C2D v X2 = Not as good as you think?

[FatRakoon]

Erm, no.

Correct my ignorance here, but the IDE/SATA ports can go on either

ACHI
IDE/RAID
IDE

I have currently got them as IDE only

So, this would not require the ACHI drivers would it?

I currently dotn have any SATA Drives connected to those lines anyway, only the orange ones, and I only have 2 DVDRW drives on them, so, do I need to?

I have the Raptor connected to the same line as the hitachi and I had thought about throwing it onto one of those purple ones ( Im assuming that the purple ones only go on as this ACHI thing??? - not seen this before you see )

 

[FatRakoon]

I don't know the board. What I do know is that the Sata controller without AHCI drops back to a compatible slower IDE mode with Sata drives. That ain't going to help. I don't mean any disrespect to you, but RTFM comes to mind. I refrained from commenting, some emotive remarks here. But I'll say my piece. I came from an Opty [email protected] after 3 prior X2's. This is the first Intel I've owned in decades and honestly what your describing, it just sounds like something is wrong. I've never seen anything like it with mine.

It does not say anything in the manual about me having to have ACHI mode on though?

That previous line also points out the fact that I have RTFM

Im not ignorant to trials though and I will HDTACH my setup with all the drives, set this ACHI thing to ... Erm, well... ACHI instead of IDE and re-do the HDTach tests and see what gives?

After all the Drive is SATA II and already its fairly quick at everything, so, who knows?

 

[FatRakoon]

Ok, I have gone into the BIOS, and set it to ACHI instead of IDE and in spite of trying to reinstall the drivers for it. I now have 6 of those IDE channels... 3 Primary and 3 secondary?

Am I correct here in thinking that the IDE ( Ok, the SATA ) drivers are not actually being installed correctly?

My list of ID Econtrolers now are :-

Intel(R) ICH8 2 Port Serial ATA Storage Controler - 2825
Intel(R) ICH8 4 Port Serial ATA Storage Controler - 2820
Primary IDE Channel
Primary IDE Channel
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controler

So, a bit too much I think there?

Also I was ( While Im here ) wondering if anyone else can verify the RAM figures that coming up for me???

Im currently playing about with the GEIL Ultra low latency stuff at the Moment, and I ran CPUZ to have a look at the settings and I have got

under memory:-
CAS# = 5.0
RAS to CAS Delay = 7 clocks
RAS Precharge = 7 Clocks
Cycle Time ( Tras ) = 20 clocks?

under SPD its telling me that the RAM is PC2-5300?? Week 39 Year 06

Anyway, I am currently at 415FSB x 7 giving me 2.9Ghz and I ran SuperPI and its at 22 Seconds?? - its a hell of a lot slower than the corsair @ 400FSB

That cant be right surely? I know the figures are pointing to a slow system, but come on! - not this much slower surely?

Im going to have to go back in now arent I?

Anyway, the Driver / Controler issue I think is my main concern for now... Its always done this however, but if anyone could very this on a DS3 please?

 

[FatRakoon]

Sure things guys. I will kill off the FAH clients on them and then have another play about later on.

I read about FAH being strong on Intels for X Projects and good on AMD for Y Projects, so maybe...?

Me starting threads relating to poor performance?

Yes, I am guilty as charged on that one.

I will be honest here, but when I moved from a Barton 3200 to my winchester 3200, I found very little difference in performance, while everyone was talkign about how its twice as fast blah blah, when it quite simply is not. I was simply looking for this so called 200% boost that never of course came.

I accepted it and after a while I realised that it was quicker but only at this or that but not the other.

When I upgraded the Winchester to a Venice, because people were saying it was better cos of this or that, and I also realised that the winchester was quicker than the venice, so what are all these people on about? - some extra commands that nothing I have will probably ever use, thats what.

When I went to the X2 3800 I was expecting double the speed, but I simply never got it... In fact, the winchester clocks way more than the 3800 does and so in fact I think the Winchester is a better CPU than the x2-3800 for most things, and to be honest, even today I only hve one program that I use regularly that can useboth cores and thats DVD Santa... Everythign else I dont really need 2 cores for.. Not really. I set most of my jobs up and they are all ready for me to click on go, and when I do, I often just walk away anyway, so whether it takes 1 hour on the winchester or half an hour on the 3800, I really dont care too much.

It was the same when I went for the Opteron assuming that that extra cache would let me work the system harder... It has not... Actually I went for the opteron expecting it to be dual core to be honest, but thats me all over... It looked cheap and I didnt read past the price.

No, the simple truth is that I have upgraded either a tiny ammount expecting it to be more than it is, or even worse, I have downgraded in some ways. I sometimes think that maybe its me, and so yes, I post and sometimes I get answers, and a lot of the time I get flames, but that I really dont care about... Not anymore.

 

[FatRakoon]

Thanks fornowagain, But doesnt that only apply to the 2 ports? - the Purple ones?

I thought this does not actually apply to the orange ones?

AFAIK the orange ones are standard and dont actualyl use this ACHI option???

Also, forgive my stupidity here, but how the hell do you get the drivers to do this? My SATA RAID Drivers, but no ACHI drivers? - I'm lost on this one?

 

[FatRakoon]

Dangerous... Im gflad your system is running so well... Hopefully this can only point to something amiss on mine surely, and I have only good news in front of me.

Right now, I dont though.

Im currently doing some HTML stuff for a friend for his site, Im not doing any hard coding of any kind, both FAH clients of course, and I am using Namo to do the HTML, and guess what? Its pausing the occasional time, perhaps for about 4 to 5 seconds I will click on something and it wont register for a while.

Thats serious.

I am also looking at the teskmanager all the time now and keeping an eye on exactly what gives, and I see that Spyware Doctor takes upa hell of a load. Now the other week, I noticed that when it does its automatic run, even if I am not doing anything else but playing a game, the game becomes jerky as hell. I have not displayed the FPS in these games, but you can see that its dropped to something below about 5 thats for sure... Much like 3DMark2005.

This does not happen on my AMDs, so...

The thing is, that I have gone through the BIOS in this system many times now and sure, its improved here and not there most are the obvious bits to do, some are less obvious, but nothing I have seen ( yet? ) have caused me to have such drastically poor performance?

I know people have pointed out that the Disk access seems to be the issue, and sure, it does sound like it is, however, the disk access in itself is perfectly fine in all areas such as Program loading, Windows startup/shutdown and defragging.

The CPU also in itself is fairly ok... Ok, now that I have gone and overclocked it with the Geil, I have lost a couple of seconds ( Annoying and weird ) with SuperPI, but the figures are indeed reassuring to say that the CPU is on par.

Back to the RAM though?

Im a little concerned at this for a few reasons...

1 - I just simply cannot for the life of me get the RAM to go in very well.
The PC just wont start up, and I often mess about for yonks nudging it that tiny little bit each time... Swapping the corsair for the Geil for example took me just over an hour... Does anyone else have this problem?

2 - The Geil vs Corsair
I have been running it at 400FSB on *** corsair and I have been getting as low as 18 second 1MB SuperPI with the corsair, however, I have thrown the Geil all the way up to 430 and I get nowhere near 18 Seconds... In fact I am getting 21??? - Cant be right surely?

With both of those, could it be possible that my board might simply be faulty?

I have run MEMTEST and it primes 24/7 just fine so its confusing me there.

 

[FatRakoon]

Normally I tend to just press return on most things.

However, I did set something the last time I ran it...

I just had a look at the config file on all my clients and on the conroe, priority is set to 96!! - Im sure this is in % on both cores.

The priority option is NOT present in the AMD clients

Ill alter that one and see what happens?

 

[FatRakoon]

Im currently running XP Pro but I do also have a XP64 Licence that I have for this PC too and I found that to be a little more reliable, especially when I was trying o actually get Need For Speed games to play without crashing, but at this time, its XP Pro.

Yes, I mean to have a play about, but later on with the AMD & C2D with the FAH priority settings.

Actually, when I want to change any of the settings, I just simply kill off the process in TaskManager, delete the config file and re-run the console... I enter my usual garb and it continues where it left off.

However, if I am doing a basic change, then I drag it into notepad and alter thefile and the next time it starts up, the new settigns will be done.... Thats the idea I was going to look at with the PRIORITY setting... I was going to have one on 5 and the other on 95 and then run DVDSanta as a very quick test and see what it does there ( Hey, It might be usefull might now, oyu dont know till you try do you? )

I was going to do this on the x2-3800, the C2D, and the Opteron ( Why not? )

 

[FatRakoon]

As I said, the conroe is great for 99.9% of users. Its speed for running just a few apps is way higher than it is on my AMD. Even encoding a video in the background while running a game is better on the conroe than it is on the AMD. Im not argueing that one a single jot.

Im often encoding a couple of files with DVDSanta, sometimes running DVDSanat more than 2 or 3 instances at once, Im also encoding some files with DVD2ONE, again 3 or 4 times at once, depending on what I have on, and also converting 2 or 3 instances of TMPGDVDENCoder, all at once, as well as my usual junk, and I can throw those into the background no problem and just forget about them, and carry on doing anything I should wish to... My while the conroe is definitely chugging through all of that for sure, it struggles to bring each one up to show me its progress, while the AMD is much quicker, also as I said, if I fancied playing a game such as HalfLife2, Doom3, or even basic Need For Speed, the AMD just does it with only a small ammount of slowdown during the disk access, and yet the conroe is really struggling, to the point that half the time I seriously doubt its going to actually bother because its taking that long.

When the conroe runs a few things, its the better system, when the conroe runs a few and a few, it simply is not.

Ok, this could be down to a simple thing:-
My conroe may not be setup right and the AMD might be spot on?

Sure, this is true, however, I have gone through several attempts at getting an installation right and its never been any different each time.

 

[FatRakoon]

Or Rakoons AMD system is ultra-leet

Hmmmm...

Maybe both!!!!

( Rubs chin )

Maybe I have got my AMDs setup right, I dont know?

One thing I NEVER do, is put any unecessary junk of C:
All of my systems for several years now, have had Windows on C: and NOTHING ELSE... Ok, thats untrue, some System Tools like AntiVirus/Spyware and my defragger and the odd utils but no apps or games or anyhting else I can think of... They all go into D:\Program Files\

And D: is always on a different drive than C: too!

My C: is only 8GB and at this time, it has 3GB left on it.

I also spread out the Pagefile too, usually 256MB on C: and 512MB for any other drives. Maybe may argue on this, but I feel that it makes me feel like its faster... Whether it does or not, is debateable ( No, not here ) but I have had times where its faster and times where its slower. This is how I do it.

I do these things such as having Media on E: and my junks stuff on F: and they all add up to make a system thats very responsive even when its full of stupid junk. The Remaining space on the C: Drive is taken up for storing my ISO Files, and thats Partition T: and my downloads are also on a different Drive too, this is M:

This means that I can indeed load up the PC with files coming to and from various partitions and I get very little slowdown in the file access..

For example, if I copy an ISO from one drive to another, it takes about 10 seconds... If I copied this file to the same partition, or even to a different partition on the same drive, it takes about 14 seconds... If I am defragging C: and copying it, we are talking just over 20 seconds. Defragging, and burning and the copy now goes over 25 seconds.

Not the way I have my system... It still takes only 10 seconds pretty much no matter how ridiculous I go with other disk access ( Pinch of salt of course )

I have found that even a basic RAID setup struggles to do the same jobs compared to this way...Basic RAID as in 2 drives and multiple partitions.

So, yes, I think my AMD setups are pretty L33T now you mention it.

 

[FatRakoon]

I really don't want to get involved with this aurguement/debate

But... here you are...

all I know is we are never going to know for sure unless we have two system's with the exact same components in every way shape and form (apart from cpu obviously), setup exactly the same way, and then run the test, EVEN then the test may be unfair due to software not be optimized for the new C2D architecture

Very true.

I dont really know what my real point of this is truely all about when it comes down to 99.9% of users. My conroe is faster than my AMDs... Any of my AMDs, even my Winchester thats gone back to 3Ghz for some of the messing about tests against the conroe, and *** conroe is still faster for everything I can realistically ask of it.

Its just that I dont. I ask far too much, and the AMD handles these jobs better than the conroe does.

this thread is not worth the six pages it's reached thus far until proper a test can be done

Agreed in part, but then 6 pages of replies ( And junk ) say otherwise ( sort of )

one man that has two systems that are pretty similar don't cut for me,

Which is why I posted and asked if anyone can verify it.

I have seen a number of replies that have said "My conroe can do this or that" but no one has come back and said that they have run the same thigns on both their AMD and their Intel and kept loading up till one of them got bogged down, and of the PC that bogged it first, was it their intel or their AMD.
We can go on and on for 60 pages saying whatever the hell we like, but until you actually see for yourself what I mean, its all pretty much one word against another.

We need to make a mutlimedia test that everyone can do easly and involves using software that is easy for everyone to get hold of, free/shareware etc.

Yes, thats spot-on.

And not just that but it needs to be completely free of any kind of preference of the CPU being used, or indeed, it must have the tweaks needed for all CPUs. It needs to be 100% neutral, and it also needs to do EVERYTHING that can be asked of a CPU... Its no good doing tests based around, say for example adding 1+1 when an intel might be able to add 1+1 a million times quicker than an AMD when the AMD might be able to add 2+2 a million times quicker than the Intel... The tests needs to have a bit of everythign possible that could be asked from a CPU. ( Not possible I suppose but you see what I mean )

 

[FatRakoon]

I'd recommend you start a topic regarding this page file setup in the Windows forum. Briefly, I can tell you 256MB + 512MB is nowhere near enough for 1GB of RAM, let alone 2GB - and unequal size page files on different drives is not recommended.

Obviously you need to sort this out before the thread can continue on any logical route. Conroe relies heavily on precaching and a duff page file setup could be affecting this.

Start Topic
NO. Already seen enough on that subject, and its never been resolved ... Not really, and read far too many reviews by many sources and they all say its this way or that way thats the best... I no longer give a stuff what anyone says or writes about the pagefile anymore.

Although...

You are correct in that unequal pagefiles are apparently not the best option to choose, and sure enough, it may very well affect the Intel. and not being stuck up my own rear like many others I know of, I will have a play about again when I next go onto the intels, but however, on the AMDs ( Or at least the last time I did toy about with setting up the optimal pagefile(s) ) I found that when running multiple Apps from Multiple HDs, having Multiple Pagefiles did indeed make the PC seem more responsive... By a minute ammount mind you, dont get me wrong here, but it felt snappier never the less.

Oh, I didnt say 256+512 is the total... I said 256MB for C: and 512MB for the other partitions... My PCs all have at least 2 drives, and my main ones have at least 4... The ones with only 2 drives are setup 256MB + 1024MB which is plenty and my main PC right here, is actually running 512MB + 1024 + 1024 + 512MB which is also fine... Each PC has their Pagefile setup in their own ways, but in a similar way to this.

 

[FatRakoon]

I got to ask, but what size is the DVD?

Only, if oyu were to copy a non-protected standard / Home Made DVD from your DVD Drive to your HD, how long does it take?

 

[FatRakoon]

This would actually make for a good read and quality thread if it was not for some peoples pointless pathetic L33T speak and patronising tone.
A guy has a very interesting point to make, he even admits he could be wrong, yet he gets flamed with L33T talk which in all honesty has not added any value.

I probably risk a holiday and I dont care, but howcome some guys keep getting away with spouting un-constructive BS and creating aggro in perfectly fine and interesting threads? It's sad and boring.

To OP: I found your tests intriguing and the technical discussions they spawned very interesting. I am also very impressed with your patience towards certain critics. Hats off to you. Personally I would have lost my temper at page four.

Thank you mate... Thank you very much.

I have learned a lot of things with a lot of OCUK posters, and that its simply not worth wasting my time on them.

Mass majority are good people and hey, Im wrong a lot of the time, Im right a lot of the time, just like everyone else here... No one knows everythign about PCs and I dont believe for one minute that anyone does. and sure, when Im wrong and people point this out, then cool. I was wrong. But to flame me for being wrong??? HA! it just shows another side to them and while they think it might be cool and "L33T" do do this to people, I thin kthat it just shows that in truth, they probably know less than I do, on the scale of things, and it just gives me a bit of a comfy glow knowing this.

I had the exact same problem as you did for a while, tested everything I could find, read times were all okay for testing, yet still in actual use it'd start stuttering or FPS would bottom out in games. I knew in my gut that all the problems felt like disk access time, but the tests kept telling me I was wrong.

Well, I ended up fixing the problem by systematically swapping SATA cables from the disks in my RAID setup. Turned out that one of them was causing some intermittant trouble with reading. Since I did that, the whole system has been flying along.
Not saying that's what your problem is, but, if you're tried everything else...?

Cheers dude... No.

I have not changed the cables over and ... Hang on...


Hmmm yes, 2 of the cables are blue things that I dont know where the hell I got them from, but I got a couple of packs of new ones and I will chuck them in later on. You never know eh?

Im not convinced that even if the cables are cruddy that it will give me answers to my original post, but at least it will probably clean up my signal surely.

Cheers guys.

 

[FatRakoon]

Ok. I have swapped the cables over... too early to say if its done anything, and will no doubt need time to see.

FanBoyism?

Its funny really. I have to say that I am an AMD fan before Intel.
Few reasons for this... Over the years I feel that I have been let down with Intels for a few reasons... Most are obvious now, but were not at the time.

I mean, I had an AMD600 ( SLOT-A ) a fair while back, and Iasked a local shop if they would be willing to swap it for a faster CPU, they gave me a Celeron 900, now naturally I saw 600 to 900 and of course a 50% boost... NOPE! - what a pile of crud the Celeron was against the AMD. I asked to have it back and they laughed at me.

This taught me a lesson.

I never touched Intels for quite some time.

A Mate had a 2.6Ghz P4 and I sold him a Ti4200 a while back to replace his ageing MX440... I was getting about 18K in 3DMark ( 2K or 2K1 I cant remember now ) and this was on my slightly overclocked XP17 and yet we never did get his above 11K.
Again, I knew I hated Intels then too, and this isnt all that long ago... Maybe 3 years perhaps?

Now, a year or so ago, I managed to get hold of a P4 3.6Ghz Prescott system for £400 and it was a steal... It was a real pile of plonk however, and I do mean that. It was so poor that I took the HDs out of it and stuffed them into my AMD and used a single 80GB in it instead and just played about.
Anyway, Thigns like SuperPI were showing me very nice results and some tests on that against my Newcastle 3000 showed that the Newcastle had to be clocked to 2.4 to give near-exacting results as what the P4 was giving me, however, general useage of the system was dire beyond belief, and it was my first introduction to this so-called HT Technology and how badly it can make some things perform when you are expecting it to be more than it is.

I asked about this though and thats what led me on to the DS3, then eventually to the conroe, because the Mobo I originally had in that system is a complete tool... Plus, it was DDR1 which cannot have helped things.

But, the P4 and the DS3 coupled with cheap n nasty DDR2 RAM, allowed me to clock the hell out of the P4 and finally I started to see that intels really can be good systems, its just that the P4HT cannot handle multitaskign as good as they say it can... Even the newcastle was multitasking better I think ( The reason why I chose the Newcastle against the P4 was simply that I had them next to each other and no other reason )

I have since got a Conroe, another DS3 Board, and some better RAM and I am finding that Even the conroe has been a little overhyped, or maybe that I havebeen sucked into the hype and seeing people get under 10 seconds when I have only under extreme clocking gone under 30 with my AMDs, sort of Made it all up for me, only to find that I am only a little bit better off!

And yes, I have said it a number of times now, but for 99.9% of users, the conroe will be far better than an AMD, and I am one of those 0.01% that is just in the league of extraordinary bellends who likes to push their PC way over what can realistically be asked of it, and I feel that my AMDs can handle it better... Not faster, but better. In this I mean that I can carry on opening programs and run them at a good pace, whereas the intels simply get slower and slower and slower at a much faster rate than the AMD does.

Again, dont get me wrong here... My next purchase is actually going to be another conroe... This time Im looking at the Kentsfield, but again, only because I do indeed like to run tons of stuff, but agian, as I have said... I do it because I can.

Its no longer a matter of fanboyism for me... Its more a matter of what I feel more comfortable with and right now, its my good old ( OLD? ) AMD.

 

[FatRakoon]

Sorry to hijack the thread - but I was wondering how do you tell that both C2D cores are enabled? In my windows task manager I have one graph for CPU useage and two graphs for CPU useage history (and I'm running a Conroe 6300). Is this how it should appear or should I have two separate CPU useage graphs with C2D and windows XP?

Yes,thats how it should be.

The one on the left is total CPU useage ( REALTIME ) and the ones on the right are Per-core useage ( HISTORY )

 

[FatRakoon]

And of course Intel have not had to drop ANY of their prices have they?

Oh, while Im here... Full spec of the conroe

Case = Thermalte Armour
Mobo = DS3 ( F7 Bios )
RAM = Geil 6400 ULL
CPU = E6300 @ 3.01Ghz - Artic Freezer
PSU = Qtec 300w ( Only joking its a Hyper 530 )
GFX = X800GTO2 @ 850

PCI Cards
AUD = XFI
IDE = ITE8212
TV = Mercury

HDs
SATA0 = Hitachi 80GB ( C:=8GB Windaz & T:=68GB ISOs )
SATA1 = Raptor36 ( M: - Downloads )

SATA2 = Seagate 250GB ( D:164GB Apps + F:68GB Junk stuff )
SATA3 = Seagate 250GB ( E: Media )

IDE 0 + 1 ( Mobo ) = 2 x DVDRW
IDE 0 + 1 ( Card ) = 2 x DVDRW

PSU Overpowered? Possible... I have taken drives away and one minimal tests but found no benefits

I really should move the Raptor to the Purple connections and I think I will do that in a few minutes and see if that gives me any improvement, plus I want to see more into booting into this ACHI mode thingy that seems to also provide some improvements, and one other issue that I am needing to sort out is that one of my RAID drives was a bit grindy, so I took it out and have now installed to just the one... I have just realised last night that I am still using the grindy one, so its yet another F&R coming up... Most likely tonight.

Couple of other issues that may or may not provide me with some gains and these will all be addressed as soon as I knuckle down with another install.

 

[FatRakoon]

So are you still trying to prove that C2D is slower at multitasking than X2 by ruling out all possible problems or have you accepted that this is definitely the case and are now trying to reduce the gap for your own benefit?

Bit of both, bit of neither.

I dont care anymore about trying to prove anything... I am comparing my own 2 main PCs and I know what I am seeing and I know that my AMD can handle lots more than the conroe, even though the conroe is a much faster CPU, I have run them side by side and I simply find my AMD is much more responsive than the Intel. I dont have to prove anything to anyone and I am still waiting for someone to actually run th very same apps on similar systems to disprove me... Or rather to see for themselves what I mean... While I have had many many people **** me off and saying that their Intel does this or that, not one has actually got back with a head to head where both Pcs are working OTT... Not one.

I would love with all honesty, to suddenly find out that my system is not quite setup right... I really would... If I all of a suddent get the Intels to run the stuff I ask of it as well as the AMDs then I would switch in an instant.

However, I also know that I have it setup as good as I can get it so I dont hold out much hope... Not really.

 

[FatRakoon]

Hey hang on... I have not said that the AMD is quicker at any of these tasks...

I said that when I run a fair load of apps, while they both slow down ( obvious ) the Conroe slows down a lot more than the AMD does and it eventually ges to the point, that the AMD can still perform is normal tasks with very little generla slowdowns, while the conroe gets too sluggish.

Ok, so yours is the opposite, and this is what I wanted to know. Mine on the other hand is the opposite to yours. Of course, I can Prime, SuperPI, CS2 ( Although once CS is in, it takes nothing from the CPU so proves nothing ) and sure, 3DMark too, but these for me dont show any real difference betwen the two other than my GFX Cards giving differing scores.

Im not disputing that only running those apps will show any difference to what you had, but try loading a whole load more apps all eating as much CPU % as they can, and you will find that the gap betwen the 2 will close... The most apps you load up the smaller the gap and eventually the AMD will take over.

Or at least thats what is happening to me.

 

[FatRakoon]

Don't know if this has been addressed yet (long thread...) but the timing is out and will result in poorer performance.

You should be able to run 4-4-4-12 timing on that memory (I'm assuming its Geil PC6400 now). The fact its reporting it as PC5300 in the SPD tab is normal. I believe this may be for compatibility reasons because the memory requires higher than JEDEC standard voltage to operate at its rated speed. It needs 2.1v. In other words it probably wouldn't POST in most motherboards if the SPD was set for it to operate at 800mhz and 4-4-4-12 timings.

These are the current timings... No, its not been adressed yet.

If I set the RAM to ANYTHING other than stock, ( These ) it fails to boot.

Any clues?