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My new P1.5 screems on benchmarks but is a dog when in use??

W

wezal

Member
I bought a P4 1.5 gig with 256 megs of RAM, a 3D Prophet II MX video card and a 20 gig drive thinking it would scream, but my PIII 733 is faster in practical use. Both machines are running win 2000 and the P4 is a dog doing crap like taking 5 seconds to redraw a webshots background when closing an application, it can barely run Jedi Night II at 1024 X 768, takes forever to load starcraft and even tripps over videos in turbotax? The strange thing is when I run any benchmark program to find the culprit, the benchmark comes back with flying colors, far superior to my P3??? Does anyone have an idea of how to track down what is slowing me down? Thanks.

 
no offense dude but maybe a better video card would help

my p-4 1.5 out does a p-3 1000 owned by a friend so much it blows him away and hes always pestering me to let him use it during lan multiplayer games so "i won't have a distinct advantage" lol

and i'm running 4 64 mb sticks of rdram and a radeon all in one wonder go figure lol

p-4's are memory hogs but even then i average 1000 benchmarks higher than him in 3dmark 2001

and 1500 to 2500 in 3dmark 2000 depending how we set them up lol so unless your p-4 is on sdram you should be kicking the p-3's behind very badly lol

hope this helps
 
Yea, PC-133. One option I guess is just start to swap out components until things start working well? I fear the motherboard is the culprit since it is a no-name brand. I would think through that a benchmark program would catch that?
 
Why is SDRAM so bad with a P4? My stupid P4 motherboad only takes SDRAM! I guess I will be going shopping, should I go for DDR? BTW, my 3DMark2001 score is 2475 which is just above what others with P4s and mx cards are getting. Any ideas why the benchmarks are coiming out good, but real performance sucks? Thanks for the help.
 


<< taking 5 seconds to redraw a webshots background when closing an application, it can barely run Jedi Night II at 1024 X 768, takes forever to load starcraft and even tripps over videos in turbotax? >>

while it's true that sdram is the slowest platform for the p4, that doesn't explain the above issues. i've run sdram p4's with similar specs, and never had issues like those mentioned.

make sure you have the latest windows updates, and the latest drivers (particularly the video card drivers.)
 
Why is SDRAM so bad with a P4?

Because the Pentium4's architecture was designed for high memory bandwidth. When it doesn't get it (ie SDRAM) performance drops significantly.

Wezal, make sure you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers (yes, Intel has these too) for your system.
 


<< I bought a P4 1.5 gig with 256 megs of RAM, a 3D Prophet II MX video card and a 20 gig drive thinking it would scream, but my PIII 733 is faster in practical use. Both machines are running win 2000 and the P4 is a dog doing crap like taking 5 seconds to redraw a web shots background when closing an application, it can barely run Jedi Night II at 1024 X 768, takes forever to load starcraft and even tripps over videos in TurboTax? The strange thing is when I run any benchmark program to find the culprit, the benchmark comes back with flying colors, far superior to my P3??? Does anyone have an idea of how to track down what is slowing me down? Thanks. >>



All the problems you mentioned seem like I/O problems. Did you install the latest inf file and bus drivers when you installed Win2k? If not that?s probably the cause of your problem. The reason you don't see the same bad performance in benchmarks is most of them test a certain part of your computer like the CPU, memory and graphic's card but not your entire computer.



<< Why is SDRAM so bad with a P4? My stupid P4 motherboard only takes SDRAM! I guess I will be going shopping, should I go for DDR? BTW, my 3DMark2001 score is 2475 which is just above what others with P4s and mx cards are getting. Any ideas why the benchmarks are coiming out good, but real performance sucks? Thanks for the help. >>



A P4 on a SDRAM motherboard is slower then comparable system using a DDRAM or RDRAM motherboard but its not that much slower. At most there a 10-20% difference which most won't notice in day to day use unless you?re doing 3D modeling work. Check out this review from HardOCP where they compare a Asus P4B (the best P4 SDRAM motherboard) to a bunch of DDRAM motherboards, no RDRAM motherboards were tested cause Kyle's a dumbass. When equally clocked the SDRAM board is 20% slower in Quake3 and Serious Sam SE and 5% slower in Aqua Mark then the fastest DDRAM board. So a P4 + SDRAM is not a dog.
 
a P4 with SDRam certainly doesnt perform to the levels of a P4 with RDram/DDR SDram, but it isnt any 'dog' which most people stereotypically point out.

From the looks if it you certainly do have I/O problems... you might even want to get that Intel Accelerator application or maybe even consider reformatting your computer over again.
 
Isnt the 3d prophet II MX a geforce 2 MX? If thats true you definitely need a better card for gaming.
 
First, make sure your Hard Drive is a 7200rpm, second, you really especially in games are screaming for RDRAM or DDR. dexvx is correct that in office apps, there isn't a whole load of real world difference between RDRAM, DDR and SDR, but in games, SDR is a DOG. First off, is your P4 a Socket 423 or Socket 478? If it's the former, then you have quite a problem. Your mobo would not be able to upgrade to Northwood's. If your CPU is Socket 423, get a Asus P4T and Samsung PC800 RDRAM. Best option. Fastest in games, and hardly any more expensive than DDR. If you have Socket 478 P4, get Asus P4T-E or Abit Th7II and Samsung RDRAM. Good luck!!!!
 
I can't help but think the problem lies in disk-thrashing. The problems he's having is in loading programs... My system slows to a crawl while it's disk-thrashing as well. Adding extra SDRAM to MY P4 helped quite a bit. 128 was NOT enough, 384 is much nicer. 🙂
I would check how much free space is on that hard drive, and do a few hard drive benchmarks... I think that may be your culprit.
 
Am I right in saying that if the current Pentium 3 architecture made it to 1.5ghz it would whip the Pentium 4 1.5ghz if both machines were equipped with SDRAM?

As for the gaming, I agree with Wolfsraider, Get a GF4-MX or even better a GF3-Ti200 for a nice performence boost.

Corm
 
My Motherboard is a Elite P4VXMS which is a socket 423. I am updating the bios, drivers and increasing the ram to 1 gig to see if that helps. I agree with everyone on getting a new video card, which I will do in the future, but this G-force-II MX never had these problems when on my Athlon 750. I hope something works, it sucks to get a new system just to find out it is slower than your old system!

Thanks for all the input everyone!
 


<< dexvx is correct that in office apps, there isn't a whole load of real world difference between RDRAM, DDR and SDR, but in games, SDR is a DOG. >>



Athlon4all, here's the results from the HardOCP's tests I posted before:

Serious Sam SE:
MSI 845 Ultra-ARU(DDRAM) - 60fps
Asus P4B(SDRAM) - 50.8
Difference - 9.2fps

Quake III:
MSI 645 Ultra(DDRAM) - 159.1fps
Asus P4B(SDRAM) - 134fps
Difference - 25.1fps

Aqua Mark:
MSI 845 Ultra-ARU(DDRAM) - 63.3fps
Asus P4B(SDRAM) - 59.2
Difference - 4.1fps

I think those number show that a P4 + SDRAM is not a "dog".
 
while I agree that sdram is not as fast at rdram or ddr, it's a misconception that it's such a "DOG". we're talking like 10% difference, and certainly not anything that would cause problems running video in turbotax or drawing a desktop background.

(sometimes i wonder if you guys even pay attention to his original post.)

nonetheless, check out thugsrooks thread about sdram vs ddr/rdram and see for yourselves.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=28&threadid=766774&highlight_key=y
 


<< Get a GF4-MX or even better a GF3-Ti200 for a nice performence boost. >>


In office apps?????? 😕 The problems he's having is in loading typical office apps and browser windows! A video card won't help with that!
 
Ok, I flashed the Bios with the latest and greatest, and installed a total of a half gig of ram and still nothing. I am even getting virtual memory errors trying to run Jedi II at 800X600! Why would it even care about virtual memory with half a gig? Since I did not do the original install on this system of win 2000, I will reinstall everything and start from scratch, unless anyone else has any good suggestions?
 
virtual memory errors, i get from running dos programs on xp pro .a clean install would help if you are running dos programs

something is definately not right there

are you running anti virus programs? if so try disabling them and see if it helps

control alt delete to see whats running in the background and try disabling anything not absolutely necessary then try your apps again if this helps then try narrowing down one by one to find the culprit and when you find it see if you can find either an update for it or a similar program to take it's place

it sounds like a driver or program doesn't like it's drivers or other programs that would be my best bet



also check device manager and make sure no yellow flags that mean a driver wasn't installed right or still has a problem

hope it helps
 
After a week of playing with drivers and such, I did a full reinstall and it runs like a real P4 now! Go figure?? Anyway, thanks for all the help.
 
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