AMD (ATI) Catalyst 11.8 Drivers Available

One of our machines popped up a request to update the AMD (ATI) drivers on the machine:

Now, once we clicked through on the Express setup for the driver. Something along the way died out. Instead of clicking on any of the buttons just click on the Red X to allow the installation to move forward.

The install will complete successfully as indicated above.

We opened the Catalyst Control Center to verify that everything was good to go:

Everything checks out okay.

Hopefully this version is as stable as its predecessor. :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Contracted to Build a Boss Dual W5580 Trading System

One of our long time clients has delved into currency trading and is using a proprietary monitoring and graphing application for the various world currencies being watched and traded.

Their current system is a high performance system we put together for them six years ago.

That system was based on a P4 with HyperThreading, Windows XP Pro and 1GB of RAM. We had our client bring the system here to the shop to run various process monitoring utilities on the PC while the proprietary application was up and running.

We were looking for a couple of specific things:

• How many simultaneous threads was the app capable of tossing towards the CPU.
• How many threads were involved in generating a new graph and what happens during the graph generation.

What we discovered was an application that is capable of taking advantage of as many “cores” as possible.

The last test we ran was the generation of a new graph with everything else going on in the background. The new graph being generated pegged one of the “cores” on the system, so that particular process was single threaded . . . maybe.

Now that we had a pretty good overview of how the application performed, we now knew some key performance needs:

• The ability to bin a core or multiple cores up for a demanding process was critical.
• The ability to handle more than 4 simultaneous threads was also a priority due to the way the software operated.
• The more RAM we had in the system, the better.
• We need the ability to drive 8 monitors.
• We need to eliminate the disk I/O bottleneck.

So, the configuration we have come up with for the system to be built to meet our client’s needs will be as follows:

• Dual Intel Xeon Processor W5580 or W5590
• Intel Workstation Board S5520SC
• 24GB Kingston Registered ECC RAM (6x 4GB Intel Tested)
• Intel RS2BL080 PCI-E 8x RAID Controller and Battery Backup
• 320GB (4x 160GB Intel 2nd Gen SSD) RAID 10
• Intel SC5650WS Workstation Chassis
• 6 Bay Hot Swap Option
• Dual ATI FirePro 2450 PCI-E Multi-View
• Up to 8 24” Wide Screen LCD Monitors
• ErgoTron Multi-Monitor Stands
• Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Edition

We expect the ability of each of the Xeon Processors to bin one or two cores upwards to gain the needed extra performance will make this rig fit our client’s needs perfectly.

Using the second generation Intel Solid-State Drives plus a second generation Intel RAID controller aught to help us virtually eliminate any disk subsystem bottlenecks.

The extra RAM and the 64bit capabilities of Windows 7 Ultimate round out the setup.

The workstation board S5520SC has a Trusted Platform Module version 1.2. Since we are installing Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Edition on this setup and due to the sensitivity of the tasks being accomplished by the user we will be encrypting the contents of any partition created with BitLocker.

In the end, the system should provide our client with exactly the responsiveness they are looking for in a system and also protect everything on the system via encryption.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

One of those days! :|

Every once in a while, things just do not seem to go the way we planned and leave us seemingly spinning our tires.

Today was one of those days.

A client system with a RAID array failure, has an nForce on board RAID where the RAID BIOS refused to allow us to rebuild the array on the seemingly failed drives. The drives tested 100% okay. We had a ShadowProtect image of the Windows Vista x64 OS installation, but that failed to restore on a Winload.exe error after recreating the RAID array.

Another client system with a Hauppauge Win TV-HVR-1800 series PCI-E TV card in it keeps locking up Windows Vista on the AudioHG.exe driver. This one did not have the automatic updates enabled. When it was realized that the machine needed updates, all of them were allowed to download and install … including the MU drivers. The system choked with no hope of recovery. It was running fine until all of the updates happened.

Then, one of the Sapphire Radeon video cards on the system here has failed. There looks to be no way of bringing it back from the dead.

So, lots of troubleshooting with no real resolutions.

It is days like this one that really hone those rough personality edges. There is a need to take a deep breath before answering that thousandth phone call by the same person having an ongoing problem, to those crazy fog horn blasts in the ear because someone has a free cruise for me if I but, “sell my first born and give a pint of blood!” ;)

Yeah … one of those days. Tough on the professionalism to the Nth degree.

Leaves me thankful that I can go home to my wife and kids, after a number of really deep breaths, and enjoy a warm welcome from Monique and the fact that the kid’s screams of delight at my coming home act to separate work and home.

Refreshed, and repurposed, I will be able to approach things outside of the box and try again.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

A Vista Gadget Funny

It’s Friday, time to go home and one last task to accomplish was the update of this workstation’s ATI Catalyst drivers to the newest version since it started choking on them yesterday.

So, after the update reboot, we must have hit hyper-space, because we ain’t in Kansas anymore Toto:

A blue sun!

BTW, that –5 Celsius is nice to see since it was –25 Celsius yesterday!

Welcome to the Andromeda Galaxy!

Time to go home. Will fix another day. :)

Have a great weekend!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac!

Windows Live Writer

Display Flicker - Change the Refresh

With the advent of LCD monitors, image flicker has become a thing of the past ... at least relatively speaking.

For the most part, a screen set to refresh at 60 Hz will provide a clear and flicker free image.

Some LCD monitors are a little more sensitive to outside electromagnetic interference (EM) than others. It used to be that one could change the refresh rate in the video card driver to 70 Hz or even 75 Hz to eliminate any EM interference.

On the newer and larger LCD monitors this does not seem to be the case.

Electricity cycles at 60 Hz. Sometimes, when the monitor is set to refresh at 60 Hz, the image will flicker.

Some may never notice it, but for those of us with relatively sensitive eyes we pick it up immediately. In the case of CRT monitors, the refresh rate was the first thing to get adjusted due to the annoying characteristics of the CRT's image flickering.

In this case, the monitor in question is a new Acer X243w. When the ATI driver was set to refresh at 60 Hz, there was no end to the amount of flickering in the monitor's image.

But, there was no option on that monitor to bump up the refresh rate to 70+ Hz.

There was however an option to bump it down:

Acer X243W Refresh at 59 Hz

Once the setting change was made and applied, the flickering was gone.

Having the refresh rate on the monitor set to 60 Hz along with the A/C being at 60 Hz when having EM issues is a bit like having two fans, one directly behind the other, spinning at the same rate but not synchronized. One will notice the lack of synchronization in the way of a flicker.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 on Intel X38BT Install Issue

There are just some things we never got warned about in school! ;)

When it comes to the more exotic system builds, it is always good to be prepared for the unexpected.

As our previous post on the conflict between the Zalman CPU Cooler bottom bracket and the back of the Intel X38BT makes clear, there were going to be more challenges putting this system together.

Even with the Cooler Master Cosmos' open design, there were some space and cable path issues between components.

One such conflict is between the ATI HD 3870 X2 and the on board SATA ports.

The Intel X38BT board layout is as follows:

19: On Board SATA Ports

We have the on board SATA ports directly in line with the PCI-E 16x lanes for the video cards.

So, when we go to install the ATI HD 3870 X2 video cards, which are full length and double wide video cards, we end up with a space limitation right above the on board SATA ports.

The out of the box SATA cables that came with the X38BT motherboard have the standard straight in plug style with the metal clip:

Intel X38BT Supplied SATA Cable

In this situation, they will not work. The cable ends plugging into the motherboard port would stand too tall for the ATI video card to seat itself properly in the PCI-E slot.

In order to make things work, we needed a SATA cable with a plug that had a profile that was as low as possible.

We were fortunate that we had a pile of SATA cables to sort through.

We ended up finding four of the following (we were installing four hard drives):

Intel Server Board SATA Cable with 90 Degree Plugs

Both ends of the cable had a 90 degree plug on it. Because of the tight space limitations behind the drive connectors, having these cable types on hand to connect the drives to the motherboard served up a double bonus:

• Enough room to properly seat the full length ATI video cards
• Better clearance on the plug side of the hard drives

One never knows when those spare parts may come in handy. In this case, they saved us a trip to one of our local suppliers to pick up some of the required SATA cables.

We will however, make sure to pick some up on our next trip through there or on our next order from Synnex or Tech Data.

As a system builder, one can never be too prepared! The above parts run would have cost us enough to cut right into the margins on the system itself.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

Intel QX9650 Quad Core Extreme has a new cooling solution

We are in the process of putting a system together based on the following high performance components:

• Intel X38BT Extreme Edition Motherboard
• Intel QX9650 Quad Core Extreme CPU
• Zalman CNPS9700 LED CPU Heat Pipe Cooler
• Dual (2x) ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB Graphics PCI-E
• Dual (2x) 150GB Western Digital Raptor 10K SATA 150 RAID 1
• Dual (2x) 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 300 RAID 1
• Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro
• Antec P180B Chassis
• 1200Watt (1.2KW) ThermalTake ToughPower 4 Rail
• Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1

We just received the QX9650 CPU from our supplier.

We were surprised by the size of the box: It is at least twice the size of a regular Core 2 CPU box. Not only that, it weighs less than the standard Core 2 CPU box too.

Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Packaging

Once we had the packinging open, the tray holding everything has changed.

The reason for this packaging change?

Intel is trying to give Zalman a run for their money! ;)

But seriously folks, Intel is packaging a new CPU cooler for their new 45nm Extreme processors.

Here are a number of screenshots:

Intel QX9650 CPU Cooler - Top

Intel QX9650 CPU Cooler - Side

Intel QX9650 CPU Cooler - Top - No Fan

Intel QX9650 CPU Cooler - Bottom

The cooler unit itself is very light. It looks as though there is a single heat pipe within the large hollow barrel below the fan motor.

While it is a huge step in the right direction for Intel CPU cooling in that it is light weight, capable of greater cooling due to the heat pipe, and quieter because of the larger fan it will not discourage avid users from purchasing a product like the Zalman.

This is one area where Intel should learn a lesson from AMD: Package the Extreme series processor in a small environmentally friendly box and leave the CPU cooler up to us.

This way costs for packaging the CPU go down significantly and those savings can be passed along to us in the form of a price reduction on the CPU.

For the Extreme series CPU purchaser, it is pretty much a given that they already have a cooling method in mind from a good air based cooler such as the Zalman, to a water based method, or the exteme of liquid nitrogen (Live search).

UPDATE: Missed this one in the inital post:

Intel Core 2 Extreme Processor Cooling Solution

This little sheet came with the processor in the box.

Note their qualifier under Thermal performance to spare:

Designed to meet and exceed thermal performance needs for the Intel Core 2 Extreme Edition processors under normal user conditions.

This further reaffirms the need for an aftermarket CPU cooling product for those who are looking to tweak their CPU performance or are looking for optimal thermal qualities in a CPU cooler.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

System Builder Tip: Vista Aero Performance Rating - ATI X1250 on AMD 690G Chipset

A while back, we went to the AMD/Microsoft TechTour which offered us a Tour Bundle at a discount over purchasing through distribution.

According to the coupon we received to redeem for the bundle, we were to get an AMD X2 4400+, Asus M2A-VM AM2 series motherboard, a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate NFR, and a one year subscription to McAfee's security product *cough*. ;0)

We decided to take a risk and purchase the bundle.

This is the first time in over five (5) years that we have purchased anything AMD!

Why? Because, we were burned so badly by a number of AMD based systems back then that we never turned back. We had to fight with the motherboards to work with any add-in cards like network or video for example. Or, we had to fight to get the drivers to work properly or the system to run stable at all. There were a number of times we were replacing components or motherboards to get things to play together nicely. Any so-called cost savings was obliterated by the time fighting with the systems.

So, that was that. Remember the three strike rule? :D

And here we are, with the processor, motherboard, some Kingston RAM, a couple of 320 GB Seagates setup in a RAID 1 array and having just finished installing Windows Vista Ultimate.

All in all, the install went smoothly.

The one glitch we ran into was getting Vista to recognize the on board ATI X1250 video subsystem. Vista refused to. After fighting with it for about half an hour, we extracted the driver ZIP file, and went into the Device Manager and forced the driver to update via the Update Drivers button on the Standard VGA driver.

After a reboot the Standard VGA was still there, though the display setting was reset to 640 x 480. So, tried one more reboot and it worked. We now had Vista recognizing the video as an ATI X1250.

By the way, we had a bit of a struggle trying to figure out where to find the video driver in the first place. The lingo used on Asus' site didn't have anything labelled video. It only had what turned out to be one massive "chipset" driver:


Um, Intel's "chipset" drivers tend to be something like 2-3 MB. So, the only logical conclusion with a 149 MB download, is that Asus packages both the chipset and video drivers together.

That is a pretty chunky download by the way.

Here is the current Catalyst driver size:

A whole whopping 40 MB.

So, take 3 MB for Intel's chipset drivers and 40 MB for ATI's Catalyst drivers, and that leaves 100 MB+ of what exactly? Not too sure on that.

The first run at the Windows System Assessment Tool failed. That was after the first reboot post ATI driver install.

The Windows System Assessment Tool ran fine after the second reboot.

Here is how the ATI X1250 did:



Desktop performance for Windows Aero scored a 2.5 and the 3D business and gaming graphics performance scored a 2.8.

So, how does the on board ATI X1250 stack up to Intel's on board GMA 3000 series video chipset?

Not really that well I am afraid.

In our System Builder Tip: Vista Aero Performance Rating - Intel GMA 3000 on DQ965GF and ATI FireMV 2200 PCI-E,

the on board GMA 3000 series graphics ran a 3.9 score for Vista Aero and a 3.7 score for 3D Graphics.

Intel's 945GM chipset in a Toshiba Portégé M500 had a Desktop performance for Windows Aero score of 2.0 while the 3D business and gaming graphics performance scored 2.8.

For most users that use the Internet, e-mail, and perhaps Microsoft Office this performance level would be okay.

I think that the occasional gamer may be a bit disappointed in the ATI X1250 performance and go out and pick up at least an ATI X1600 or above to get better performance.

Please keep in mind that since this is our first foray into AMD in so many years, we are not exactly up on what's the fastest and newest stuff from them and those that manufacture their system parts. So, hopefully we won't need any flame retardant underwear! ;)

This particular box is going to be our test desktop mule for our SBS Cougar beta testing. So, it is going to get a lot of use, as well as tear downs. Hopefully it is up to the task.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

System Builder Tip: Vista Aero Performance Rating - Intel GMA3000 on DQ965GF and ATI FireMV 2200 PCI-E

I finally gave up trying to install Vista on the Intel D945GTP with Pentium D and 1 GB of RAM for now. When I have more time, I will try and figure out the factor that enables us to install on that board.

For now we have the following base system:

• Intel DQ965GF series MicroATX motherboard.
• Intel E6400 Core 2 Duo processor
• 2 GB of Kingston ValueRAM
• Onboard GMA 3000 Intel graphics
• 2 x 200 GB Seagate SATA 300 in RAID 1

With the default Vista Ultimate installed drivers we ended up with the following when we first ran the Windows System Assessment Tool:

The assessment failed. We could not get anywhere with it out of the box.

Off to Intel's site for the DQ965GF motherboard's updated drivers.

After the download and install, we reran the Windows System Assessment Tool and we received what is, to me, a rather impressive result for an onboard video chip:


The onboard GMA 3000 series graphics ran a 3.9 score for Vista Aero and a 3.7 score for 3D Graphics.

Considering the ATI X1300 PCI-E, a fully independent video card, ran a 2.8/3.0 on Vista, the score is pretty good.

We then went ahead and installed an ATI FireMV 2200 PCI-E low profile video card. The components are stuffed into an Antec Minuet II chassis for ease of carrying around to clients to demonstrate Vista and Office 2007.

With the stock drivers picked up by Vista we ended up with the following:


A fairly poor Graphics score of 2.1 and a 3D Graphics score of 3.1. Not really too good.

The card was purchased to work with the D945GTP board if we could ever get it going with Vista and realized that the onboard Aero performance was nil, as in it wouldn't run.

In a pinch, such as the need for low profile, the FireMV 2200 will work, but a higher end low profile card would be needed for anything beyond the pedestrian Office and IE type usage.

Here is a Quick List of Intel's Desktop Motherboards.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

Vista Aero Performance Rating - ATI X1300 & X850

I realize that there are a number of variables for hardware performance.

However, here is my experience with a couple of different systems and their graphics performance as rated by the Windows Vista video hardware assessment for Graphics (Desktop performance for Windows Aero) and Gaming Graphics (3D business and gaming graphics performance):

• P4 650 3.4 GHz. HT
• Intel D925XCEV
• 4 GB RAM
• 320 GB Seagate SATA 300 (2) RAID 1
• ATI X850 Pro PCI-E

The above system's Windows Vista 32bit Video score for Graphics and Gaming Graphics: 4.8

• Intel E6400 2.13 GHz.
• Intel DQ965GF
• 2 GB RAM
• 320 GB Seagate SATA 300 (2) RAID 1
• ATI X1300 Pro PCI-E

The above system's Windows Vista 32bit Video initial score for Graphics and Gaming Graphics: 3.0

For the second system, I went and downloaded and installed ATI's latest drivers for Vista 32bit. I re-ran the assessment and the score ended up lower! The score with the ATI drivers was: 2.8

I rolled back the video driver and re-ran the assessment again. The proper Microsoft WDDM driver was there as it was before I installed the ATI driver.

The damage was done, the score came out at 2.8 again. I wasn't about to go in and clean everything out to bump the score up a whole two tenths.

Our E6400 system client was happy with the overall performance increase they experienced with this particular upgrade. They were originally running a P4 2.8 GHz. with on board video. We upgraded their hardware to the above E6400 configuration, their OS to Windows Vista Business, and their Office to 2007.

The P4 650 is my home based system.

For system builders, video performance on Vista may be an important consideration, and perhaps should become one of the key questions that the client gets asked when planning a hardware upgrade, whether partial or a whole new box, in preparation for Vista.

This example also goes to show that a much more powerful CPU will not make up for a slower performing video card when it comes to Windows Aero and 3D performance!

Happy system building!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists