Load Balancing Issue on Smithfield in XP Pro.

[Kretschmer]

A few months back, the "stuttering" problem with AMD X2 processors made the tech rounds, causing quite a few consternated customers.

At around the same time, I built a Smithfield system. It was based around the 820 processor and P5LD2. The idea was to heavily overclock the build at a competitive pricepoint.

After the usual kinks and speedbumps, "Nova" was up and running. Unfortunately, the overclock was somewhat underwhelming. 500mhz, to a final tally of 3.29ghz. After breaking the 235mhz FSB barrier, I would see graphical stuttering and general issues in games. I wrote it off as a PCIe lock issue, and settled for what I could get.

Yesterday, I got the tweaking bug, again. Updated my BIOS (while my pulse was at 120; last board I buy without a backup bios!), updated my GPU drivers, and faced the magical 235mhz barrier again. The BIOS fix did nothing. While poking around ASUS support, I opened my box for the serial number and invited my X2-owning buddy over to poke around. He mentioned processor affinity (I've only played with it in passing, before). I tried setting my games to CPU "1" and fwoosh...they worked flawlessy!

Unfortunately, manually setting affinity isn't very practical, so I sought out Microsoft's unoffical fix for the issue. Linky here. It did nothing.

Unfortunately, my OEM copy of XP Pro is not supported by Microsoft, so I'm left with few options. If anyone has any ideas or the ear of a Microsoft developer, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cliff's notes:

-Processor load balancing for a Smithfield breaks down when operating in excess of 235mhz FSB.
-Official MS fix does not work.
-Additional options sought.

 

[stevty2889]

That hot fix should fix the problem, you did also do the registry edit correct? The hotfix doesn't do anything if you don't do the registry edit to enable it..there are programs you can get to set affinity for you, cant' think of any off hand since I haven't had any of the problems other people seem to get, with either my X2 or my pentium-d. Also with your overclock, you should double check to make sure you aren't throttling, because I and several others have verified that throttling kicks in at lower temps when you OC..what are you using to cool it, and what kind of load temps do you get at 3.3ghz?

 

[Markfw]

and what vcore to OC. That is key at to at what temp it throttles

 

[Kretschmer]

Hot fix doesn't do anything one way or the other. Technically, the regedit is only to disable the fix, but the fix had no effect without the registry change, with the change set to 1, and with the change set to 0.

Once stevty mentioned VCore, I played around with that a bit. At 1.4V, 3.44ghz appears to run stably in ATITool. At 3.5ghz, 1.425V was just short of graphically stable. I didn't want to push it any higher, as Smithfield is only rated for 1.4V, if I recall correctly. So right now I'm sticking with 3.44/1.4 until I work up the courage for 1.45V or find another method of attack.

Current Temps at 3.44Ghz/1.44V under max Prime95 temp load: 64-65C

At 3.3ghz/1.375V max temps were at 63-64C, all on an XP-120 and 79ish CFM fan.

 

[Kretschmer]

Interesting.

The graphics are stable when only ATITool is running, but the 3.44 overclock fails when 2 instances of prime95 are churning in the background (note; this is still solveable with manually selecting affinity.

Back at 235FSB for now.

 

[shiznit]

the hotfix works, no more stuttering for me