This Prescott must be crippled

[LarsWS]

Hiya

I recently recieved a Pentium 4 Prescott 3.4GHz CPU and a D875PBZ (Intel 875P) from Intel. I added the following to create a complete system out of those parts:

400W PSU (Intel Active Monitor is quite satisfied under full load)
Creative Radeon 9800 XT graphics card (works perfectly)
Creative Audigy 2 sound card
Hitatchi Deskstar 7K250 160GB SATA harddrive (benches quite well)
Kingston HyperX 2x512MB PC4000 RAM (CL2.5 runs in dual)
Windows XP Pro SP1

Newest drivers for the Creative cards and every appliable Windows update is installed.

After getting it running I started noticing an often quite horrid performance, on desktop tasks and Folding@Home, so I started doing a few tests mainly focused on the CPU and motherboard. The following is my findings:

3D Benchmarks are quite reasonable. My overall 3DMark03 (440) score is a bit over 5500 points, but it would be alot higher if not for the CPU benchmarks. CPU test 1 comes in at 39.7fps and CPU test 2 only does 6.6fps. Now my other system (Athlon 64 3200+, Radeon 9800 Pro, 1GB ram) easily beats both scores with 73.6 and 10.3 fps respectively.

P4 3.4GHz 39.7 / 6.6 fps
Athlon 3200+ 73.6 / 10.3 fps

Would you agree that something is wrong?

I'm pretty stumped about what to do now. I'm used to my AMD systems that just work and perform quite nicely. If anyone knows how to help me fix this or just have some suggestion then please speak up. This can't be right.

Thanks up front.


edited in: the CPU is at a very respectable 43 degrees celcius (about 100 fahrenheit I guess) after a few hours at full load

 

[johnjkr1]

Welcome to the form lars,

First, did you clean install winxp? Latest chipset and video drivers?

Also, what temps are you running at? P4's will slow down if they are getting too hot.

 

[Regs]

Download CPU-Z and find out what your Bus is running at as well as your memory.

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

 

[LarsWS]

Thanks for the replies guys

I did a totally clean install, as the harddrive had never been used before putting together that system. I've got the latest drivers for graphics and sound along with everything I could find at www.intel.com. At full load the temperatures are quite within reason. I always run the Intel Active Monitor in the background and it's quite reasonably within the "green zone".

I downloaded CPU-Z and took the following screenshots:

Screenshot#1
Screenshot#2
Screenshot#3
Screenshot#4

As you can see from screenshot #1 it's an Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz (ES). I'm thinking the (ES) "Enginering Sample" could have something to do with all this, but I also doubt Intel would be so silly as to send me a defective processor.

 

[magomago]

if its an engineering sample....see if you can change the multiplier

 

[LarsWS]

Originally posted by: magomago
if its an engineering sample....see if you can change the multiplier

Hee hee
I would if this "Intel brand" motherboard had any kind of OC settings in the BIOS. I really need to smooze my contact at Asus to send me a better board than this. I feel so... restricted.

 

[spelletrader]

Might be that 8x multi, your cpu is runnin 1600mhz. Check you bios twice for multi settings.

 

[johnjkr1]

Haha, yeah, I dont think 3.4ghz CPU's run at 1.6

 

[Sniper991122]

Originally posted by: johnjkr1
Welcome to the form lars,

First, did you clean install winxp? Latest chipset and video drivers?

Also, what temps are you running at? P4's will slow down if they are getting too hot.

what do you consider too hot, to the point where it slows down?

 

[johnjkr1]

Well sniper, that's a good question. Intel doesn't give an "official" slowdown temp. This article talks about it:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/p4-temp.html

 

[Sunner]

That, along with the fact that it's not a Prescott might explain the low temp

 

[LarsWS]

Man what a mess.

I seems to be working now, thanks to some really good pointers. Turns out I needed to shift a jumper to enter config mode, adjust the stepping and put the annoying jumper back. How I love motherboards that think users are so stupid they should be restricted from certain BIOS menues.

3.4GHz @ 3.4GHz finally

Interesting that Intel sent me a Northwood when I specifically asked for a Prescott. Hmm. I should stop "shopping" through my editor and go directly to the source instead. Heh

P4 3.4GHz @ 1.6GHz 39.7 / 6.6 fps
P4 3.4GHz @ 3.4GHz 75.6 / 13.0 fps
Athlon 3200+ 73.6 / 10.3 fps

Hoorah! I love you guys!
Thanks for the great advice.

 

[johnjkr1]

Glad you got it working, 3.4 is alot of CPU.

 

[LarsWS]

Originally posted by: johnjkr1
Glad you got it working, 3.4 is alot of CPU.

Yeah. Now I need to figure out some use for it other than just Folding@home.

BTW I hooked the two machines up with one of these:
IOGEAR MiniView? Micro Audio KVM Switch
Two taps on the Scroll Lock button and the monitor switches between the two machines. I'm totally in love with this toy. The only downside seems to be the slight ambient noise this device adds to the speakers. I can live with that though.

 

[SocrPlyr]

is the 3.4E even out yet?
I haven't seen a prescott one for sale, just curious

Josh

 

[ViRGE]

So have we determined if this is an engineering sample or not? If it is, you've got gold on your hands; you could easily re-sell it for big bucks, buy a real Prescott(although I don't know why you'd want to), and pocket the change.

 

[LarsWS]

Well it did come straight from the nice people at Intel. Programs like CPU-Z and SiSoft Sandra seem to agree that it's an enginering sample, but I'm not quite sure yet.
Either way I'm not about to sell it. Sounds like a great way to make the Intel guys reeeaaally mad at me. I'd much rather keep it and play around with it some more.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: LarsWS
Well it did come straight from the nice people at Intel. Programs like CPU-Z and SiSoft Sandra seem to agree that it's an enginering sample, but I'm not quite sure yet.
Either way I'm not about to sell it. Sounds like a great way to make the Intel guys reeeaaally mad at me. I'd much rather keep it and play around with it some more.

Oh, well if it came from Intel, yeah, keep it. I thought that it came off the normal retail market.

 

[Mik3y]

maybe it got a heat stroke. it is a prescott after all...