AMD64 X2 4800 multitasking issues

[fluxquantum]

hi everyone,

i've been posting a lot lately regarding my new processor. i got my cpu last wednesday and have formatted my pc and reinstalled windows 3 times already. i managed to get a crash free setup at the follow settings:

did not install AMD driver, optimizer, or XP patch since these would crash my system. uninstalled each one and system is stable now. using latest nForce 4 chipset drivers but did not install IDE drivers. using 84.21 WHQL drivers for video.

cpu: 270 x 10 = 2700 @ 1.4125v
ram: 270 DDR540 @ 2.7v CAS 3-3-2-7
PSU: measured 12 volt rail with multimeter and holds steady at about 12.14 during heavy load.
temps: idle 36C and load 48C.

memtest86+: 20 hours with no errors
Prime95, SP2004: 20 hours with no errors, ran 2 instances to test each core
SuperPi: ran 2 instances to test each core with no errors
3dmark2000: 24721
3dmark2001: 28842
3dmark2003: 17689
3dmark2005: 8462
3dmark2006: 5664

played battlefield 2 for 8 hours with absolutely no crashes or glitches. smooth as glass

okay, everything seems to be fine except when i go to multitask. i have even set affinity for each application and i still have an issue where the pc will temporarily freeze and then resume activity. for example, are any of you X2 owners able to play several instances of quicktime, alt+tab out of battlefield2, play media player, etc? seems as if my hard drive is bottlenecking my system during these tasks. i am able to hear lots of disk activity during heavy multitasking. running multiple instances of quicktime will really test my system. it will run smooth for a short time and then the video will get choppy or freeze. do you guys experience the same?

 

[Mr Fox]

Originally posted by: fluxquantum
hi everyone,

i've been posting a lot lately regarding my new processor. i got my cpu last wednesday and have formatted my pc and reinstalled windows 3 times already. i managed to get a crash free setup at the follow settings:

did not install AMD driver, optimizer, or XP patch since these would crash my system. uninstalled each one and system is stable now. using latest nForce 4 chipset drivers but did not install IDE drivers. using 84.21 WHQL drivers for video.

cpu: 270 x 10 = 2700 @ 1.4125v
ram: 270 DDR540 @ 2.7v CAS 3-3-2-7
PSU: measured 12 volt rail with multimeter and holds steady at about 12.14 during heavy load.
temps: idle 36C and load 48C.

memtest86+: 20 hours with no errors
Prime95, SP2004: 20 hours with no errors, ran 2 instances to test each core
SuperPi: ran 2 instances to test each core with no errors
3dmark2000: 24721
3dmark2001: 28842
3dmark2003: 17689
3dmark2005: 8462
3dmark2006: 5664

played battlefield 2 for 8 hours with absolutely no crashes or glitches. smooth as glass

okay, everything seems to be fine except when i go to multitask. i have even set affinity for each application and i still have an issue where the pc will temporarily freeze and then resume activity. for example, are any of you X2 owners able to play several instances of quicktime, alt+tab out of battlefield2, play media player, etc? seems as if my hard drive is bottlenecking my system during these tasks. i am able to hear lots of disk activity during heavy multitasking. running multiple instances of quicktime will really test my system. it will run smooth for a short time and then the video will get choppy or freeze. do you guys experience the same?

Glad to Hear you are having minimal Issues !!



It sounds like Now you need to tweak your Pagefile... and you should be good to go.


Go : Control Panel/System/Advanced tab/Performance/Settings/Advanced/Virtual memory/Change/Custom Size/3070 Initial Size 4092 Max.

Back out saying "ok" to all... Let me know if that helps !

 

[fluxquantum]

Originally posted by: Mr Fox

Originally posted by: fluxquantum
hi everyone,

i've been posting a lot lately regarding my new processor. i got my cpu last wednesday and have formatted my pc and reinstalled windows 3 times already. i managed to get a crash free setup at the follow settings:

did not install AMD driver, optimizer, or XP patch since these would crash my system. uninstalled each one and system is stable now. using latest nForce 4 chipset drivers but did not install IDE drivers. using 84.21 WHQL drivers for video.

cpu: 270 x 10 = 2700 @ 1.4125v
ram: 270 DDR540 @ 2.7v CAS 3-3-2-7
PSU: measured 12 volt rail with multimeter and holds steady at about 12.14 during heavy load.
temps: idle 36C and load 48C.

memtest86+: 20 hours with no errors
Prime95, SP2004: 20 hours with no errors, ran 2 instances to test each core
SuperPi: ran 2 instances to test each core with no errors
3dmark2000: 24721
3dmark2001: 28842
3dmark2003: 17689
3dmark2005: 8462
3dmark2006: 5664

played battlefield 2 for 8 hours with absolutely no crashes or glitches. smooth as glass

okay, everything seems to be fine except when i go to multitask. i have even set affinity for each application and i still have an issue where the pc will temporarily freeze and then resume activity. for example, are any of you X2 owners able to play several instances of quicktime, alt+tab out of battlefield2, play media player, etc? seems as if my hard drive is bottlenecking my system during these tasks. i am able to hear lots of disk activity during heavy multitasking. running multiple instances of quicktime will really test my system. it will run smooth for a short time and then the video will get choppy or freeze. do you guys experience the same?

Glad to Hear you are having minimal Issues !!



It sounds like Now you need to tweak your Pagefile... and you should be good to go.


Go : Control Panel/System/Advanced tab/Performance/Settings/Advanced/Virtual memory/Change/Custom Size/3070 Initial Size 4092 Max.

Back out saying "ok" to all... Let me know if that helps !

good day mr. fox. thanks for your reply. my page file is currently set to 3070 min and max. i'll go ahead and modify it per your advice. will update you on the results. also i use raxco perfect disk to defrag. i defrag both the system files and page file.

 

[fluxquantum]

i'm back. that seems to have alleviated some of the bottleneck but i'm not totally content. would upgrading my hard drive solve this or is this a memory issue?

 

[Capt Caveman]

Your hard drive should be fine. From my experience, I've always had good success with a fixed 2048mb page file. You shouldn't need a page file any larger. Keeping it at a fixed sized will eliminate the possible defragmentation that can occur.

 

[fluxquantum]

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
Your hard drive should be fine. From my experience, I've always had good success with a fixed 2048mb page file. You shouldn't need a page file any larger. Keeping it at a fixed sized will eliminate the possible defragmentation that can occur.

do you put your pagefile on the same drive as your OS or on a separate drive?

 

[Viditor]

Originally posted by: fluxquantum

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman
Your hard drive should be fine. From my experience, I've always had good success with a fixed 2048mb page file. You shouldn't need a page file any larger. Keeping it at a fixed sized will eliminate the possible defragmentation that can occur.

do you put your pagefile on the same drive as your OS or on a separate drive?

Everyone's different, but I have a seperate partition for my pagefile...it speeds things up a few percent.

 

[customcoms]

http://www.techspot.com/tweaks/memory-winxp/memory-4.shtml

In theory and in real world usage, I doubt you'll see an increase in performance if your page file is on the same hd but in a different partition-its still accessing the same disk!!!

The best is a seperate, equally fast hd. It is slower to have your main HD be SATA and then put your pasge file on an ATA-100 (IDE) drive, than it is for them to be on the same disk. I have personally tested this, and the difference is NOTICABLE!

 

[Griswold]

Originally posted by: customcoms

The best is a seperate, equally fast hd. It is slower to have your main HD be SATA and then put your pasge file on an ATA-100 (IDE) drive, than it is for them to be on the same disk. I have personally tested this, and the difference is NOTICABLE!

Somehow I doubt this, considering the possible bandwith of ATA-100. There was most likely some other issue that made it look like ATA is the problem here - maybe having an optical drive on the same channel as the ATA HDD?

Anyway, to the original poster:

You did some extensive stability testing, but if your machine crashed anyway or crashed when installing certain drivers, then it's a good hint that your overclock is not stable after all - does the same happen at default clockspeeds?

As far as HDD performance goes, the drive itself seems adequate. For optimal pagefile performance, putting the swapfile on a seperate HDD will definitely yield better results. Or take it one step further and split the pagefile up into two chunks (2x1.5GB in your case), each one on its seperate physical disk. Windows will utilize both portions of the swapfile equally (can check that with perfmon).