a64 rustiness

[Spikesoldier]

i installed an x-fi soundcard yesterday and took an enormous (visable) hit in fps during gaming, i believe my cpu is beginning to show it's age.
I am running an A64 3000+ winchester, at 2.5ghz.

with the new price cuts, i would likely get an X2 3800+ as a drop in replacement, and maybe get another gig of ram, I have one gig at the moment.

my motherboard is an Epox 9NDA3J, based on the NF3 ultra chipset, and i am running 2x 512mb sticks in dual channel.

heres the question: i recall you cant populate all 4 dimms and maintain the 1T command rate timing, but i am unsure if this was limited by the chipset (NF3 series) or the integrated memory core on the earlier revision A64's. (winchester and earlier)

would you advise running 4 dimms on an NF3? what are your experiences? what kind of overclocks have you been getting on the new batch or newest stepping of the X2 3800+(939)?

thanks

 

[Bobthelost]

The 2T command rate is due to the on die controller, it's true for all 939 chips as far as i know.

4 sticks will be cheaper than buying 2x1gb.

An AMD @ 2.5Ghz should not be suffering from the XFI. I think you've got something else going wrong there.

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: Spikesoldier
i installed an x-fi soundcard yesterday and took an enormous (visable) hit in fps during gaming, i believe my cpu is beginning to show it's age.
I am running an A64 3000+ winchester, at 2.5ghz.
......

Was it a game that was cpu limited? A 2.5Ghz A64 is typically not the bottleneck since newer games are more gpu limited. Also games don't typically make use of both cores and a 3800+ only runs at 2.0Ghz.

 

[Aluvus]

Did you install all the software that came with the X-Fi, or just the sound card drivers?

 

[Spikesoldier]

yeah being lazy i just figured it was creative's crappy drivers that were bogging my system, i mean even idle in windows, i would see anywhere from a 50-65% CPU utilization by some unknown process, not listed in taskmgr.

i resolved this problem by uninstalling it and moving to another PCI slot, i should have slapped myself for putting it into the bottom PCI slot (farthest from AGP slot), i figured that the AGP and that particular PCI slot were probably having IRQ conflicts or something. well its all resolved, but the true questions remain:

1. 4 dimms ok on NF3 even with new CPU core revision?

2. how are your X2 3800+ overclocks on recent steppings?

3. i've never owned anything with dual cores before, not even Intel HT. any big difference coming from single core even at same frequency?

 

[Zap]

1) For the most part 4 DIMMs means 2T, but besides a measurable difference in Sandra, I don't think it amounts to much elsewhere.

2) Mine's not very recent, but does 2.4-2.5GHz pretty easily on stock volts.

3) I went from socket 754 to 939 so doubled the memory bandwidth and doubled the number of cores while keeping the GHz roughly the same. Well, system feels... just the way it did. Oh, I also went to PCI-E and video cards have made a difference, but for my usage patterns I have noticed no difference.