TO DUVIE....................

[EdzAviator]

I recently have an Athlon 64 3000+ (S939) paired with MSI K8N Neo Platinum and 2 512MB of DDR400......It is fast in gaming...BUT......

The problem is when I start to do many things (MULTI-TASKING....)

My Workloads are:

1. DVD Burning while Virus Scanning/Surfing the Net.
2. Virus Scaning/DVD Burning & Surfing the Net while Winamp runs in the background...
3. Any of these applications while copying 15-20GB of Files from one HDD to the other...

When I do these kind of Multi-Tasking, the responsiveness of my PC is VERY SLOW....an example is that when I copy a 15gb file to the other HDD and then I play Winamp, the responsiveness of Winamp becomes slow...or when I burn a DVD while scanning virus, the responsiveness of Norton becomes SLOW....

Maybe A64 is not a good Multi-Tasking CPU...Maybe I'll change to Pentium 4 6xx series....

Does Hyper Threading really help in Multi-Tasking??Have you tried HT???
What are your recommendations and explainations about these problem....Should I change to P4 6xx or JUST ADD another 2 512mb of RAM????Why?

 

[imported_Kensai]

Hmm.. I guess at this point, I'd suggest the 6xx series for you. And HT lets you run two threads at the same time.

 

[kini62]

Just wait for the dual core Athlon. You already have the system, why change everything when you can just change the CPU?

 

[Sexy D]

When copying stuff over from one HDD to another, check task manager out, u'll see ur cpu is barely being used, ur hard disks are...

Get urself a Maxtor DiamondMax10 16mb cache or a 10k Raptor, u will see a much better performance increase with either of them than u would gettin a different CPU. Simple.

 

[Sexy D]

lol why scan for virus's while ur transcoding dvd's anyway ??

 

[Sentential]

When I do these kind of Multi-Tasking, the responsiveness of my PC is VERY SLOW

Yes they suck when compared to a P4 with Hyperthreading for multi-tasking purposes. Overall A64s are very lopsided. VERY fast for games but they are just terrible at almost everything else (ive owned both) No amount of RAM will fix the lack of HT / dual core

 

[Markfw]

Sounds to me like you are IO bound, and HT won;t help that. What is the CPU utilization when its slow ?

 

[RussianSensation]

I would have to agree with Mark on this. When my computer is doing nothing, but using Norton to scan files, it comes much slower. Also when I do a Search for files, it is extremely slow. I have P4 3.2 HT and i dont think HT benefits at all since it is the hard drive that is doing most of the work when working with files.

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: Sentential

When I do these kind of Multi-Tasking, the responsiveness of my PC is VERY SLOW

Yes they suck when compared to a P4 with Hyperthreading for multi-tasking purposes. Overall A64s are very lopsided. VERY fast for games but they are just terrible at almost everything else (ive owned both) No amount of RAM will fix the lack of HT / dual core

I THINK THAT STATEMENT IS A BIT SEVERE...I have had both and I dont see it the same as you.....

Doesn't matter HT benefit will soon come to an end and dual core will make it a thing of the past....


To the OP:

I agree with Mark on this as well...I do many of the same type of things as you and I am not having as much of an issue. I run 2x 36gb raptors (no raid yet) and a SATA 80gb Segate as a backup/storage drive....They are all on thier own channels as well as the dvd-rom and dv-r burner....

The key is dont expect the drive (or any 1 drive) to be able to read and write and run apps at the same time no matter the cpu.....IO limitations will still exist with dual core.

Loot at cpu usage from reviews for dvd-burners, playing dvds, play winamp...all of these are very low usage and should easily play together with one another. Even scanning harddrives should not take anywhere near 100% cpu usage, but it will max out read operations for that drive and make it difficult to do other things...

 

[ssvegeta1010]

A Raptor or faster hard drive will help ALOT more than HT. (Norton only uses 60% max CPU for me)
Most of it is just you hard drive slowing things down.

 

[akugami]

IO limitations are slowing you down as others have said. I can watch a movie, burn a DVD/CD, have a virus scan in the background and not be slowed too much. Start copying large files and watch the mouse jump all over the place. And forget it if the movie was on the same HD as one of those it's being written or read to.

 

[Duvie]

Just checked......I am running mp3downloading (downloading CSI episodes to drive C...burning DVD+RW 4x drive E: (CSI season 5, 1thru12) off of drive G:....scanning AVG antivirus C: drive...35-50% cpu usage...

To top it off I started playing an mpeg2 video off of the d drive...started up fast and fine and cpu usage is like 45-65% range....still no slowdown....

see it is about balance of drives....

switched to playing CsI episode 7 from seaon 4 off of the c: drive....still fine....I can scan forwards and back with ease thru WMP10....


Most slowdown reports are about IO bottlenecks and not cpu usage. HT is for multiple cpu intensive apps (apps that take up to 100% by themselves or equal more then 100% if added up separately)...

 

[Yossairian]

Op,

Are you running 1T or 2T command rate on your memory? I had a friend that just built a similar system had the same complaints. He was using all auto on his memory configs,which defaulted his command rate to 2t.. Changing that back to 1t made the whole system quite a bit snappier.

Yes they suck when compared to a P4 with Hyperthreading for multi-tasking purposes. Overall A64s are very lopsided. VERY fast for games but they are just terrible at almost everything else (ive owned both) No amount of RAM will fix the lack of HT / dual core

I dont find that to be true at all.. I too currently own systems with both tech, and I dont notice the speed difference in MT at all. Transversly the AMD isn't noticably faster in games either, but thats another thread. Is it possible your AMD system was not configured properly ? Or maybe you are just looking at synthetic benchmarks intread of actual use ? I know reading some of these reviews and looking at the graphs, they make the performance gap look quite abit bigger than it feels. This works both ways of course.

 

[carlosd]

Again this question??, HT won't help on these tasks, it is a IO limitation since the disk usage is very high, slowing the whole system.

 

[carlosd]

Originally posted by: Sentential

When I do these kind of Multi-Tasking, the responsiveness of my PC is VERY SLOW

Yes they suck when compared to a P4 with Hyperthreading for multi-tasking purposes. Overall A64s are very lopsided. VERY fast for games but they are just terrible at almost everything else (ive owned both) No amount of RAM will fix the lack of HT / dual core

????
That`s not true, A64 is a very good CPU (Actuallt the best overall) , not only for gaming, also for C compiling, WInrar archiving, 3DSmaxx, Powerfull math calculations apps like matlab or mathemathica, image editing, and also mey be good in video encoding, since I don't consider that difference with simalrly priced P4s in this area is critical, at most 5%. Regarding HT it has a little advantage ONLY in specific multitasking scenarios, like DIVX while running another demanding task, but still unaceptable behavior, at least for me, since I use to do really heavy multitasting in dual opterons machines in my job.

 

[alkemyst]

if TO DUVIE................

use PM's man.

also I don't really know WTF the n00b Sentential is talking about.

I have a 3200+ that smokes my dad's 3.2 P4 y0 HT y0! chip

I still :heart: the (*ive owned both*) remark. Him adding dual core to that, I wonder what his reply will be once the dual core AMD's come out.

Prior to 'HT' multi-tasking usually encompassed copying files while doing *something* else.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Duvie
The key is dont expect the drive (or any 1 drive) to be able to read and write and run apps at the same time no matter the cpu.....IO limitations will still exist with dual core.

Loot at cpu usage from reviews for dvd-burners, playing dvds, play winamp...all of these are very low usage and should easily play together with one another. Even scanning harddrives should not take anywhere near 100% cpu usage, but it will max out read operations for that drive and make it difficult to do other things...

Yep, and having several independent drives, to do different tasks at once with, really helps out in situations like these.
Mechanical seek time is a real performance-killer, no matter how much RAM or how fast your CPU is.

 

[EdzAviator]

Duvie, if you said that all I'm doing in Multi-Tasking is IO Bottlenecks...........and it doesn't take up a 100% of the CPU usage...

How can you explain that when I am creating a winRAR SFX file, and check the task manager using CTRL+ALT+DEL....winRAR uses 100% of the CPU...so I can't create 2 or Multiple winRAR SFX file at same time because my PC's responsiveness becomes VERY SLOW.....

 

[Duvie]

I agree winrar seems to peg my cpu usage to 85% as well.....However if I minimized it I was able to run run WMP10 and watch a mpeg, still downloading and was able to open several apps with responsiveness....


every app I launched...launched quickly...the winrar expected time just increases the more apps I open....

I am not sure what most of you ppl are doing or trying....Learn to not have everything positioned on the screen...If I slide the video of WMP10 down on the screen and then maximize the winrar archiving so that both are visible on the desktop the video gets sluggish. No surprise now they are both in the foreground and the winrar was the last to be clicked and therefore has "preference".....Now if I reclick the box of the WMP10 app it goes back to flawless and takes "preference".....Why is this such a surprise to most???

Since winrar takes 85-100% and WMP takes about 10-15% and the downloading probably takes 3-5% then the 120% total could be helped by HT in P4. If the winrar is compressing files on the C: drive and the mpoeg is being played from the C: drive you may still have an issue...will the work get done any faster?? maybe not since an AMD64 will likely get the winrar app done faster anyways. Even with the hit of WMP running I may still at my speed get the archiving done faster then a P4 at 3.4ghz....


NOw I tried running this...

everything above...winrar archiving is being done on the G: drive...I start to copy a folder (540+mb) to the D: drive...still no slowdown as long as the WMP10 is in the foreground it runs smooth. If I truied to copy folder form the c: drive it starts to slowdwon the playback of the video even if I minimize the copy procedure. That is a clear cut sign of IO bottleneck and you will face that anywhere.

2 instances of winrar even if all things were being done on the differenet drives did slow sdown the video regardless of with items are minimized or not. This is probably overloading the buses bandwidth. Who the heck needs to be archiving 2 things at same time??? I bet you will have issues doing everything I did above on a P4 with HT...someone test it please...

Be patient and stop trying to do this type of activity. 1 at a time. I suspect without multiple drives, higher bandwidth HDD controllers, this function could be severe on any system....

 

[Markfw]

Exactly Duvie. The only thing that could help do this much is a duallie with a very fast chaching SCSI controller, and you can hardly kill it no matter what you do. But then you could build 4 desktops for what I have in this one, and just use each (thru a KVM) !!!

 

[Munky]

Heh, it seems like you're taxing your HD too much, not the cpu. Don't tell me you're also trying to do a virus scan while defragging the disk, because that's so.... I'm not even gonna say it. The HD is the slowest component of any system, dont expect miracles from it. Try something like watching a video while running prime95, then we'll see if it's the cpu's fault.

 

[EdzAviator]

What do you mean when doing things on separate Drives???? Is it partition drive or a different HDD??

I have an 80GB which i partitioned to 4 drives....How do i avoid IO Bottlenecks?? Should install winrar in C: and norton on D:????? To be able to run them on different drives????

Does adding memory helps a lot in this kind of Multi-Tasking than changing the processor????

 

[Duvie]

Partitioned drives are not separate drives....they require the same mechancial parts therefore they will be limited even when doing things between the partitions. The only reason ppl partition is to make more manageable size portions to run quicker scandisk and defrags on...Otherwise I have always seen that partitioning a drive can actually slow things down more. The facts is the 4 drives are all on the same channel meaning they are limited to one read or write command at a time.

When I read a file from drive C for me and write to drive D, I have no limitations and the speed increase is real...I can read write operations simultaneaously...

Adding memory helps, yes...however for most 512mb is plenty and moving to 1gb may not be a big deal. So i would hate to have you go this route and not have any differences....I run a lof of CAD apps so it helped me. What I would do is open the number of apps you normally do then hit <ctrl-alt-del> and check in the task manager under performance...see how much physiacl memory is still available. If most of the memory is used up then you may benefit somewhat. When the system runs out of system ram to use it will start using the HDD and that will be a blow in performance....


Edit: look in my sig.....I have 3 separate HDD's...2 was enough was a big difference over 1 alone in many things...

 

[Acanthus]

Id bite the bullet until dual core. Dual core for both intel and amd are going to slaughter HT.

 

[Jeff7181]

Why are all of you responding? He asked DUVIE a question...