X2 game issue...Is it the same with ATI and NVIDIA?? How many problems are the P-Ds having???

[Thor86]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
This thread has me concerned. Do I go with a X2 4400+ Toledo or a 4000+ San Diego?

Are you going to be multi-tasking heavily or playing 1080P Quicktime 7 HD videos? If not, and you are just going to be gaming, I would probably go for single core cpu.

 

[imported_Kensai]

We need cliffs. 😛

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: subzero813
btw, my friend installed the X2 driver, and it let C&C generals actually load. but then within minutes of entering a game, his computer just reboots. his memory timings are 2.5-3-3-8 and are exactly according to SPD.

Is it overclocked ? does he have enough power ?? I refuse to believe its a problem, untill I personally see a correctly setup computer, not run the game. I have generals, maybe I will install it on the X2 and see ! (I have it on the Opteron box now)

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
This thread has me concerned. Do I go with a X2 4400+ Toledo or a 4000+ San Diego?

Why don;t you let me test all these games. Give me a list, and I will work on it.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: Markfw900

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
This thread has me concerned. Do I go with a X2 4400+ Toledo or a 4000+ San Diego?

Why don;t you let me test all these games. Give me a list, and I will work on it.

I play HL2 and BF2.

 

[Markfw]

OK, I just spent the last 30 minutes or so installing XP, the drivers (no SP2 and NO X2 driver) and Generals. Then I played it for 15 minutes. No X2 driver, NO SP2 and NO problems at all !!! I am on the second mission ! I already read above where HL2 and BF2 worked, so I was responding to the only known application that wasn;t supposed to work.

I still say there is no problem !!! I don;t own BF2 but I may get it. Anybody in portland OR that wants to loan me a copy to prove it again !!!

GT, No problems here, take my word. And if you don;t like it, I would maybe even buy the CPU from you ! (if you bought it for a good price)

And I am posting this from the new XP install, alt-tabbed out of the Generals game that is still running !!!! !!!

 

[Markfw]

OK, I just spent the last 2 hours proving that Generals works fine EVEN WITHOUT GAME PATCHES, THE X2 DRIVERS OR XP SP2 !!!!!! So I don't want to hear anymore crap about that game. Any more you want tested ? I also had confirmation from Pabster that BF2 and HL2 work fine (don't know if he had the X2 driver installed or not though. Pabster confirm please ???)

 

[chinkgai]

Originally posted by: Markfw900
OK, I just spent the last 2 hours proving that Generals works fine EVEN WITHOUT GAME PATCHES, THE X2 DRIVERS OR XP SP2 !!!!!! So I don't want to hear anymore crap about that game.

whoa dude, this is a support thread. calm down.

 

[Markfw]

I only get a little miffed, since I and Duvie have posted many times, that there is no problem with the CPU, but possible bugs in some games, that can be corrected by either drivers, or patches.

But some people seem to insist that there is still a problem with the CPU, and it pisses me off, since that is crap. QAlmost as bad as Intelia.

OK, if anybody has a problem with a game, and they can't get it fixed, post here. But so far every game posted has been verified by at least one other user to work fine.

OK ????%#!%#$@%#@%#

 

[tarez]

I don't know if all of these experiements are fresh windows XP installs or not however if you go from a single processor to a multi processor setup on an already installed version of Windows XP, you have to upgrade the HAL and the NT kernel. I am honestly not sure if that is the same with the dual core AMD processor or not, but I thought I would toss the thought out to you all having problems.

 

[Pabster]

Battlefield 2 runs just fine. There are plenty of programming errata from EA, but that is to be expected with their bloatware.

What other titles are people having issues with? I don't play the role-playing titles so don't ask me on those 😀

 

[Redox]

I've tried installed the AMD CPU driver as suggested and it appears to have solved my problem in both Far Cry and Half Life 2 with jerkiness (haven't tried others yet). I had previously been using Runfirst to set affinity in the shortcut command line as posted here ...

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=27&threadid=1662743&enterthread=y

Supposedly the AMD driver is intended to enable Cool 'n Quiet but it appears to have helped with this problem.

Thanks for the info!

p.s. system specs are AMD64 X2 4400, Gigabyte K8N Ultra SLI, eVGA 7800 GTX, 2GB RAM, Audigy 2 ZX 77.77 drivers, AMD X2 driver installed, not sure about version of chipset drivers

 

[Redox]

spoke too soon ... still having problems with some games. Thief Deadly Shadows keeps cycling through opening cut scene and won't stop on starting menu. Ground Control II also shows strange behaviour with the background cutscene on the opening menu moving at erratic speed.

Using set affinity utilities (winlauncher or runfirst) solves both of the above problems but I was hoping that the CPU driver would be the generic fix for everything ...

 

[Waylay00]

Guys, what Duvie and Mark are trying to say is that some of the problems in here may be coincedental, and may not even be related to the CPu. I bet a good deal of the problems reported in this thread have nothing to do with the CPU.

 

[Redox]

Then why are 100% of my problems solved by disabling the second core?

It doesn't mean that there's a problem with the cpu per se but there do appear to be problems with compatibility with certain games. No doubt this will disappear or be less common with new games as they would likely be tested with A64 X2 cpu's

 

[Duvie]

All I am saying is that evryone who has mentioned they have an issue with a game I can find someone who doesn't or who solved it with the X2 drivers......What does that tell you??? If it was hardware it should effect everyone equally ...there are obviously other factors here and that is what I am trying to get at...I think it is a siftware implication of possbly the HAL....

 

[MichaelD]

Hi everyone,

I guess I'm lucky; I'm having no issues whatsoever. No speeding/stuttering/restarting/bluescreening/freaking the hell out. Nothing. I've only played five (5) games so far:

Half Life 2 (latest patches via the auto update utility built into Steam)
Counter Strike Source (ditto, above)
Far Cry (v. 1.33)
Serious Sam (latest patch)
Serious Sam Second Encounter (latest patch)

I am running WinXP Pro, SP1 with all the latest updates except SP2. (SP2 is the devil...), DirectX 9C (latest update available), NVidia Unified Driver 6.66, and Videocard driver 77.77. For the soundcard, I'm running whatever drivers are on the CD; I bought the card about a year ago. I've tried the latest drivers "update patch" from Creative and it always breaks my system. Fck it. I'll stick w/the CD drivers!

I am NOT running the NVidia firewall...it conflicted big time with Symantec Corporate firewall (which I really like) big time. I wiped/reloaded b/c the NVidia firewall didn't uninstall completely.

Here's my hardware setup:

MB: EVGA NF-41
CPU: AthlonX2 4400
MEM: 2GB (2x1GB) Crucial PC3200 (CAS3.0 3-3-8)
Videocard: EVGA 7800GTX
Soundcard: Audigy2 ZS
HD: 2 x 250GB SATA 7200rpm Maxtors, RAID0 using onboard SATA
PS: Sparkle 550-PLG 550W EPS (has the 8-pin plug for a server MB...not using it...has all the other connectors (SATA/PCI-E/etc)

I guess one very important thing to point out is that I'm not overclocking anything. Nothing. EVerything is stock speed...for now. 😉

Hope this helps someone. 🙂

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Redox
Then why are 100% of my problems solved by disabling the second core?

It doesn't mean that there's a problem with the cpu per se but there do appear to be problems with compatibility with certain games. No doubt this will disappear or be less common with new games as they would likely be tested with A64 X2 cpu's

It doens;t really disable the second core, it just doesn;t tell the game that 2 cpu's are available. Because you can use the second core for encoding (or whatever) while play the game, and the second core uses that.

 

[Redox]

Thanks Markfw ... good to know. I guess this means I shouldn't worry about background apps running like the virus scanner.

MichaelD ... do you have any of the following games (Thief Deadly Shadows, Deus Ex IW, or Ground Control II)? These games still give me problems with dual core but I know that Half Life 2 and Far Cry both work properly with the AMD cpu drivers installed. We seem to have similar setups except for the MB. Thanks!

 

[keitaro]

Prelim testing, but to confirm somewhat.

I ran Guild Wars without much problem, albeit for a short period of time. So far the game is working without the X2 driver. Since I do not have BF2 retail, I'll be reinstalling the demo soon and will try that out. But this is just additional info for you to add. Here's my full setup:

Hardware...
X2 3800+ @ 2.4GHz, ~1.33v (<-- wtf?)
MSI K8N Neo2 Plat (1.9 BIOS, it's what it came with upon arrival)
Crucial PC3200 512MB x 2 @ DDR-400 (8-4-4-3, 2T; early batches w/ Samsung chips; yes, horrible timings It's so old it cannot even do 1T)
ATi R9800 Pro 128MB
Enermax EG465P-VE 430W PSU

Drivers/softwares...
nForce platform/system drivers 6.66 (everything but SW IDE)
Realtek Gigabit (from CD)
Catalyst 5.8 w/ Control Panel (don't like their CC)

Right now, the system is running without the X2 drivers. I plan to later but I'm just being damn lazy about it. 😉 Will give additional reports.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: Redox
Thanks Markfw ... good to know. I guess this means I shouldn't worry about background apps running like the virus scanner.

MichaelD ... do you have any of the following games (Thief Deadly Shadows, Deus Ex IW, or Ground Control II)? These games still give me problems with dual core but I know that Half Life 2 and Far Cry both work properly with the AMD cpu drivers installed. We seem to have similar setups except for the MB. Thanks!

No, I'm sorry, I don't. 🙁 I do however, have the original Deus EX...but it's really old. I also have the original Thief. 🙂 We seem to have similar taste in gams. 😎

 

[keitaro]

Update for my Guild Wars testing on the X2. While nothing major, some movement would have that sudden "jerkness." By that I mean that you'd move and the 3D would render smoothly and at some point, it'd quicken up for just slightly and then go back to normal. Kinda like seeing a video trying to catch up to a proper sync point. Mind you, this is without the AMD driver.

After installing the AMD driver, I reran Guild Wars to see that it did improve somewhat in that I do not get that kind of "jerky" movements. But there's probably some other variables that I did not factor in and may be concluding too early. However, it's safe to say with or without the AMD driver, Guild Wars work w/o any glitches, blips, or whatnot. Add this one to the list of "Games that work with X2." My specs is same as above sans for the following:

X2 3800+ @ 2.4GHz / 1.40v in BIOS (SpeedFan reports it as 1.33v-1.35v)

 

[fatty4ksu]

Originally posted by: Redox
Then why are 100% of my problems solved by disabling the second core?

:thumbsup:

 

[Thor86]

Well, I am about to ditch my X2 and go back to single core, because even the Winxplauncher only works at random times.

Sometimes the games (Diablo2/CS:Source) launch no problems, most times, it just hangs there with blank screen, and I cannot even bring up task manager - nothing but a hard reset to get back into the OS.

BF2 works without any issues and I can play for hours on end, and this was before the AMD driver and doesn't need the launcher, so it isn't my OC or hardware.

Any suggestions are welcome as tonight will be the last night of f#$$ing around with this thing.

 

[aka1nas]

Maybe it would be useful to add to your list of questions whether or not this was a clean install or a drop-in CPU replacement. That might help us in pinpointing if it is a problem with the HAL.