Dual core performance increase

[VanTheMan]

I had my 3200 OCed to 2500 Mhz and I'm running the X2 3800 at stock speeds. I was expecting to see SOME kind of noticeable (not just benchmarks/on paper) performance increase, but everything seems to be exactly the same. I installed the AMD drivers for the processor and I ran the AMD Optimizer that adds /usepmtimer. I also added the Throttle key in my registry. I've done all kinds of Googling on it and those are the only things I came up with. I'm thinking about doing a fresh install of XP since it's been about a year.

I'm mainly playing BF2 and LotRO right now. I haven't played BF2 since installing the new processor, but LotRO seems to be the same or maybe even a little bit slower.

What else can I try before I do a fresh install of XP? Thanks.

 

[MarcVenice]

Erm nothing? You do realize most things aren't optimized for dualcores, right? Try encoding something, you'll see an improvement. But windows, BF2, Lotro, are all going to play the same if not slower because of the slower clock speed. Up that x2 3800+ to 2.4-2.6ghz and things should be just fine. Oh and you should notice an improvement in multitasking. I suggest adding 1gb of ram to your system btw. That'll SURELY help in LOTRO and BF2, two memory hogging games.

 

[biostud]

overclock it. The extra core will only benefit when multitasking a lot or for software specially written to take advantage of multiple processors.

 

[VanTheMan]

Crap, I just noticed that I've had the new processor overclocked since I installed it because my motherboard kept the old settings I had for the 3200. So the X2 3800 has been running at 2500 MHz the whole time and still feels the same/slower. I'd like to get another gig of RAM, but the only way it really makes sense is to switch to 2x1GB. I currently have 2x512, so I'd have to buy 2x1GB of DDR400 and that stuff is ridiculously expensive. Well, at least I only paid $58 for this processor.

Edit: Oh, I guess that's post 1000 for me. Memorable...

 

[Dravic]

you are ram starved for a game like BF2 if you ar playing larger 32+ person servers. BF2 cant eat as much as 1.7 GB or more of ram ona busy server.


get more ram if you can, buy i used from the FS/FT forums here maybe. The benifit from dual core will be that you no longer have to turn off your other apps while gaming as long as you have the ram to support keeping all those apps open. not even dual cores can save you from having to relay on paging to the swap file.

you can often go with 4x512 you just may have to use 2t timings, the improvement of haing 2GB of ram will offset the small memory perfoamnce hit from goign to 2t.

 

[MarcVenice]

Yeah I went with 4x512mb as well. My pc is smooth as lightning, really. The memory will probably be underclocked, running at 333mhz, but when you overclock and you give it 0.1 or 0.2v extra it will at near 400 speeds anyways. And if it doesn't, the extra 1gb of ram will offset the small performance loss. athlons aren't memory bandwith starved anyways...

 

[betasub]

smooth as lightning ?

 

[VanTheMan]

Betasub, you have obviously never felt lightning. It's really very smooth... Thanks guys, I guess I'll look into getting another 2x512MB of RAM and see if that helps.

 

[daveybrat]

If you really want proof, time how long it takes to rip and encode a dvd on your old cpu and then try the same on your new dual-core.

Or buy a copy of supreme commander and try playing it on both cpu's.........trust me, you'll see the difference

 

[Dravic]

Originally posted by: VanTheMan
Betasub, you have obviously never felt lightning. It's really very smooth... Thanks guys, I guess I'll look into getting another 2x512MB of RAM and see if that helps.

i would try 2t timings first, and if that didnt work try ddr333 settings.

 

[Munky]

Unless you use an application that is designed to use multiple cpu cores you will not see any benefit from such cpu's. And, as it happens, only some applications, like those used in image editing, movie encoding and 3D modeling, are designed that way. Most games see little if any benefit from dual cores.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: munky
Most games see little if any benefit from dual cores.

Well, that all depends on whether the game was written from the beginning to be SMP-capable, or just "patched". The few games that are natively SMP-capable actually take advantage of the additional core: E4300 vs. 2.4 Ghz A64 3800 single core comparison in Supreme Commander.

As you can see, the E4300 gets ~3x the framerates as the 600 Mhz faster single core A64, although each core of the E4300 is slightly slower than the single core of the 3800.

 

[SolMiester]

Did the O/S install the ACPI HAL for multi processor PC after you slipped the cpu in?

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: SolMiester
Did the O/S install the ACPI HAL for multi processor PC after you slipped the cpu in?

Definitely worth checking this in Device Manager/Computer - should read ACPI Multiprocessor PC (and not ACPI Uniprocessor PC). Task Manager won't show more than one CPU Usage graph if you are still running the ACPI Uniprocessor HAL.

 

[VanTheMan]

Yeah, ACPI Multiprocessor PC is there.

 

[dflynchimp]

since the A64 X2 isn't a revolutionary overhaul of the single core tech, you won't see any noticeable improvements unless you're multitasking or doing heavy encoding work.

 

[nyker96]

I think all the single task stuff don't show no improvements at all, but when it comes to encoding, for instance, my older 2.4Ghz sempty encodes a movie to xvid like 3 hrs, I can do the same job on my 2.9 E2160 for about 1 hr. So there you go, there's a pretty big improvements when going dual core. I think for X2s you don't get as big a boost about I'd say at least you get close to 2x power in encoding films or graphics related stuff which are optimized for dual/multi cores.