Just Built New System Need Some Help!

[Nick119]

Ok first off I want to start off by saying that I've heard excellent things about the community here and i'm positive you guys will be able to lead me in the right direction. I also want to thank everyone in advance for any help you provide me.

Ok down to the problem:

2 Days ago I just built a brand new system from scratch. Here are the specs:

Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD MOBO.
GPU: ASUS EAX800XL/2DTV/256 Radeon X800XL 256MB DDR PCI Express x16 Video Card.
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Manchester 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core.
Memory: Kingston HyperX 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) ECC Registered Dual Channel Kit System Memory.
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JD 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150.
PSU: Antec SmartPower 2.0 SP-500 ATX12V 500W Power Supply.
OS: Windows XP SP2

I figured that this system would run superb with all the latest games (HL2, CS:S) and I would get high scores with 3DMark05. Apparently not. The system runs CS:S pretty well but there is a certain chop to it and its not smooth. I just ran 3dmark05's cpu test and got a score of 2703 and I see that other people with similar setups are getting 2 times plus better results. I know I have to have done something wrong somewhere. Any help is greatly APPRECIATED.

Thanks a million in advance. Any other information you need frrom me let me know!

Thank you

-Nick

 

[Nick119]

Forgot to add that I have this setup on 2 Twin 19inch Samsung SyncMaster 915n LCDs

 

[orion23]

Have you installed the latest Nvidia Nforce 4 drivers version 6.70? LINK
Latest ATI Catalyst drivers? LINK
AMD's X2 Processor Drivers? LINK
Windows XP Dual Core Fix? LINK

 

[Nick119]

I will do all this and check back right away. Thank you sooo much...

 

[Nick119]

OK, Slight improvements but still not nearly as good as a score as i should get with this system. Any other ideas? Thanks a milllion

 

[Blake]

I am getting about 6000 for a score on 3DMark05 with an MSI 939 socket board and AMD 4000+ with an ATI X800XT Platinum AGP card. I was looking at a review of March 23, 2005 on Tom's Hardware of the Asus A8N-SLI Premium. With a single NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT and an AMD FX-55 they were getting 3500 to 3700 3DMark05 scores. It wasn't until they used two NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT's in dual mode that they started getting 6400 to 6600 3DMark05 scores. It may be you need to go with two graphics cards to get the high performance out of the board.

I would run the free CPU-Z program to see if your dual-core AMD is showing up correctly and to see if the memory is set at the recommended timings. I'd say your 3DMark05 score is about right with the one graphics card.

 

[Nick119]

Thats horrible then if thats the case. Because its a fairly expensive board. Have to jet now I will be on later. If anyone else has anything else to say please let me know. I will post my memory timings later because i really thing that might be the problem. Thanks a ton guys!

 

[rivan]

Originally posted by: Blake
I am getting about 6000 for a score on 3DMark05 with an MSI 939 socket board and AMD 4000+ with an ATI X800XT Platinum AGP card. I was looking at a review of March 23, 2005 on Tom's Hardware of the Asus A8N-SLI Premium. With a single NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT and an AMD FX-55 they were getting 3500 to 3700 3DMark05 scores. It wasn't until they used two NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT's in dual mode that they started getting 6400 to 6600 3DMark05 scores. It may be you need to go with two graphics cards to get the high performance out of the board.

I would run the free CPU-Z program to see if your dual-core AMD is showing up correctly and to see if the memory is set at the recommended timings. I'd say your 3DMark05 score is about right with the one graphics card.

I'm not sure why he's talking about 3DMark scores with a 6600GT - it's got no bearing on your issues, imo. I guess he saw the SLI motherboard and...well who knows.

You should be seeing far better scores/performance from that setup. I'm at about 6200 with an AGP X850XT and a much slower processor (xp3000+).

If you're certain all the drivers are in order (check for any major BIOS changes as well here.) try bumping a revision back on the video drivers.

Your motherboard isn't set to enable SLI, by any chance is it? I don't know how SLI motherboards react when incorrectly configured for SLI, but double check that.

Also, is your memory correctly installed and showing as running dual channel?

 

[Nick119]

Thats something I want to figure out. Im not sure if it is running dual channel. I wasn't sure what slots to put it in. How Do I check. I'll post some screenshots of my settings in CPU-Z maybe its something obvious to you guys that i dont know about.

 

[Nick119]

Here are the screenshots of my CPU-Z:

http://www.element-119.com/ss1.gif
http://www.element-119.com/ss2.gif
http://www.element-119.com/ss3.gif
http://www.element-119.com/ss4.gif
http://www.element-119.com/ss5.gif
http://www.element-119.com/ss6.gif
http://www.element-119.com/ss7.gif

also heres the excel document that contains the results to my 3dmark tests.. it also contains a lot of information about my computer if you want to check it out..

http://www.element-119.com/results.xls


Thank you guys so much for taking the time to help me out..

 

[rivan]

Actually, I misread your initial post and thought you were talking about the regular 3dmark score - the 6k I mentioned was *not* my CPU score, but rather the 3dmark05 score.

After looking at some comparable machines, there indeed seems to be something wrong.

CPU-z shows your memory to be in dual channel mode, in ss5.gif. Are the modules in A1 and B1 as proscribed on page 2-11 of your manual? They (I think) are the two blue slots.

Did you follow orion23's links and install the AMD x2 drivers and XP dual core fix?

I think everyone's also been assuming that since this is a new build, the likelihood of something software eating cycles wouldn't be an issue, but it's something else you might want to look at. It looks like you've got an HP printer and a webcam installed... maybe check your running processes for anything that's getting a lot of processor usage - there's certainly enough processes running with significant memory usage... perhaps one of them's a hog. Having winamp, AIM, mcafee, Zipmanager, whatever "hpqtra08.exe" & "hpqste08.exe" are and all the other crap that's loaded is also likely not helping.

I'd try killing some of that stuff, starting with McAfee, and testing again... it might not be the culprit, but it certainly can't hurt to see where you are without them.

 

[orion23]

You should update the bios, maybe it will help. Also, now days, 2X512MB of memory isn't enough depending on what you are running at start-up time.

Your antivirus could be using a lot of memory, as well as other programs. Follow ^ his advice and kill some programs and see if it helps.

If you decide to add more RAM, keep in mind that it's recommended not to use 4X512MB, but instead to go with 2X1GB due to a limitation of the NFORCE 4 and/or AMD CPUs.

 

[Nick119]

Ok I tryed turning off a bunch of stuff while running the test. While it helped my CPU score by like 800-900 points, it didn't help my 3DMark Score at all.

Heres a link to the results: http://www.element-119.com/results2.xls

What should i use to update the bios? Asus Update?

 

[Nick119]

Ok updated the bios using Asus Update. Went through successfully to version 1008 from 1006. Also on the Asus cd rom i saw a couple of programs, AI Booster and AI Selector. I also installed nTune which has a bunch of options to tweak the settings. Any ideas?

By the way i istill get the same results from 3dMark05... no change.. I'm thinking my memory timings might be off.

 

[Nick119]

I just opened nvidia nTune for the first time and it says Warning: Your PCI clock is currently set to track the HT bus. If you adjust the clock for the HT bus, the PCI bus clock will change as well. Please consult your motherboard manual to determine how to disable the behavior before proceeding. NVIDIA is not responsible for data loss or hardware damage resulting from ignoring this warning message.

How do i got about fixing this, because this might be my problem?
Thank you guys.

 

[Nick119]

I also just noticed that under Hard Drive information in PCMark, it says
Hard Disk Information
Model WDC WD2500JD-00HBC0
Connection IDE
Capacity 238.47 GB
Bus Type ATA

and meanwhile im running a SATA connection to the motherboard. Why the hell is it not recognizing it as SATA?

heres the link to my pcmark tests: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?pcm05=156434

I can't thank you guys enough.

 

[Nick119]

At this point, I'm just so frustrated. I did everything. Installed all the updates, all the fixes and i still get stutters and chop while playing HL2. Ive done everything i can think of so far lol and no luck. I've hit a dead end and not sure what direction to go in now. All help is greatly appreciated!

 

[orion23]

You should request for this thread to be moved to the motherboard section (just PM a moderator) You will be able to reach more people there, and lots of them will probably have similar setups to yours.

 

[Nick119]

Is it safe to say that its the motherboard causing the problem or could it be the GPU? But it wouldnt hurt to move the thread to the mobo section.

 

[psmcginnis]

Just a shot in the dark, but after you did the microsoft fix for dual core processors, did you enable the fix by setting the registry value to 1?

 

[Nick119]

No I didnt.. let me try to find that article and try that. I'll let you know what happens. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Nick119]

No change with the setting the value to 1. However I did revert back video card drivers to catalyst 5.7 and it did increase my score by about 900 which is a start. But still not nearly as fast as it should be.

 

[Nick119]

Any other suggestions for this?