Performance problems with Asus A8N-SLI mobo

[discworld]

Hi

I have some problems with my new PC and hope some one could help me to solve these problems because I personally have no idea what?s wrong with my PC

My PC: AMD64 3000+
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (bios v. 1003)
2X512 DDR RAM Kingston PC3200 CL2.5 (running in dual ddr)
6600 GT Club3d
Samsung 160 Gig HDD
Cooler master 450W PSU
Windows XP PRO SP2

The problem is that when I run the 3Dmark03 test (I have the latest patched installed and use the nVidia 66.93 drivers) I get 7770 points which is good and that?s the score my pc should get (the games run fine and with good FPS).

But after hours of playing games (and sometimes without it) the 3Dmark03 starts acting strangely. Usually the load screens between the test?s are working fine (when I get 7770 points) but then the load screens start to load, go black and start loading again.
And as a result I get 6000 points and bad FPS in games. And this problem doesn't go away until I reinstall windows.

And the program called nTune gives me a error.
I personally don?t know what?s exactly wrong with it and how can I fix it


nTune error



The motherboard installation was easy and dint run into any problems with windows. The system temps are good (30 CPU and 30 Motherboard) and the voltages are fine. The only problems seems to be the 19MHz PCU bus and the low fps in games.
Can this be a Asus A8N-SLI deluxe problem or driver bugs?




This is my first nForce chip motherboard and already I get into problems with it (never had problems with VIA chip and ATI card)

:roll:

 

[KGB]

disc,

Welcome to the Forums! :beer:

Check your Asus manual for the BIOS setting that locks your PCI bus speed.
It needs to be at 33Mhz.

 

[ahurtt]

Try and find the 71.25 (WHQL) Beta ForceWare drivers for your video card. The 66.93 ones were CRAP for me. The 71.25 ones work well though. I was able to find / download them at guru3d.com

 

[discworld]

Thank you for replaying to my post

The PCI exp buss speed is weird. I have set it to 33.33 Mhz in the bios (bios version is 1003) and still it gives me this error and shows me the 19 MHz. I have all the other settings in bios set to auto (CPU speed is set to standard and other things are auto). It seems that the bios doesn?t lock the PCI express speed. Is there any other way to fix this problem? And what could be the cause of this error?

And what about the 3Dmark03 and my FPS problem? Is this problem related with the nForce4 chip drivers or nVidia video card drivers? I heard that the nForce4 drivers have lot of bugs in it. Is this true?

I will try the beta drivers but I?m not sure these will help me because the PCI exp bus speed is still wrong.

Should I set the CPU speeds and memory timings manually or leave them auto?

Has any one else had the same problem? Searched the forum but didn?t find anything.


And i forgot to mention that my 6600 GT is very hot when im playing games (but I dont get artifacts). It goes all the way up to 75 C . But I cant to anything to fix it right now because im waiting for my new cooler to arrive. I hope this high temp wount cause any problems

 

[discworld]

Originally posted by: ahurtt
Try and find the 71.25 (WHQL) Beta ForceWare drivers for your video card. The 66.93 ones were CRAP for me. The 71.25 ones work well though. I was able to find / download them at guru3d.com

I found this in the forum: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=29&threadid=1489187&enterthread=y

Its seemed that you had the same problem that I have right now.
Did you managed to find a solution to your problem?
Hope the new bios update will be released soon because I think this problem is caused by it.

 

[ahurtt]

As for that PCI clock reporting 19MHz in nTune, I have since just disregarded that because I think I remember reading in the release notes for nTune that it does not officially support nForce 4. Use ClockGenNF4 instead. As far as i know the PCI clock lock should kick in automatically as soon as you raise your CPU Frequency by as little as 1MHz.

[EDIT] I just went to nVidias site and checked the release notes to be sure and it actually says nTune DOES support nForce 4 SLI and the ASUS A8N SLI board. The most recent version is 2.00.23 dated Jan 28, 2005. What version of nTune do you have. I have to double check my version since I might have one older than this.

also don't confuse the pci express speed and the regular pci speed. PCI express should lock at 100 and pci should lock at 33.33 or 33.34.

[EDIT] one more edit, I'm also using the BIOS 1004-001 beta which is working just fine for me as well. You could give it a shot. Also turn off Cool n' Quiet and do not use the AI overclock feature. Either disable it or set it to manual and enter all the settings manually. It could be your Cool n' Quiet "feature" clocking the system down under low load or something like that so when you are looking at the nTune tool, the system is not under a high load if you know what I mean. I dont' know why they really put that cool n' quiet feature on AMD chips but if you ask me its just another thing that can go wrong.

 

[discworld]

But still I?m worried about the 3Dmark03 acting like that (giving 6000 points for my beast).

What could be the cause of that? I'm afraid to run games right now because I'm scared I get the low fps again and bad 3dmark03 score.

I waited for a month for this motherboard (had to use old 1GHz celleron) and could not play any games. Finally I got my system up and running and have these problems with it.

Never had these kind of problems with my PC before.

I think its just bad luck


[edit] I downlaoded the nTunes from the nVidia home page so its the new version.

Ok found the beta 1004 If it dosent mess my PC up I would give it a try (im desperate right now)

 

[ahurtt]

Did you try the 71.25 WHQL Beta drivers for the video card I mentioned above? Bad drivers could definitely cause bad performance. I think the 66.93 ones were the first ones to introduce SLI support so there are bound to be some bugs in there (although you are not running SLI but it is an SLI motherboard. .. dunno what effects could be there). Just make sure you have a backup of the 1003 bios handy incase 1004-001 messes something up. You can get the 1004-001 betas off of ASUS' support website. Just go to asus.com and click on downloads and navigate your way to downloads for the A8N SLI Deluxe. Click the little radio button for Beta and it should be there. But if you aren't experiencing any other oddities then try the new ForceWare video drivers first before you go and update the BIOS. And then make sure you install the most recent nForce chipset drivers. Update the BIOS as a last resort.

 

[discworld]

OK. I have the beta 71.25 nVidia drivers installed and the nForce 4 chipset drivers: (http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_winxp_6.39). And I downloaded the program ClockGen For nForce 4 and I shows me this: ClockGen

From there I can c that my PCI express bus is set to 33.49 (I set it 33.33 in the bios)
Does that mean the nTune program is giving me false info? It still shows the 19MHz?

If this time the 3Dmark03 starts giving me 6000 points again then I try the 1004 bios. If that doesn?t help then I?m ........ :|

 

[discworld]

ok its seems that the problem was in nVidia drivers because I have played some games and wound get bad 3Dmark03 score any more but I will c if that problems comes back again.

But im hoping that nvidia releases new drivers soon because im getting missing textures in CS S and bad (30) FPS in some parts of the hl2.

Its like max fps 160 in some parts and min fps is 30

And it seems to me that the nTunes program is useless because it still gives me the error but the other program says that the pci express bus is 33.49

But thanks for all your help.

 

[Tweakin]

Originally posted by: discworld
But still I?m worried about the 3Dmark03 acting like that (giving 6000 points for my beast).

What could be the cause of that? I'm afraid to run games right now because I'm scared I get the low fps again and bad 3dmark03 score.

I waited for a month for this motherboard (had to use old 1GHz celleron) and could not play any games. Finally I got my system up and running and have these problems with it.

Never had these kind of problems with my PC before.

I think its just bad luck

Don't flame me, but isn't it commonly known that bleeding edge technology brings along with it some uncertain results and possible mishaps, such as the ones you are currently experiencing? Most of these can be attributed to early drivers and will mature as time goes along. For now, enjoy the power you have and don't pay so much attention to the synthetic scores. When you feel the system is slowing down, just think of your old 1Ghz Celery...

[edit] I downlaoded the nTunes from the nVidia home page so its the new version.

Ok found the beta 1004 If it dosent mess my PC up I would give it a try (im desperate right now)

 

[Robowang]

ahurtt said it once, already.
don't get the pci bus mixed up with the pci-express bus. I don't have the asus, i have the gigabyte. there isn't a pci bus speed adjust in my bios. But, I do have a pci-express adjustment. It should be set fo 100mhz, not 33mhz. If you have your PCI-E bus set for 33, you will have major problems.

 

[discworld]

Please don?t remind me my old Celeron. I still have nightmares about it. It was so dam slow.

But the reason I?m worried about this PC is that If it works as same as my old PC (P4 3.2 , 9800 PRO and other parts where the same) then I just wasted some money for nothing ?

I hope that nVidia will fix these problems. I know that this technology is new and it has some driver problems. The important thing form me is that none of the hardware (mobo, cpu, video card) is not damaged. I can always fix problems which are associated with drivers or bios settings.

Ok I now sometimes get the bad 3dmark 03 score (this far 2 times only) but I was wondering is my FarCry fps ok?
The FPS is to low or is it just me. The settings are 1024X768. All Very High. No AA or FSAA.


2005-02-13 16:47:56 - FarCry
Frames: 683 - Time: 16009ms - Avg: 42.663 - Min: 23 - Max: 70

2005-02-13 16:48:43 - FarCry
Frames: 1344 - Time: 24838ms - Avg: 54.110 - Min: 40 - Max: 75

2005-02-13 16:50:41 - FarCry
Frames: 922 - Time: 12402ms - Avg: 74.342 - Min: 57 - Max: 88

2005-02-13 16:52:28 - FarCry
Frames: 961 - Time: 20118ms - Avg: 47.768 - Min: 20 - Max: 61

2005-02-13 16:53:34 - FarCry
Frames: 1172 - Time: 19724ms - Avg: 59.419 - Min: 33 - Max: 87

2005-02-13 17:00:04 - FarCry
Frames: 686 - Time: 16675ms - Avg: 41.139 - Min: 34 - Max: 53

2005-02-13 17:02:31 - FarCry
Frames: 916 - Time: 18677ms - Avg: 49.044 - Min: 41 - Max: 64

2005-02-13 17:02:52 - FarCry
Frames: 3579 - Time: 75257ms - Avg: 47.557 - Min: 13 - Max: 73

2005-02-13 17:04:09 - FarCry
Frames: 498 - Time: 12945ms - Avg: 38.470 - Min: 31 - Max: 57

2005-02-13 17:04:26 - FarCry
Frames: 471 - Time: 10247ms - Avg: 45.964 - Min: 40 - Max: 69


To Robowang: I have the PCI express set to 100 (its default in bios) and some other PCI setting (cant go to bios right now) 33.33.
If u can please look @ this picture http://ftp.hot.ee/discworld/PCIexp.jpg and tell me if everything is as it should be.




-Edit-:

I played some games and after that ran the 3Dmark03 again (to test the PC) and i got bad score 6000.- :shocked: . But i notised something different when i inported the result to exel: When i have the good score the Internal Clock Maximum is 3700 (the info about the CPU and there is Internal Clock and other thing writen about my CPU). I'm not 100% sure but when I get bad score the Internal Clock Maximum is 1800. I dont have the bad score exel file anymore to look but I remamber it was lower.

What toes the Internal Clock Maximum mean? And if it was 1800 can this be the problem ?

Oh and my 6600 GT temp is 80 when its on full load. I cant to anything about it right now because my video gard cooler hasent arrived yet.

Im going to flash the bios to 1004 tommorrow and c if that helps me. If not then I dont have any ide whats rong with me PC and I just have wasted some good money for nothing buying this mobo, video gard and CPU.

 

[discworld]

Ok I ran some test again and found the different (besides the lower FPS and lower score).

When I get 7800 points in 3Dmark03 the Internal Clock Maximum is 3709 MHz
But when I get 6000 points then the Internal Clock Maximum is 1809 MHz

Can some one please tell me what is that Internal Clock and why is it so low sometimes (I think its low when I run some games).

I think this is the cause of the problem I have.

PS I haven?t dried the 1004 beta bios. Could that fix anything?

 

[coyrls]

Could it have anything to do with Cool 'n' Quiet? That will dynamically change processor speeds, so if you've got it enabled, you could try disabling that. Also the ASUS dynamic over clocking from the BIOS (AI NOS), or from the ASUS utility could have the same effect, so again, if you've got these set you could disable them.

 

[ahurtt]

Ok first things first. . .in the picture of your ClockGenNF4, it shows your multiplier at 5x. That is too low. Did you set it at that? You have a 3000+ CPU which is supposed to run at a stock speed of 1.8MHz out of the box. It does this at a 200MHz CPU frequency multiplied by 9. (9x200 = 1800MHz). Your CPU multiplier shows as 5x so therefore your CPU is only running at about 1000MHz. You lost 800MHz somehow. Out of the box your CPU should run at 9 x 200. You also don't seem to understand that PCI and PCI express are DIFFERENT! PCI express is supposed to be 100MHz. Which your ClockGen screenshot is showing fine. The regular (non-express) PCI bus is showing 33.49 which is a little tiny bit too high but close enough it shouldn't be a problem. The question is, why is your CPU multiplier at 5x instead of the 9x it is supposed to be? Do not confuse this with the HTT multiplier which should be 4x or 5x.

Also, you said you had a P4 3.2 before and you expect a 1.8MHz Athlon 64 to perform faster than that?? I mean come on. . .AMD is more efficient ounce for ounce against the P4 but how can you expect a chip running at half the speed to be faster? It is pretty impressive that a 1.8MHz Athlon 64 is giving you the same performance of a P4 3.2 though! Imagine the money you would save by just going with the AMD in the first place!But how can you expect it to be faster?

 

[coyrls]

If you haven't set the multiplier to 5x yourself, it might still be Cool 'n' Quiet. I believe that when the CPU is idle a 3000+ will run at 1000 Mhz with Cool 'n' Quiet, perhaps it drops to this speed by reducing the multiplier. I've given up with Cool 'n' Quiet myself. From some basic testing, it seems to have no effect on CPU benchmarks but it has quite a drastic effect on memory benchmarks. Disabling Cool 'n' Quiet increased my memory benchmark scores on the (basic) nTune memory benchmark by about 30%!

Also (having checked your screenshot) the fact that your CPU voltage is down from the default would also point to Cool 'n' Quiet, unless you also set this manually.

 

[discworld]

Ok I understand the difference between the PCI and PCI express just wanted to make sure it?s all OK (its my own stupidity to ask again to be sure).

And my P4 was originally 2.8GHz (and ran 55 C so it was dam hot) and I overclocked it just for fun and dint get better performance.
The AMD is not overclocked and it kicks ass. Its fast and it runs 42 C at full load (y) so yes amd is better. And when I overclock it I should get more out of it. I want to overclock it to 3400+.
I had P4 because I dint know anything about CPU s and which one was faster at that time. And now I know that in games AMD is the winner.


And that multiplier thing is weird. I don?t remember if I had the amd Cool and quiet enabled when I took this shot. But now it shows (if I look it with the same program) 200X9 = 1800MHz. And I haven?t set any CPU settings in the bios. The multiplier is set to AUTO.
The FPS is 200 in the bios (it?s the default value). The CPU-z shows me that I have 1800Mhz CPU. So there seems to be no problem.


But what is this thing: Internal Clock Maximum?
When I get bad 3Dmark03 score its 1800 and when I get good 3Dmark03 score its 3700?

I think I?m going to set all the CPU settings in the bios. But how much volts to I have to give to the CPU and Memory? What are the default values? Bios shows me only auto (old IC7 showed me the default volts but this one doesn?t ? )

 

[coyrls]

One thing at a time .... check if Cool 'n' Quiet is enabled in the BIOS, if it is disable it and re-run your tests. If you change more than one thing at once you won't know which made the difference.

 

[discworld]

Set the Cool and Quiet disabled in the bios. The multiplier is set to 9X200=1800MHz.
But after some gaming I get bad 3Dmark03 score.

And only thing different is that when I run the test my Internal Clock Maximum is 1800MHz.
If it is 3700 then I wound get that bad score.

Is there any program that could monitory my CPU speed?
Just want to make sure that my CPU speed is 1800MHz all the time.

 

[coyrls]

If, by some miracle, your processor could run at over twice its rated clock speed, your performance would not suffer. If you haven't got any dynamic tuning, the speed of the processor won't change. If you are getting a reported processor speed of 3700, something is being corrupted or the utility is not working properly.

 

[discworld]

If some one could help fix this problem I would be crateful

I added excel file that shows info abut 3Dmark03 test.

And I haven?t changed any CPU multiplayer or FSB. It?s all set to default. The temperatures are constantly bellow 45 and the chipset temp is bellow 34.

http://ftp.hot.ee/discworld/3dmark.xls

Please help

I hope non of my PC parts are not faulty because I hate arguing with the PC warranty idiots who always find a way to tell me the hardware all is working fine.

 

[coyrls]

OK .... I've looked back through your posts and in one you say......

"And i forgot to mention that my 6600 GT is very hot when im playing games (but I dont get artifacts). It goes all the way up to 75 C . But I cant to anything to fix it right now because im waiting for my new cooler to arrive. I hope this high temp wount cause any problems"

Now I'm not in front of my SLI system, so I can't check, but if you look at the nvidia properties page where you are reading this temperature from, just above the temperature you'll see something that says something like "temperature at which GPU will drop speed" or something like that and I think that temperature is something like 79. Now given that you're reporting 75, I'm guessing it's possible that you're hitting this threshold temperature and the GPU is throttling it's speed down with a consequent loss of frame rates.

I don't know what triggers the GPU to go back to operating at full speed, but perhaps it's when the GPU gets way down in temperature, so it could take some time before it reactiviates itself. If possible you should monitor the temperature while benchmarking and see if this it what is happening.

 

[discworld]

My 6600 GT goes all the way up to 80C if I stress it a lot. I use the Riva Tuner to measure the temperature and it?s really dam hot.

And when I play games I get these low FPS points in demanding games like Counter Strike Source and HL2 and Far Cry (some times the game freezer for 1 sec when some big action and effects take place in the game). And the low 3Dmark03 score is low when I run the test after playing.

So is it possible that my PC is OK and works fine but the 6600 GT goes to hot so to prevent damaging itself it downclocks itself? The Club-3d 6600 GT stock cooler is really bad because I can see the GPU when I look between the cooler and the card. It has some contact but not good as a custom made cooler.

I will run some test and see if Riva tuner shows me some high temps and down clock.
Only thing whit this card is that it downclocks itself when the GPU isn?t in use. When the GPU is needed it clocks itself up again.

Is there any good program that could monitor my CPU and video card clocks?

I have the ASUS monitoring program and I?m monitoring CPU temperature and volts with it. But it doesn?t monitor the speeds.

 

[ahurtt]

Wait until your new cooling unit comes and then try out your tests again and let us know how it goes. 80 C is really hot and could definitely trigger the auto-throttle to limit the speed. Also, low power can cause the cards to throttle down too. I have 2 6600 GT cards in my system made by BFG and they never get above about 67C. . .but then again I have 2 and they are sharing the load for most games. I can't imagine why yours is getting so hot . . .I don't know anything about club3d. Never heard of that maker. Do you have any of the AI Overclock features in the BIOS enabled? If so, try switching it to Standard instead. Also, if you get your new cooler and are still having problems, try the 1004 bios version.

You do understand I hope that even if your AMD is running at a very efficient 1.8 GHz, there is no way it should outperform a Pentium 4 rated to run at 3.2 GHz right? For instance, if you have a 1.8 GHz P4 and a 1.8 GHz AMD, the AMD is going to outperform the P4 and be faster. But your old P4 was nearly twice as fast as what you have now! While what you have now (1.8 GHz AMD) might perform equivalent to maybe a P4 2.5 GHz (just pulling numbers out of my head. . .) you went from a 3.2 GHz processor to a 1.8. You will still have the more efficient operation of the AMD just because it does more work in a single cycle than a P4. But it CANNOT do the amount of extra work per cycle to make up the difference between 1.8GHz and 3.2 GHz! Thus it will NOT be faster!