New P4 system running like crap

[zugdud]

Howdy folks! Please allow me to explain my situation. I am putting together a new system using the following hardware

Pentium4 2.26 ghz cpu (0.13 micron 533 fsb)

gigabyte motherboard model number GA-8IHXP P4 Socket 478(P4/533fsb/4 rimm/6pci/promise ata 133 raid)

Gforce4 ti4200 videocard

I have ordered a Gigabyte of 1066 rambus memory (kingston) However it will not arive for a week or so. I do have the rest of my hardware and was attempting to test out the computer using samsung pc 800 rambus memory. I installed windows xp and the computer is running so unbelievably slow, it takes 10 minutes to start and then if i click the start button it takes around 2 minutes to pop up. you can see each individual frame change when windows xp fades in during start up! No hard disk thrashing during this time eighter so i gather that its the cpu or memory just taking their sweet time. I guess my question here is, is the a known issue with this motherboard or combination of parts, did I just get a bad batch, or do I have this problem ONLY because I am not using 1066 rambus?

thanks for your time!

 

[sandorski]

Sounds like a driver is missing(RAID maybe?) or perhaps an incorrect BIOS setting(RAID enabled when not being used?).

 

[jthoske]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Pentium-class computers.

 

[Macaw]

I've seen a 10 fold perf increase in apps like Unreal Tournament on P4 machines just by installing the motherboard drivers.

Remember that PC's nowadays require MB drivers for the chipsets -- especially in smart OS's like XP.

 

[nortexoid]

sounds driver related...update all your hardware drivers including video, and chipset.

remove everything from the PCI slots except Video to initially troubleshoot.

 

[Wolfsraider]

Originally posted by: jthoske
Welcome to the wonderful world of Pentium-class computers.

:Q tsk tsk tsk peter rabbit, er... i mean jthoske, if we can't say somthing nice we shouldn't say nothing at all

seriously it sounds like more than a ram issue and i too would suspect drivers or settings in the bios as the culprit
try the motherboard drivers as suggested also the intel accelerator drivers may help
check the bios turn off video bios cachable and system bios cachable disable pci vga snoop and make sure that cpu L1 L2 cache is enabled

also update any and all drivers make sure all ram is completely seated and all pci cards are seated

try one stick of ram

and keep reporting what you try and what happens

hope this helps
mike

 

[NOX]

10 Minutes to start!!!??? That?s obviously a Hardware issue. I would think the hard drives are causing this major slow down. I have a similar setup (well same CPU) just using the 845E, and I can say It?s blazing fast.

First off are you running RAID? If no, do you have your hard drive plugged into the RAID IDE slots? If yes, try removing them and putting it in the IDE 1 (Primary).

Also, from personal experience, like others have stated, install the latest Intel drivers, and install SP2 for XP.

 

[IanthePez]

My brother's computer once took around 8 minutes to start and it was simple that his hard drives weren't set up properly in the bios. Wierd problem, heh.

 

[imgod2u]

I would check the chipset drivers first. The i850e chipset is new, quite newer than WinXP, so the OS may not have the driver on hand and would either use a generic or old driver for the wrong chipset model. And contrary to what someone else said, OS's have always needed drivers. It's just that up till now, OS releases have always been ahead of chipset releases. So win98 came shipping with 440BX drivers. The i815 series of chipset required drivers because older OS's like win98 didn't have the driver in the driver pool.
I know that when I first installed win2k (which didn't have the i815 driver), it ran piss poor until I installed Intel's chipset drivers.

 

[zugdud]

Thanks all for the suggestions, I belive I have tried pretty much everything now however the problem seems to have gotten worse. I have removed all the expansion cards and just have the video card in the cojmputer, while installing windows xp I get a message saying that some software is not digitally signed and may cause the computer to not work correctly or at all (unfortunattly it does not specify what software/driver). I have said no and yes to this message, however no matter what i do the computer no longer starts at all after windows has installed. It gives a blue screen which says windows has shut down to prevent damage to your computer, please run chkdisk on your drives or contact your vendor. I have tried the same installtion on 3 different (new) hard disks and all give the same result. I have attached them to the primary ide controller as well as the raid controller but no change in luck.

Anyway i tried starting it in safemode and it also locks up but it locks up while loading DRIVERS/440svd

Not sure what else to do, I guess its a driver problem but i have even tried different videocards so aside from motherboard drivers i cant think of what else it would be. And sense windows will never start i cant install motherboard drivers...ahhhh well am i out of luck here?

thanks!

 

[zugdud]

Also id like to add that the final part of windows xp installation "saving settings" takes over an hour and a half to complete alone making the entire installation require over 2 hours. Its like its writing superslow to the disk

 

[MadRat]

Always start by turning off QoS in Windows XP. The QoS scheduler can disrupt many aspects of performance, most critically the system bus when the NIC is having a conflict. I would only guess you have an IRQ or bus mastering conflict, particularly it sounds like the bus mastering conflict. The QoS scheduler only exacerbates the whole issue by flooding your NIC with random, garbage packets in its effort to "detect" your optimal network timing...

 

[WarCon]

Are your temps running in the normal range (30-65C)? If not you may be throttling and running slow.

If your running hot, check your heatsink install to make sure you got all the clips in correctly.