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My A64 3000+ feels slower than my old P4 2.4B rig

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whattaguy

Senior member
I just put together this rig and haven't had the chance to really optimize everything yet, but all desktop apps seem slower. Windows takes about a minute to load up, and IE seems a bit slow...all of this compared to my P4 2.4B (533fsb) processor.
Is this a normal thing with A64's?

FYI, I am a first time AMD owner after owning my P4 rig for 2 years.

I thought the AMD64 would blow away my Intel chip.

My system:

DFI LAN Party UT NF3
A64 3000+ @ stock
1 gig DDR PC3200 Patriot (2-3-2-5)
ATI 9800pro (MSI version with 360 core)
2 160gig PATA HDDs (8mb cache)
1 40gig PATA HDD (4mb cache)
1 60gig PATA HDD (4mb cache)
1 Promise IDE controller card
1 Plextor CDRW (on contoller card)
1 NEC DVDRW (on controller card)
2 Aardvark Direct Pro 2496 sound cards (www.aardvarkaudio.com if you want info)

Replaced this:

ASUS P4T533-C
P4 2.4B @2.66GHz
1 gig RDRAM PC800 40ns
All else equal
 
Check the power connector, make sure its plugged in. 😛😉

You might want to benchmark it to see how it the system compares to comparable configurations, and try to deduce from there. Make sure temps are normal as well.
 
My temps stay around 49-50 deg C even before and after light gaming. What benchmarks do you recommend?

I reinstalled windows and all applicable drivers before I did anything else. Is there a particular order that drivers are supposed to be installed?
 
chipset drivers. But just for grins, run 3dmark05 on both with the same video card and see how the scores compare. Post back with results please.
 
Building off of Markfw900's suggestion, which UDP did you install for your mobo (provided you installed one)?

Also, you might want to change your T(RAS) setting to 11, even Anand has found that NF systems are fastest with a T(RAS) of 10 or 11 with 11 being the fastest on 6 different NF2 systems now.
 
Originally posted by: Megatomic
Building off of Markfw900's suggestion, which UDP did you install for your mobo (provided you installed one)?

Also, you might want to change your T(RAS) setting to 11, even Anand has found that NF systems are fastest with a T(RAS) of 10 or 11 with 11 being the fastest on 6 different NF2 systems now.
Click to expand...

Can you define "UDP" and "T(RAS)" for me?

My first 3DMark03 was a 3999 compared to my P4's 5200, so I know something's definitely wrong.

Thanks.
 
Ouch, that 3dmark3 score is bad. I have a comparible system and I get better marks on 3dmark5 than your 3dmark3 score. And 3dmark3 should be several thousand higher than mark5.


There has to be some configuration setup thats botching you.

I hope your OS is on your faster HDD. Are you using a seperate HDD for your page file?

Did you go jumperfree or did you configure the jumpers?

Scary ----> 1 Promise IDE controller card, I've had nothing but headaches with Promise cards over the years.
 
Originally posted by: Kazrath
Ouch, that 3dmark3 score is bad. I have a comparible system and I get better marks on 3dmark5 than your 3dmark3 score. And 3dmark3 should be several thousand higher than mark5.


There has to be some configuration setup thats botching you.

I hope your OS is on your faster HDD. Are you using a seperate HDD for your page file?

Did you go jumperfree or did you configure the jumpers?

Scary ----> 1 Promise IDE controller card, I've had nothing but headaches with Promise cards over the years.
Click to expand...

Yes, my OS is on my faster HDD.

IDE 1 Master and OS - 8mb HDD
IDE 1 Slave - 4mb HDD backup
IDE 2 Master - 8mb HDD file storage
IDE 2 Slave - 4mb DD backup

So, yes, I configured my jumpers to master and slave. I'm assuming jumper free means cable select. Is that right?
The only thing that was different between this config and my old system config was that I had the optical drives slaved to the 8mb HDD's, and the 4mb HDD's on the controller card.

Dave,

I haven't scanned for any of those yet, but I never had problems with that before. My Linksys router does a pretty good job for me. I'll definitely try it though. Thanks.

Effee,

What's cool and quiet?
 
are you running all of your HDDs off that controller card? if so THAT is why its slower especially for booting up

I have one but run the main windows drive off the mobo, its still slower because the OS has to go through it and get the volume info of teh drives on every boot, however once its all loaded its fine
 
Originally posted by: whattaguy
Originally posted by: Megatomic
Building off of Markfw900's suggestion, which UDP did you install for your mobo (provided you installed one)?

Also, you might want to change your T(RAS) setting to 11, even Anand has found that NF systems are fastest with a T(RAS) of 10 or 11 with 11 being the fastest on 6 different NF2 systems now.
Click to expand...

Can you define "UDP" and "T(RAS)" for me?

My first 3DMark03 was a 3999 compared to my P4's 5200, so I know something's definitely wrong.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
UDP is short for Unified Driver Package, it's what NVidia calls the driver package for their NF line of chipsets.

T(RAS) is one of your memory timing settings. It is found in your motherboard's BIOS. You currently have it set to 5 (per your opening post in this thread). 10 or 11 will net you higher memory bandwidth and thus better overall system performance.

 
Originally posted by: whattaguy
No. All my HDD's are on the board's IDE channels. The optical drives are on the controller card.
Click to expand...

humm, are you useing Nvidias IDE drivers of Windows?

what are your DMA settings?
 
Originally posted by: Anubis
Originally posted by: whattaguy
No. All my HDD's are on the board's IDE channels. The optical drives are on the controller card.
Click to expand...

humm, are you useing Nvidias IDE drivers of Windows?

what are your DMA settings?
Click to expand...

I am using all the drivers provided by DFI except for my 9800pro and my soundcards.

DMA is enabled on all drives.
 
Regarding M$ vs. NV SW-IDE drivers...

I get far better performance from NVs SW-IDE drivers and have since the 2.5s came out. 2.7 was released with the leaked 6.11 UDPs and I have heard that they are better than the 2.5s. I'll be trying them out soon.
 
Wow! This is all news to me. My P4 was all plug and chug and worked fine.

Thank you for being patient with my ignorance.

How do I switch from M$ to NV SW-IE drivers?
 
Originally posted by: Megatomic
Regarding M$ vs. NV SW-IDE drivers...

I get far better performance from NVs SW-IDE drivers and have since the 2.5s came out. 2.7 was released with the leaked 6.11 UDPs and I have heard that they are better than the 2.5s. I'll be trying them out soon.
Click to expand...

mabye i should try them again, i went back to the MS once because when i was useing the NV ones on my Shuttle AN35N Ultra 400 my opticial drives were stuck in PIO mode and i could not enable DMA on my HDDs till i uninstalled them
 
When you install the UDPs you will be asked if you want to install the SW-IDE driver. You may have opted for "no" when you installed the drivers the first time as you didn't know what it was asking. The SW-IDE drivers got a bad rap last year/earlier this year as they caused some major problems. 2.5 and later are safe and fast. CPU utilization during heavy disk use scenarios is reduced, too. I like that side benefit as I'm usually doing other stuff when copying from one disk to another, etc...

 
Originally posted by: Anubis
Originally posted by: Megatomic
Regarding M$ vs. NV SW-IDE drivers...

I get far better performance from NVs SW-IDE drivers and have since the 2.5s came out. 2.7 was released with the leaked 6.11 UDPs and I have heard that they are better than the 2.5s. I'll be trying them out soon.
Click to expand...

mabye i should try them again, i went back to the MS once because when i was useing the NV ones on my Shuttle AN35N Ultra 400 my opticial drives were stuck in PIO mode and i could not enable DMA on my HDDs till i uninstalled them
Click to expand...
Do you remember which version this was? I've been using the SW-IDE driver for a long while now. 2 PATA HDDs and 2 optical drives all with maxed out UDMA settings (UDMA 6 for the HDDs and UDMA 2 for the opticals). Burning with Nero 5.5.10 has never been a problem. And according to HDTACH I get about 3-4% CPU utilization. I never even see that much if I try to monitor it with Task Manager while ripping CDs to disk or something else disk intensive.

 
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