system upgrades
extensive testing
To ensure that all the upgrades that I carried out have not negatively affected the system in anyway and to increase its performance, I performed extensive optimisation and system testing.
First, I wanted to optimise the settings of the Random Access Memory in the BIOS. This is also known as 'overclocking'. I did this by starting up the system, entering the BIOS, going to the Advanced section and entering the Jumperfree configuration menu. Below is a photo of the original settings before optimisation:
I then adjusted the central processing unit's front side bus frequency, setting it to 215MHz (an increase of 15Mhz) in order to speed up the system's performance. Below is a snapshot of the screen showing the adjustment being done:
I then went to the performance mode menu item and set it to 'Turbo'. This also speeded up the system. See snapshot below:
By making these changes I also increased the processor's frequency.
After optimising the system's settings, I used memtest86+ v1.65 to extensively test them and check the overall stability of the system. I did this by creating a bootable floppy disk and placing the memtest86+ program on it. I then restarted the system with the floppy disk still in the drive and entered the BIOS to make the floppy drive the first on the boot priority list. Then I saved the new settings and exited the BIOS. The system then proceeded to load memtest86+.
Below is a photo of memtest86+ in action. This snapshot also proves the I have overclocked the system to increase and optimise performance. It also shows the amount I have improved the speed of the system.
The processor now has an increase in frequency of 182MHz. It now has a total frequency of 2.58 GHz, instead of 2.4GHz. The RAM has been speed has also increased from DDR400 to DRR430.
With the 2 gigabytes of RAM now installed, optimised and tested, John's system is now extremely fast and meets the requirements of the MoD specification.
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