GeForce 7950 GX2 which is smaller in comparison to the GeForce 7900 GX2 to allow for a Quad SLI setup in less specific cases. While one will still need a fairly large chassis and a tremendous power supply to support two of these dual chip graphics cards, one should be able to get Quad SLI up and running with a large enough case and the correct motherboard. Even though the card is designed for Quad SLI, you can start of with only one GeForce 7950 GX2 and add second card at a later stage to complete the Quad SLI configuration.
Taking the acclaimed NVIDIA SLI technology to the next level, Quad SLI delivers the most extreme HD gaming experience available on the PC. Combining the power of four NVIDIA GeForce 7900 graphics processing units (GPU's) with an NVIDIA nForce4 SLI based motherboard in a single system; Quad SLI lets you run your favorite games at an unbelievably high resolution of 2560x1600 while maintaining silky smooth frame rates. In addition, support for a new 32x anti-aliasing mode and 16x anisotropic filtering enable stunning visuals.

Western Digital 250 GB USB 2.0/Firewire External Hard Drive with Dual Option Backup and USB ( WDXB2500JBRNN )

Product Description
From the ManufacturerWestern Digital's high-capacity 250 GB WD Dual-option Combo hard drive includes a USB 2.0 hub with front and rear ports. A convenient power button is equipped with SafeShutdown, a WD-exclusive feature that ensures all data has been transferred before shutting down the drive. Dual-option backup buttons let you choose how and when to backup your data - automatically or on-the-spot.
Features
Dual-option Backup -- choose how and when to back up your data, automatically or on-the-spot
Includes both USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces giving you your choice of high-speed connectivity options for maximum flexibility and throughput. Built-in USB hub
Front-mounted power button -- equipped with WD’s exclusive Safe Shutdown feature that ensures all data has been safely transferred before shutting down the drive
7200 RPM rotational speed
Preformatted; simply plug it in and go
Designed for near-silent operation with WD’s whisper-quiet hard drive
Fast, easy connection to PC or Macintosh computers
Cool, heat-dissipating case
Stands vertically or horizontally
Stackable
Applications
Back up your existing hard drive
Archive the music stored on your MP3 player
Add plenty of space for digital video capture and editing
Save and organize your digital photo collection
Back up your valuable data from notebooks
Easily share files between computers
Add virtually unlimited storage with multiple external hard drives
System Requirements
PC Users
Available USB port
Windows 98SE, Me, 2000, XP
Macintosh Users
Available USB port
Mac OS v9.2.2 or Mac OS X v10.2.8+
Kit Contents
250 GB USB 2.0/FireWire external hard drive with USB 2.0 hub
6 foot (1.8m) USB 2.0 certified cable
Software CD including Dantz Retrospect Express backup software
AC adapter with power cord
Vertical stands
Feet for horizontal placement
Quick Install Guide Product DescriptionWestern Digital's Dual-option External Drive combines external hard drive and USB 2.0 hub for space-saving convenience. Dual-option Backup buttons let you choose how and when to back up your data. Add more storage to your PC instantly. Back up your valuable data, music, photos and movies.

Intel® Centrino® with vPro™ Technology

Business takes you places-when it does, you want the best Intel®-based laptops for business with Intel® Centrino® with vPro™ technology। Combining remote manageability, unique hardware-assisted and proactive security features, and breakthrough mobile performance, these laptops provide reliability IT can trust,

Unleash productivity with peace-of-mind built in

With Intel Centrino with vPro technology, you get a desktop experience in a sleek, light, and powerful business laptop.
Remote manageability providing IT with remote PC monitoring and the ability to diagnose and repair the PC even when the OS is off or unresponsive.¹
Broad industry support from leading manageability and security independent software vendors (ISVs) like Symantec, LANDesk, HP, Microsoft, and Cisco that take advantage of the Intel Centrino with vPro technology features.
Industry-standard management support for protocols such as WS-MAN and DASH² that are more capable and secure than ASF and enables secure communication between the console and the PC.
Industry-leading mobile dual-core performance so you can run multiple intensive applications at once without slowing down
Breakthrough battery life enabled by next-generation hafnium-infused 45nm Intel® Core™ microarchitecture
2x greater wireless range and up to 5x faster wireless with the optional integrated 802.11n wireless technologyΔ
Full Windows Vista* and Windows Aero* graphics without the expense of an external graphics card enabled by powerful Intel® Graphics Technology
Delivering bold benchmarks to business
Keep systems secure, maintain them more efficiently, and reduce your operating expenses with laptop PCs with Intel's hardware-based management technologies enabling a stable and reliable IT infrastructure. Check out the benchmarks:
Achieve up to 94 percent faster time to patch saturation³
Reduce hardware related desk-side visits by up to 50 percent³
Reduce software related desk-side visits by up to 75 percent³
Conduct hardware and software inventory up to 95 percent faster than manually per PC³

Intel® vPro™ Technology

Notebook and desktop PCs with Intel® vPro™ technology enable IT to take advantage of hardware-assisted security and manageability capabilities that enhance their ability to maintain, manage, and protect their business PCs. And with the latest IT management consoles from Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) with native Intel vPro technology support, IT can now take advantage of enhanced features to manage notebooks over a wired or corporate wireless network- or even outside the corporate firewall through a wired LAN connection.
PCs with Intel vPro technology integrate robust hardware-based security and enhanced maintenance and management capabilities that work seamlessly with ISV consoles.¹ Because these capabilities are built into the hardware, Intel vPro technology provides IT with the industry's first solution for OS-absent manageability and down-the-wire security even when the PC is off, the OS is unresponsive, or software agents are disabled.²

Asus P6T6 WS Revolution Core i7 Motherboard

When we think about what is perhaps the one draw-back that enthusiasts and gamers could point to with respect to an Intel chipset-based motherboard, historically, it was lack of NVIDIA SLI multi-GPU support. Though you could drop more than one AMD ATI Radeon-based graphics card into a P45, X38 or X48-chipset based motherboard, for the most part, SLI was a no-go, save perhaps for a few custom OEM solutions. This wasn't too much of a problem for gaming purists that wanted in on NVIDIA powered multi-GPU action, since there was always the most recent revision of the nForce chipset in support of Intel's platform architecture; that is of course until the launch of Intel's Core i7 platform.
Intel's fledgling new desktop platform offers several new architectural in addition to native support for NVIDAI SLI technology. Though motherboard manufacturers like Asus need to have their board "certified" and enable SLI via hooks in their BIOS firmware, you can in fact now have your cake and eat it too, so to speak। Curiously, we have yet to hear from NVIDIA regarding an upcoming nForce motherboard chipset platform in support of Core i7 and from the sound of the between the two companies, we probably never will. Though, in this industry, never is a very long time. It will be interesting to see how the landscape shakes out for all parties involved.
Regardless, taking this new capability for Intel chipsets one step further, motherboard manufacturers also have the ability to enable various 3-way SLI combinations through the use of NVIDIA's NF200 PCI Express fanout switch chip and also with existing PCI Express links in the X58 chipset itself। The Asus P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard is one such product and we've got a full evaluation of it on tap in the pages ahead. We'll show you how this new high-end X58 Express solution performs versus other motherboards in its class and also look at what a full Gen2 PCIe X16 3-Way SLI setup (48-lanes) can do for a killer gaming rig configuration; a realm where price is secondary at best, but fun nonetheless to explore. Let's get on with it then...

Intel DX58SO Motherboard

Intel DX58SO Motherboard
Bottle necks slow down performance. This happens when the processor, or one of its core, is unable to fetch data or instructions fast enough. The memory of the computer system is particularly important because of the amount of data that is passed through it as the system receives instructions from the applications. Theoretically speaking, this means that the faster a processor receives data from memory, the better the performance.
Traditionally, processors have been connected to the memory of a computer via an external bi-directional front-side bus (FSB). This bus served as the central connection point between the processors, the chipset that contains the memory controller hub, and all the other buses such as PCI, AGP, etc.
Intel engineers know that having more powerful processors means that the architecture must also be upgraded to ensure that data flows more quickly between all the different components, and thus the Quickpath Interconnect was created.
The most notable element of the Quickpath architecture is that the memory controller is now integrated into each microprocessor. Each processor has a dedicated memory controller. In the event that a processor needs to access data from the dedicated memory of another core, it can do so through a high speed connection. This allows the cores to get data from memory controllers directly, and connection with other components of the system is also greatly enhanced. The technology is named Quickpath Interconnect because that is precisely what it offers: high speed connection between all the components.
For this reason, the Core i7 processors can only be used on motherboards that support Quickpath Interconnect. The Intel DX58SO is one such example.
The Intel DX58SO motherboard (codename “Smackover”) consists of the Intel X58 Express chipset with ICH10R south bridge chip. The ICH offers support for all the other devices such as video and audio. All buses and components operate on a 133.33 MHz base clock. In other words, a multiplier is applied to the base clock to acquire a speed value. There are four multipliers on the motherboard that affects the overall system speed. They are the CPU speed, the memory speed, the Quickpath Interconnect (QPI) speed, and the uncore speed. The first three are dedicated to overclocking. Uncore speed is the multiplier that is applied to devices that do not draw power from the processor. Together, these four multipliers manage the overall system performance.
Besides support for the Core i7 processors (it supports all three editions), the DX58SO also offers other features, including integrated Intel audio, improved graphics performance, and the PCI Express 2.0 interface that delivers up to 16GB/s bandwidth per port.
As all data and applications are stored on a systems hard drive, it is of utmost importance that the system is able to draw data from the drives very quickly. This is achieved through six SATA ports with transfer speeds of up to 3GB/s. For external storage devices, eSATA is available to help achieve the same performance.
With the DX58SO motherboard, Intel actually emphasizes system stability significantly. For example, the motherboard features an exclusive fault tolerant BIOS that virtually eliminates downtime due to a corrupted BIOS.
The new features certainly promise highly enhanced performance. However, how does the Core i7 perform under stringent hardware tests?

Test Results
Testing has been performed on four separate systems. The first three systems are the three editions of Core i7 processors. They are mounted on the DX58SO motherboard. The last system is the Intel X3350 processor (overclocked to 3.2 GHz), mounted on an ASUS P5E3 motherboard.
All 4 systems were put through a series of benchmarking tests using leading diagnostic/testing applications such as 3DMark system test, SANDRA 2009 system test, Everest Ultimate system test, POV Ray, SuperPi, WinRAR, Crysis, and World in Conflict tests. The results from so many tests reveal almost everything that enthusiasts would want to know about how the Core processors fare when compared to the X3350 overclocked processor. Performance values are obtained for CPU, memory, and storage system tests, single and quad-core rendering tests, and graphics performance tests (DirectX).
The CPU system tests reveal that the Core i7 processors outperform the X3350 processor by as much as 40%. The difference is even more dramatic for the memory tests. Memory bandwidth was shown to be over 100% higher (more than double) for all three editions of the Core i7 processor. Compared to the X3350 system, which uses external memory controllers, the direct memory controllers on the Core i7-based systems certainly works much better.
The 3DMark scores are usually used by gamers to gauge how efficient a system performs when running a 3D game. There are two scores – one for the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and one for the CPU. The GPU scores showed very little differences, as the graphics card used on all systems is the same. As the graphics processing was offloaded to the GPU while the tests were ran, the results are rather predictable. However, the CPU reflects slight differences that fall between the range of 5% to 10%, with the highest end Core i7 processor having the highest score.
The SuperPi scores are used by overclockers and enthusiasts all over the world to benchmark and test the stability of an overclocked system. The assumption is that if a system can successfully compute PI values for up to the 32 millionth decimal place without error, it is moderately stable in terms of RAM and CPU. Tests done on 1M, 2M, and 4M calculations all show that the highest end Core i7 processor produces the best performance. The X3350 processor loses out to the Core i7 920 by a small margin

Intel® Core™ i7 Processor

Brilliantly fast
With faster, intelligent, multi-core technology that applies processing power where it's needed most, new Intel® Core™ i7 processors deliver an incredible breakthrough in PC performance. They are the best desktop processors on the planet.¹
You'll multitask applications faster and unleash incredible digital media creation. And you'll experience maximum performance for everything you do, thanks to the combination of Intel® Turbo Boost technology² and Intel® Hyper-Threading technology (Intel® HT technology)³, which maximizes performance to match your workload.
Product information
2.93 GHz and 2.66 GHz core speed
8 processing threads with Intel® HT technology
8 MB of Intel® Smart Cache
3 Channels of DDR3 1066 MHz memory

Features and benefits
Go to the next level of multi-core performance.
Intel Core i7 processors deliver an incredible breakthrough in quad-core performance and feature the latest innovations in processor technologies:
maximizes speed for demanding applications, dynamically accelerating performance to match your workload—more performance when you need it the most.²
Intel® Hyper-Threading technology enables highly threaded applications to get more work done in parallel. With 8 threads available to the operating system, multi-tasking becomes even easier.³
Intel® Smart Cache provides a higher-performance, more efficient cache subsystem. Optimized for industry leading multi-threaded games.
Intel® QuickPath Interconnect is designed for increased bandwidth and low latency. It can achieve data transfer speeds as high as 25.6 GB/sec with the Extreme Edition processor.
Integrated memory controller enables three channels of DDR3 1066 MHz memory, resulting in up to 25.6 GB/sec memory bandwidth. This memory controller's lower latency and higher memory bandwidth delivers amazing performance for data-intensive applications.
Intel® HD Boost significantly improves a broad range of multimedia and compute-intensive applications. The 128-bit SSE instructions are issued at a throughput rate of one per clock cycle, allowing a new level of processing efficiency with SSE4 optimized applications.

Intel® Core™2 Quad Processors

Introducing the Intel® Core™2 Quad processor for desktop PCs, designed to handle massive compute and visualization workloads enabled by powerful multi-core technology. Providing all the bandwidth you need for next-generation highly-threaded applications, the latest four-core Intel Core 2 Quad processors are built on 45nm Intel® Core™ microarchitecture enabling faster, cooler, and quieter desktop PC and workstation experiences.
Plus, with optional Intel® vPro™ technology, you have the ability to remotely isolate, diagnose, and repair infected desktop and mobile workstations wirelessly and outside of the firewall, even if the PC is off, or the OS is unresponsive।

Features and benefits
With four processing cores, up to 12MB of shared L2 cache¹ and 1333 MHz Front Side Bus the Intel Core 2 Quad desktops processor delivers amazing performance and power efficiency enabled by the all new hafnium-based circuitry of 45nm Intel Core microarchitecture.
Whether you're encoding, rendering, editing, or streaming HD multimedia in the office or on the go, power your most demanding applications with notebooks and desktops based on the Intel Core 2 Quad processor.
Plus, with these processors you get great Intel® technologies built in²:
Intel® Wide Dynamic Execution, enabling delivery of more instructions per clock cycle to improve execution time and energy efficiency
Demo
See how the Intel® Core™2 Quad processor is rewriting the rules on what your PC can do.
Talk with the experts
Gain access, share ideas, and discuss hot industry topics with leaders in the IT community on Intel's Open Port.
Compare products
Intel® Intelligent Power Capability, designed to deliver more energy-efficient performance
Intel® Smart Memory Access, improving system performance by optimizing the use of the available data bandwidth
optimized for multi-core processors, providing a higher-performance, more efficient cache subsystem.
Intel® Advanced Digital Media Boost, accelerating a broad range of multimedia, encryption, scientific and financial applications by significantly improving performance when executing Intel® Streaming SIMD Extension (SSE/SSE2/SSE3) instructions.
Intel® HD Boost³, implementing new Intel® Streaming SIMD Extension 4 (Intel SSE4) instructions for even greater multimedia performance and faster high definition video editing and encoding.
Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT)², enabling greater security, manageability, and utilization.
Future ready, designed to perform in highly threaded programs with powerful Intel® multi-core technology.

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo desktop processors

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo desktop processors
With Intel Core 2 Duo desktop processor, you'll experience revolutionary performance, unbelievable system responsiveness, and energy-efficiency second to none.
Big, big performance. More energy efficient.¹ Now available in smaller packages. The Intel Core 2 Duo processor-based desktop PC was designed from the ground up for energy efficiency, letting you enjoy higher performing, ultra-quiet, sleek, and low power desktop PC designs.
Multitask with reckless abandon. Do more at the same time, like playing your favorite music, running virus scan in the background, and all while you edit video or pictures. The powerful Intel Core 2 Duo desktop processor provides you with the speed you need to perform any and all tasks imaginable.
Love your PC again. Don’t settle for anything less than the very best. Find your perfect desktop powered by the Intel Core 2 Duo processor and get the best processing technology money can buy. Only from Intel.
• Up to 6MB L2 cache
• Up to 1333 MHz front side bus

Identifying Core 2 Duos

Intel hasn’t done itself any favours with the naming and numbering system that it has come up with for the Core 2 Duo range of processors. Each processor in the Core 2 range has a five-digit ‘identifier’ number that refers to a number of features of that particular processor.
These can include the clock speed, power consumption, front-side bus and the day of the week that the processor rolled off the production line. OK, we made that last one up, but Intel states on its website that “these numbers have no inherent meaning” – which doesn’t exactly help to simplify matters.
There are currently four versions of the Core 2 Duo available – with the identifiers E6300, E6400, E6600 and E6700 (the processors in this group test were all E6600 and E6700 versions).
The ‘E’ prefix indicates that they all have the same power consumption (in the range 25-49W). This is in contrast to the high-end Core 2 Extreme X6800, which has an ‘X’ prefix to indicate its higher power consumption (75W).
The other numbers in the identifier should allow you to determine the clock speed, cache size and speed of the front-side bus. However, to simplify matters, we just decided to list them for you in the downloadable pdf table.

Dual Core Processor - Explained

Dual Core Processor -
As people demand more from their computer and the tasks that computers handle become more complicated and demanding, computer manufacturers are trying hard to increase speed in order to keep up with demand। Increasing the speed of the CPU has been the traditional way to keep up, since a faster CPU can do a task faster and then quickly switch and work on the next task. However, there is a limit to how fast processor can work, due to size, complexity and heat issues. Better performance how to come from another source - dual core processing.Obviously having two CPUs working together would improve performance, but two processors working together is more expensive, and would create problems with the mother board and chipset hosting them. So the computer engineers came up with another approach: take two CPUs, and push together in to one chip and you get the power of two CPUs, that only take one socket on the motherboard. Dual core technology allows for the power of two CPUs (also known as cores, hence the name "Dual Core") with a cost that is less than two separate chips. So the "Dual Core" processor is a CPU with two separate cores on the same die, each with its own cache (and newer chips allow cache sharing which improves the functionality of the processor). It's the equivalent of getting two microprocessors in one.
How does it work? In the single core processor the CPU is fed strings of instructions it must order, execute, and then selectively store in its cache for quick retrieval। When data outside the cache is required, it is retrieved from the random access memory (RAM). Accessing this data slows down performance to the maximum speed of the RAM (or the maximum speed of the bus that connects the RAM to the CPU), which is far slower than the speed of the CPU. The situation is gets more complicated and difficult when we start multi-tasking. In these cases the processor must switch back and forth between two or more sets of data streams and programs. CPU resources are depleted and performance suffers.In a dual core processor system each core handles incoming data strings simultaneously to improve efficiency. Since two heads working on the same problem is better then one, so are two hands or two processors. When one is executing the other can be accessing the system bus or executing its own code. Adding to this favorable scenario, both AMD and Intel's dual-core flagships are 64-bit (which increases the amount of data the CPU can process at one switch).
Is it worth it? There are subtle differences between the Intel and AMD dual core systems (how they combined two cores onto one chip, and the speeds they run each core at) that affect how much of a boost in performance you can get from having a dual core CPU। Also, different types of programs get differing benefits from having a dual core chip.To utilize a dual core processor, the operating system must be able to recognize multi-threading. An operating system with multi threading will take advantage of the dual core, because the scheduler has twice the CPU processing power. The scheduler is the part of the windows operating system which tells the CPU what program to be running at any given time. When we multi task and run a lot of programs simultaneously, a computer can begin to seem slow, since Windows' scheduler has to divert the computer's CPU resources in many directions. With a dual core processor the scheduler suddenly has twice as much CPU resource to work with. This would allow the scheduler to have one core run specifically for a video editing, while using the other core to do "background" things that keep the rest of the system running. Software will only take advantage of dual core processing if the software has simultaneous multi-threading technology (SMT) written into its code. SMT enables parallel multi-threading wherein the cores are served multi-threaded instructions in parallel. Without SMT the software will only recognize one core. Adobe Photoshop is an example of SMT-aware software. SMT is also used with multi-processor systems common to servers. If you are running a single program and it is not "multi-threaded", you will not see a benefit from more than one CPU or core.
So… Dual-core processor, offer immediate advantages for people looking to buy systems that boost multitasking computing power and improve the throughput of multithreaded applications. An Intel dual-core processor consists of two complete execution cores in one physical processor both running at the same frequency speed. Both cores share the same packaging and the same interface with the chipset/memory. Overall, a dual-core processor offers a way of delivering more capabilities while balancing energy-efficient performance. It seems that dual core processors are the first step in the multi-core processor future.

DDR3 memory

DDR3 is the third generation in DDR memory. DDR3 begins with a speed level of 800Mbps (400MHz) as the lowest available. As of March, 2009 (22 months after the rest of this Hub was written) the highest popularly available DDR3 speed is represented by the PC3-16000 Corsair Dominator GT and OCZ Blade Series lines which run at an absolutely blistering 2 billion data transfers per second!!!

DDR2 memory

DDR2 memory is the second generation in DDR memory. DDR2 begins with a speed level of 400MHz as the lowest available while the 400MHz speed is actually the highest speed for DDR1. Therefore, DDR2 picks up where DDR1 leaves off. It's a bit strange but due to different latencies a 400MHz DDR1 will outperform a 400MHz DDR2, but the advantage returns to DDR2 as soon as the speed reaches the next step 532MHz, which DDR1 cannot reach.

Expansion Cards

The letters “PCI” stand for Peripheral Component Interconnect, and is the term used to describe a bus that connects components directly to the system’s memory and to the system’s processor through the “frontside bus.” When discussing communications on a motherboard, the term “bus” has nothing to do with the big yellow thing that takes the kids to school. There may be several buses in a computer, and like the PCI bus, they are all responsible for managing the communication “traffic” from different devices to the processor.


The frontside bus is a high speed connection that manages the processor’s communication with items such as hard drives, memory, and PCI devices, while not burdening the processor with all of the management responsibilities.

First developed by Intel in the early 1990s, PCI was spawned from even earlier (and slower) bus architectures such as ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) and VL-Bus (VESA Local), which were common back in the 1980s and 1990s.

Diskless Nodes

In mainframe networks, a single central main computer was connected to a large number of dumb terminals. All the processing work was done by the central computer. The terminals were nothing more than a monitor and a keyboard, which merely performed input/output operations and had no processing functions. With the spread of PCs and GUI-based operating systems, dumb terminals went out of fashion. Novell tried to re-introduce the concept of diskless workstation but did not make much headway.

When a system administrator in an organisation decides to build a local area network (LAN), he simply orders a large number of desktops from HP or Dell. Apart from being very expensive, these PCS are also bristling with a host of unwanted features such as DVD writers, USB ports, and floppy drives. This puts the PCs to potential misuse by employes who might indulge in data theft.

Adline Systems offers a solution to the problems related to price and security with a product called OfficeStation. OfficeStation is a dumb terminal, which has ports for connecting the monitor, keyboard, mouse, network and very little else. There are no USB ports or floppy drives. It has no hard disk either. Several such OfficeStation nodes are connected via the network to a single powerful host PC, which handles all processing tasks. If people in your office work with just e-mail and word-processing applications, then OfficeStation is the way to go.

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks)

Many motherboards, these days, come with extra onboard IDE controllers. You may just connect additional IDE devices to them or you can implement a RAID pair on them. See the motherboard picture for the optional RAID connector. With RAID 0, you can mimick two identical hard disks as a single hard disk. This way, read and write operations would be distributed over 2 hard disks resulting in improved performance. To implement RAID-0, you have to attach preferably two identical hard disks (same model, brand, and capacity) to the connectors using two 80-pin cables. You may have to do some tweaking with drivers and BIOS updates before you can then treat the RAID pair as a single hard disk. Since the data being written is split between two hard disks, data in one of the hard disks is useless without the other. If one of them fails, all data is lost. RAID-0 should be attempted only if it is supported by the PC manufacturer. Most users use the extra IDE connectors for expansion rather than for RAID-0.

While RAID-0 is known as data striping, RAID-1 is known as data mirroring. In RAID-1, data being written on one hard disk is simultaneously copied to another hard disk. If one hard disk suffers a mechanical failure, your data will remain intact on the other hard disk.

RAID levels range from 0 through 5. There is one another level of RAID known as RAID 10, which is a combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0, and it is the best in terms of performance and redundancy.

SPEED

Another measure for hard disk performance is the rpm, which is the speed at which the disk platters spin. These come in 5400 rpm for Ultra DMA/33 and Ultra DMA/66, 7200 rpm usually for Ultra DMA/100, and 10,000 rpm for SCSI hard disks. The hard disks also have some onboard memory called the cache. The size of this cache also contributes to its performance. The bigger the better.

There are three types of hard discs - parallel ATA (PATA) and serial ATA (SATA). PATA is the oldest technology and is being slowly being replaced by SATA. Older motherboards that support only PATA natively can be made to support by using a SATA add-on card. However, most new motherboards natively support SATA. SATA supports data transfers up to a theoretical 300 MBps. SATA2 capable hard disks are manufactured by Samsun, Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital, and Maxtor.

IRQs

PCI cards need something called IRQ (Interrupt Request Que) to operate, though some do not. A discussion of what IRQs are is unnecessary, but you may just be aware that a motherboard needs a specific number of IRQs (usually 16). Usually, most of these are already in use leaving 6 or so IRQs free for expansion cards.

Some PCI cards need an IRQ exclusively. If two such expansion cards start using the same IRQ, problems will arise. Some PCI slots share IRQs themselves. So, devices that need exclusive IRQs should not be used in them.

Windows 9x/Me need IRQs assigned in the BIOS, while Windows 2000 assigns IRQs dynamically.

Optical Drives and Disks

CD (compact disk) drives are used to read data recorded on a CD-ROM (compact disk read-only memory) disks. Data is recorded on CDs in the form of microscopic pits. The presence or absence of the pits, which is read by a red laser beam inside the drive, is used to represent digital data - the 1s and 0s. Factory-made CDs, such as audio CDs and video CDs, are made by pressing moulds, which create the pits on the disks.

On a CD-RW drive (CD writer), the pits are burnt on to a CD-R (CD writable) or a CD-RW (CD rewritable) disk using a more powerful laser. With a CD-R disk, data once written cannot be erased. On a CD-RW (CD rewritable), data can be written and erased countless times. A CD drive cannot read a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) because the pits on a DVD are much more densely packed. To read a DVD, you need a DVD drive. DVD drives can also read CD disks. CD-RW combo drives have the ability to read DVD disks. To create or "burn" DVDs however, you need DVD-RW (DVD writers) drives. Liteon and Plextor make good CD and DVD writers. A CD writer or a DVD writer will not function as a writer until a CD/DVD burning application such as Nero Burning ROM is installed. Liteon ships a limited functionality Nero Express with its drives while some others provide the full version. CD-R and CD-RW disks come in capacities of 650 and 700 MB. Mini CDs, which are smaller in size and can be easily carried in a shirt pocket, hold 170 MB. Some CDs are available in the shape of a visiting card and are typically used to provide a multimedia version of a company or a business. DVD-R can store 4.7 GB of data. Dual layer DVD-Rs disk store data on two diferent lawyers and have a capacity of 8.4 GB. Double-sided DVD-R/DVD-RW disks store data on both sides of the disk and can store 17 GB of data.

Factory-made CDs have labels painted on them. However, with burnt CD consumables such as CD-Rs, CD-RWs, DVD-Rs DVD-RWs having neat labels is an issue. Some CD consumables come with no paint work and allow a sticky paper label. However, in high-speed drives, these labels might come unstuck and destroy the disk and the drive. Many people prefer using CD labeling pens. These pens have very soft tips and make permanent labels. (Using hard tipped pens scratches the disk.) Verbatim has introduced a new CD writer and disk technology called LightScribe. After writing the data, you flip the CD to burn the label using the writer. Both Lightscribe drives and Lightscribe disks can be expensive. Printers from Canon and Epson allow you to print on special printable CDs. If you need to print labels on plain-vannilla CD/DVD disks, get a CD printer from Techcom costing Rs. 4000.

Cabinet (ATX)

Checklist before buying a cabinet for your PC
Support for the same form factor as the motherboard.
Support for ATX standard. (Pentium IV needs the newer ATX 2.03 standard)
Power supply rated above 300 W.
Support for extra cooling fans.
The power supply should have a vent directly over the CPU and the grill should be properly spaced to allow hot air to flow out.
Socket for plugging your monitor.

Cabinets today are manufactured with a great deal of imagination. So, there might be a great deal of difference between their shape, arrangement of side panels, etc. The same goes for the motherboard. The cabinet and motherboard shown here are just sample ones, and the positioning of parts and their working will differ across models.

Hard Disk (HDD) and other IDE devices

Hard disks, CD drives and DVD drives are known as IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) devices. IDE devices are used to store data. Hard disks come in capacities of 20 to 750 GB. 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. Because PCs treat thousands as 1024, a 40 GB hard disk might be identified as having 37 GB = 40,000,000,000/1024 x 1024 x 1024. Good hard disks are available from Hitachi, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital.

Somewhat similar to the music stored on an audio tape, data is stored on a hard disc magnetically. The hard disk has one or two magnetically sensitive platters inside. When the hard disk is working, the platters are spun at a very high speed. The updraft from this motion allows a read-write head assembly to levitate over the platters. The drive mechanism moves the head assembly in the required positions to read or write data. When you switch off the PC abruptly or when the power goes off without warning, the head assembly does not get time to park itself safely away and instead crashes onto the platters. In serious cases, this renders the disk unusable - a crashed hard disk. Stellar Infomation Systems provides data recovery services and software for crashed hard disks.

FSB SPEED

INTERNAL CLOCK SPEED: CPUs or processors are often graded by their internal clock speed. This speed is the number of operations a processor can perform per second. For example, the Pentium-4 3.0 GHz has a clock speed of 3000 KHz or 3.0 GHz.
EXTERNAL CLOCK SPEED: This is the speed with which the CPU can communicate the rest of the system. The CPU communicates with the rest of the system via a gateway called system bus or front side bus. Hence, the external clock speed is also called Front Side Bus (FSB) speed.
MEMORY CLOCK SPEED: This is the speed with which the RAM is given requests for data.

In old CPUs, the memory clock speed used to be the same as the FSB.

With the Athlon K7 processor, AMD introduced something new. The Athlon processor had an FSB of 100 MHz but the bus could make 2 data fetches per cycle from the RAM. So, the effective rate became 200 MHz. AMD then went on to claim that the Athlon had an FSB of 200 MHz. AMD called this Double Data Rate (DDR) FSB.

DDR Ram - What's It Really All About?

CPU clock rates have experienced an exponential growth, leaving the rest of the PC components behind. In the resulting high-end systems, the memory bus constitutes the probably most important bottleneck. Ramping up bandwidth only partially solves the problem since latencies become the primarily important bottleneck. Reducing latencies by means of faster strobes is technically difficult and economically not viable, particularly if the bus speed is increased to approach 200 MHz. Alternative solutions encompass combined SRAM-DRAM solutions that, at minimal overhead, mask latencies by uncoupling data output from the DRAM array. A simple row cache architecture, employing time multiplexed internal buses to load entire rows into centrally located 8 kb SRAM cells, can function as output buffer. Thus, the DRAM array can be precharged ahead of time to avoid page closing latencies as well as refresh penalties

What is processor

A processor is the logic circuitry that responds to and processes the basic instructions that drive a computer.

The term processor has generally replaced the term central processing unit (CPU). The processor in a personal computer or embedded in small devices is often called a microprocessor.

Webcams

A webcam lets you do just that. With one of these tiny, bug-eyed cameras hooked up to your computer, you can broadcast pictures of yourself or your home to the entire world! A webcam is a bit like a digital camera and works much the same way. But unlike a digital camera, it's designed to make relatively compact digital photos that are easy to upload onto Web pages or send across the Internet. It all sounds simple enough—so let's take a closer look at webcams and the technology behind them.

Photo: A typical webcam fixed to the screen of a laptop.

Comparison of Nvidia graphics processing units

The fields in the table listed below describe the following:

Model - The Marketing name for the processor assigned by NVIDIA.
Year - Year of release for the processor.
Code Name - The internal engineering codename for the processor (typically designated by an NVXY name and later GXY where X is the series number and Y is the schedule of the project for that generation.
Fab - Fabrication Process. Average feature size of components of the processor.
Bus interface - Bus by which the Graphics processor is attached to the system (typically an expansion slot, such as PCI, AGP, or PCI-Express).
Memory max - The maximum amount of memory used by the processor.
Core Clock max - The maximum factory core clock frequency (used as some manufacturers adjust clocks lower and higher, this number will always be the reference clocks used by NVIDIA).
Memory Clock max - The maximum factory effective memory clock frequency (used as some manufacturers adjust clocks lower and higher, this number will always be the reference clocks used by NVIDIA). All DDR/GDDR memories operate at half this frequency.
Config Core - The layout of the graphics pipeline, in terms of functional units. Over time the number, type and variety of functional units in the GPU core has changed significantly; before each section in the list there is an explanation as to what functional units are present in each generation of processors. In later models, Shaders are integrated into a Unified Shader Architecture, where any one shader can perform any of the functions listed.
Fillrate - Maximum theoretical fillrate in Textured Pixels per second. This number is generally used as a "maximum throughput number" for the GPU and generally, a higher fillrate corresponds to a more powerful (and faster) GPU.
Memory Subsection
Bandwidth max - Maximum theoretical bandwidth for the processor at factory clock with factory bus width. GB=10^9 bytes.
Bus Type - Type of memory bus or buses utilized.
Bus Width - Maximum Bit width of the memory bus or buses utilized. This will always be a factory bus width.
Graphics Library Support Section
DirectX - Maximum version of Direct3D fully supported.
OpenGL - Maximum version of OpenGL fully supported.
Features - Additional features that are not standard as a part of the two Graphics libraries.

CD/DVD Writer

These types of drives are for creating your own CD's or DVD's. They are becoming statndard on a new computer

DVD Drive

A DVD disk is the same size and shape as a CD, but can hold more information. You can play a CD in a DVD Drive, but you can't play a DVD disk in a CD Rom Drive

CD Rom Drive

Press a button on the front of your computer and a tray will probably slide out. The tray will accept a circular disk - a CD Rom.

Floppy Drive

There will be a thin slot on the front of your computer. Into the gap, a disk is inserted. This is your floppy drive, and the disk is called a floppy disk

What is a Hard Drive?

A hard drive is nothing more than a magnetised storage area. Your Operating System is stored on your hard drive, as well as all your software programmes, like Microsoft Word. The hard drive is actually a few circular disks stacked one on top of the other. A little arm moves over the disks and writes things to these circular platters, and reads them. When you save a file or create a new folder, think of these circular platters being written to and you'll have a basic idea of just what your hard drive is.

A hard drive is given a letter of the alphabet for convenience sake, and in most computers this will be the letter C. That's why the hard drive is popularly know as the C Drive. There are other drives on your computer. These are the usual drives on modern Personal Computers:

Computer Mother Board Explained.

Computer Mother board and its constituent components

A typical PC mother board with important components is given below:


1. Mouse & keyboard
2. USB
3. Parallel port
4. CPU Chip
5. RAM slots
6. Floppy controller
7. IDE controller
8. PCI slot
9. ISA slot
10. CMOS Battery
11. AGP slot
12. CPU slot
13. Power supply plug in

1. Mouse & keyboard: Keyboard Connectors are two types basically. All PCs have a Key board port connected directly to the motherboard. The oldest, but still quite common type, is a special DIN, and most PCs until recently retained this style connector. The AT-style keyboard connector is quickly disappearing, being replaced by the smaller mini DIN PS/2-style keyboard connector.
You can use an AT-style keyboard with a PS/2-style socket (or the other way around) by using a converter. Although the AT connector is unique in PCs, the PS/2-style mini-DIN is also used in more modern PCs for the mouse. Fortunately , most PCs that use the mini-DIN for both the keyboard and mouse clearly mark each mini-DIN socket as to its correct use. Some keyboards have a USB connection, but these are fairly rare compared to the PS/2 connection keyboards.

2. USB (Universal serial bus):
USB is the General-purpose connection for PC. You can find USB versions of many different devices, such as mice, keyboards, scanners, cameras, and even printers. a USB connector's distinctive rectangular shape makes it easily recognizable.

USB has a number of features that makes it particularly popular on PCs. First, USB devices are hot swappable. You can insert or remove them without restarting your system.

3. Parallel port: Most printers use a special connector called a parallel port. Parallel port carry data on more than one wire, as opposed to the serial port, which uses only one wire. Parallel ports use a 25-pin female DB connector. Parallel ports are directly supported by the motherboard through a direct connection or through a dangle.

4. CPU Chip : The central processing unit, also called the microprocessor performs all the calculations that take place inside a pc. CPUs come in Variety of shapes and sizes.
Modern CPUs generate a lot of heat and thus require a cooling fan or heat sink. The cooling device (such as a cooling fan) is removable, although some CPU manufactures sell the CPU with a fan permanently attached.

5. RAM slots: Random-Access Memory (RAM) stores programs and data currently being used by the CPU. RAM is measured in units called bytes. RAM has been packaged in many different ways. The most current package is called a 168-pin DIMM (Dual Inline Memory module).