Opteron Setup (Elliot?)

[derijones]

Hi Folks

Elliot - reason I've added your name on the end, there's someone called Elliot on the AMD/Tyan pages I've Googled who has a remarkably similar doggedness about getting the best performance out of a bit of gear and I hoped it'd be you, apologies if not!

I'm looking to re install Win XP on the computer - after 18 months of abuse it's getting a bit ropey (like won't shut down without hitting the main power switch...) and it could do with cleaning out all the clutter, new drivers etc.

It's a Tyan Thunder K8W 2885 motherboard with twin 248 processors and a Quadro 980XGL graphics card, 2Gb RAM (4 x 512Mb Corsair CMX512RE-3200LL ECC registered).

Anyone know of the best setup for the BIOS (V2.05) with regards to getting the best out of memory and processing speed.

On another note, I've decided not to go for Win XP64 as I hear that it runs slower than XP32 (Maya 7, Solidworks 2004, VX 10.94, Photoshop mostly) - with the 3Gb switch enabled and an extra 1Gb of RAM, should be fine?

Any tips on setting up XP and getting faster performance gratefully received - I've got the stuff at:

http://www.tweakhounds.com

 

but all others would be cool.

Thanks

Deri