Me and My MX7515

Hi People!

I wanted to introduce myself and ask a few questions. My name is Newman and I'm an educator and student in Wilmington, NC.

Based on your suggestions and information, I bought a 7515 at BestBuy last week. I brought in my 5310 eMachines and they just laughed! Busted fans, bad wireless, heat problems, etc. So they junked it out and I shopped around and found the 7515.

So I hope to use these resource to figure out the machine and get the inside scoop.

A couple of thoughts and questions:

1) Are Omega drivers just good for gaming or should "non-gamers" use them? What sort of real world improvements do you see?

2) What about that extra partition for recovery. Should I erase that or keep it. My other machine didn't have that. Could I use that as a place for my pagefile? Photoshop scratch disk?

3) I love quiet computers. The trick I used with the 5310 was a software CPU governor (SpeedSwitch) that limited the Top speed of the CPU. Is anyone using a governor with these computers? And what other tips do you have for keeping the computer fans settled down.

4) And are there any MUST DOs for initial setup of the 7515.

Enough... okay, thanks for reading and I'm looking forward to hanging out

Pulp and AngelofProgress - thanks for the advice and info on the 7515.

cheers,
Newman

 

Welcome to the forum!
Congratulations on your purchase! It's a wonderful machine.

1) I'd get them anyways.. can't hurt
2) I'd keep it for recovery.. You'll find that it's quite helpful. You can always get an external hard drive if you run out of space.
3) I don't have any advice on this.. I actually like a computer that can make some noise once and a while. I like "white noise."
4) I've heard that the 7515 comes with recovery disks, but check if it really does. If it doesn't, there should be some blank CD-Rs in the box. That is all that I can think of.

 

Thanks Hellmanns!

I wonder about the settings for the Graphics Card, CPU driver, etc....

What is Cool and Quiet? PowerNow?
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_9706,00.html

----> Is anyone using these utilities? Which are good and which are ****e?

I thought these things came with the computer, but I don't see them anywhere.

How are you using these functions / features?

just curious,
Newman

 

Cool and Quiet makes the processor clock to a lower speed when you arn't doing much. This help save battery life. Powernow does the same thing only with the graphics chip.

Some people have seen problems with the programs throttling back up to full power when you need it. If you need a lot of battery, use these functions. If you don't need battery power...go ahead and disable these.

 

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_10220_10221^964,00.html

 

So PowerNow is working in this notebook. The driver is throttling the processor - if I want to see it or have it explained, I should download the dashboard utility. Seems fair enough.

Anyone using this Dashboard? Any magic settings, stuff you have learned by trial and error and don't mind sharing with us?

AngelofProgress -How do you disable PowerNow? Is it only through the Power Control panel and you do it with Dashboard...

thanks again for the help,
nsl

 

I found a link about the catalyst drivers
http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html

Anyone using these drivers?

 

I am using the new 5.9 Catalyst and it works fine. Omegas are OK too, but they are not supported.

 

Thanks Lewdvig - cool name.

BTW, are you using the control panel or the control center app? I'm also wondering what performance improvements there are - I can guess that benchmarks show that the catalyst "go to 11" (spinal tap), but what about for the rest of us. Any real world improvement -

The ATI website http://www.ati.com/products/catalyst/index.html - has little to say about it (wierd, no?) just 'performance, stability, innovative features, and incredible visual quality' blah blah blah.

Anyway, just asking...

The computer is doing great. The noise is much less when on the battery - web surfing rarely spins up the harddrive and fan / fans.

Last night I went thru and cleaned out some processes running using info found here - http://www.overclockersclub.com/guides/windows_xp_services_2.php

got my tasks down to 23 ... Couldn't figure how to uninstall / remove from automatic start up pdvdserv.exe - so I just deleted it. I think it control IR remote for PowerDVD. I don't have an IR port, do I?

I finally loaded up my 7515 with my Firefox extensions, and the place feels like home..

PS: I think Mantis85 is cool!

 

Anyone use / know about PowerPlay in the ATI control panel?

I found this post
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=1154817&postcount=274

This user says to change to balanced to get a cooler, more quiet computer.... I'll try it.

And another thing AMD processor driver - mine is version 1.1 - Is it hard / worthwhile to upgrade? What other drivers should / could be upgraded? Right now I'm thinking of updating the graphics card driver to Catalyst and the processor driver.

okay - - - that's it for tonight... :noisyfan: