• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Problems with new system (very poor performance!)

D

dfawkes

Junior Member
Hi.

I've just bought the following kit and to say it's performing badly is an understatement:


CP-119-AM AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3500BPBOX) (CP-119-AM) x 1
MY-021-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC4000 Ultra Platinum CAS2.5 (GL1GB4000DC) (MY-021-GL) x 1
MB-029-EP Epox EP-9NDA3J nForce3 Ultra (Socket 939) Motherboard (MB-029-EP) x 1

I put it all together and got it working without any problems. I've got the CPU running at 2485Mhz (226 x 11) - although before I came to work Prime reported problems, so that's not even stable, but anyway - with the memory running at 226 with 1t 2.5-3-3-8. I had expected to get this higher anyway, but regardless, even with this configuration it's running like a dog.

Sandra is reporting Dhrystone ALU of 3908 MIPS and Whetstone FPU/iSSE2 of 1310/1681 FLOPS. A reference Intel Celeron 1.7Ghz was 4460 MIPS and 1241/2287 FLOPS, so there's something very fishy going on. And to be honest, if anything, it feels *slower* than the XP1900+ I just replaced, which I just can't understand.

Doing a Prime benchmark my best iteration time for 2048K was 316ms - with the benchmarks listed on http://www.mersenne.org/bench.htm listing an XP3200+ at 156ms. Again, something's wrong.

Finally, my 3DMark2003 score was less than 6000 (my graphics card is a ATI 9800, which I've flashed to an XT).

I can post some screenies to show these figures if wanted. Can anyone provide any suggestions as to why it's running so slow? The CPU and memory seem to be running as fast as they should (although still lower than I hoped, but let's ignore that for now).

So the question is, how does a 3500+ running at ~2.5Ghz get such poor benchmarks? (and user error is quite possibly behind it!! )

This is all with a clean install of WinXP with SP2 and the nForce3 drivers installed.
 
Are you positive you installed / updated your drivers, especially your motherboard drivers? Also, are there any system conflicts within windows, or anything operating out of specs (something not being reported right, or high/low temps?)?
Tas.
 
Ye, I'm sure the motherboard drivers are installed - I had to install SP2 before they would install. Also, the new m/b has onboard ethernet, which only worked after I installed the motherboard drivers.

No, there's no conflicts in Windows (only thing showing as not working was the onboard audio which I've since disabled through the BIOS).

Temps seem fine - case temp is 28C and CPU never goes above 41C or so.

I could try another clean install of WinXp and install drivers again I suppose. Is there anyway of confirming if it's Windows that's causing the problem (if the CPU and memory is running at the reported speed, then it has to be right? Unless there's something awry with the motherboard?)?
 
Ye, I realised I've done things a little back to front and should've got it working happily at stock to start with! I'll switch back to stock and try again tonight - but I tried Sandra at stock after doing a clean install and it reported slightly less than what I quoted above, so it was still acting up.

As I say, I'll switch back to remove any doubt, but if anyone's got any suggestions in the meantime I'd appreciate it.

Cheers.
 
That's very odd. All I can think of is that it's a bum motherboard. A bad processor or memory wouldn't account for such low 3dmarks, and if your graphics card worked fine before then it has to be something wrong with the motherboard.
 
hi,
i had exactly the same thing happen to me with one of the frys a64 3000+ and ecs 755a-2 mb combos. i tried everything. bios updates, complete reinstalls, latest drivers, etc. it was running stable but very slow, about what you are reporting. i finally returned it for exchange and the new ones work fine now. sorry i cant tell you which it was, frys does the full exchange for both. but it's most likely a hardware problem. mine was. if you have a processor or mb you can borrow from someone, you figure out which one you need to replace.
good luck
 
This happened to me, before.

I upgraded my Athlon "Thunderbird" 950 MHz to a Pentium 4 "Willamette" 1.8 GHz with a PCChips board, and it ran slower than my old Pentium 133 MHz! Sadly, I never figured out if the motherboard or CPU was to blame.

My suggestion is to take the system in to whoever sold it to you, and ask them to help. If you bought it online, then you may have to pay to have a professional look at it.
 
I'm willing to bet your problem is a faulty Epox motherboard. Just a few months ago I had a horrible experience with an Epox motherboard I bought for a client's a64 3000+ system. Long story short, I won't be buying Epox again. They suck.
 
Most likely faulty motherboard

I was wondering whether nForce 3 support Venice or not...
in fact, whether it supported socket 939...
I found that nForce 3 Ultra supported 939

My first intention was nForce 3 had memory controller, so have the 939 CPUs.
Thought it's a bit weird
 
Originally posted by: Muscles
I'm willing to bet your problem is a faulty Epox motherboard. Just a few months ago I had a horrible experience with an Epox motherboard I bought for a client's a64 3000+ system. Long story short, I won't be buying Epox again. They suck.
Click to expand...

Try MSI, DFI, Abit, or ASUS for a new motherboard.
 
Hm I would recommend nForce 4 ultra boards, which aren't too expensive with a set of up-to-date features
ASUS, DFI are the recommended brands; Abit, MSI are good as well
 
Don't want to move to nForce4 - can't afford the upgrade to PCI-E as well.

There's plenty of people that are getting along fine with nForce3 and Venices, just some seem to be having a problem - guess I'm just one of the unlucky ones.
 
Ok, I've got to the bottom of it (tho that doesn't mean I've found a fix for it )...

Basically in WinXP with SP2 CPU utilisation is at 70%+ when idle. I went back to a fresh install of WinXP, installed nForce3 drivers, tried Sandra, got 10.5k - result! Ran all the Windows updates prior to SP2, bench was back down to 3.5k but was back up after reinstalling the drivers.

However, after installing SP2 the bench is back at 3.5k and with high CPU utilisation, despite reinstalling the drivers.

Anyone have any idea what might be going wrong? Drivers incompatible with SP2? Some service running in the background (task manager says system is 99% idle) that would consume that much CPU?

It's completely baffling. I guess worst case scenario I just go back to pre-SP2, but I'd rather not.
 
That's my point. Task Manager says that system idle is 99% CPU (i.e. no programs are using the CPU), yet the CPU usage is at 70%+. I'm thinking that some service or perhaps a dodgy driver (?) is consuming all the CPU, and isn't listed in task manager.
 
did you install your updates while overclocked? If you did go back and redo them at stock speeds. I installed sp2 while overclocked once and had similar problems, but when I reinstalled at stock, stable speeds it fixed the prob.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top