HELP PLEASE IS IT MOB CPU OR RAM

[kevin.barnes]

Please help. Pensioner not Tecky,

My question is this. Is it the motherboard, CPU or the memory that is slowing things down?

This computer was a barebones factory sourced, it worked well then at 13 months the modem went erratic, the DVD died at about 16 months then at 18months the computer died and after emails a letter to the MD, phone calls and lots of complaining it was agreed they would have it back at the factory to investigate.

Where for no charge they replaced the Foxconn SIS 661FX MO3 motherboard that they said had had a power surge across it? For a Foxconn SIS 661FX MO4.

Since then it really struggles to play some game demos that I had run no problem before with a lower spec Geforce 5200. Demos like Far cry, BF2, Battlefield 1942 and Unreal tournament all used to run fine before? Now they are jerky and slow or BF2 will not run at all. The factory thinks that the computer is fine as it is a budget computer suitable for writing letters and spreadsheets etc. not games demos.

If this is so why did we all have to upgrade from 266mhz or 677mhz and buy fast graphics cards on their recommendations?? When a new knib for our pens would have done the trick. Nobody mentioned BUDGET when it was purchased.

The facts below have been given in the attempt to answer as many question about my system if it will help diagnose the area at fault.

Intel Celeron D 335 2.8Ghz, Foxconn Sis661FX MO4 MOB. 512mb (2 x 256mb) Generic memory sticks. Dimm 1 ******** brand unknown 256mb PC3200 DDR SDRAM Timings CL3.0–4–4-8 @ 200mhz; and
Dimm2 ******** brand Nanya 256mb PC3200 DDR SDRAM Timings CL3.0–3–3-8 @ 200mhz.
Nvidia Geforce 6200 128MB AGP graphics card. Win XP SP2. WD Caviar 160mb 80% free

Memory gets these results using. Hot CPU Tester Pro(Lite Edition) 4.3 - Benchmark Result
Sunday, April 08, 2007
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Overall : 2117

MetaBench to MHz ratio : 0.75
Integer Instructions : 334 M Instructions/s
Floating-point Instructions : 131 M Instructions/s
MMX Instructions : 211 M Instructions/s
SSE Instructions : 79 M Instructions/s
SSE2 Instructions : 76 M Instructions/s
3DNow! Instructions : N/A M Instructions/s
Memory fillrate memcpy method : 381 MB/s
Memory fillrate C++ method : 380 MB/s
Memory rep movsd : 386 MB/s
Memory FPU 8 bytes blocks : 383 MB/s
Memory Assembly 4 bytes blocks : 382 MB/s
Memory Assembly 8 bytes blocks : 381 MB/s
Memory fillrate MMX 8 bytes blocks : 382 MB/s
Memory fillrate MMX 16 bytes blocks : 382 MB/s
Memory fillrate SSE 16 bytes blocks : 384 MB/s

Memory fillrate SSE movntq 8 bytes blocks : 573 MB/s
Memory fillrate SSE movntq 16 bytes blocks : 572 MB/s
Memory fillrate SSE prefetch movntq 16 bytes blocks : 571 MB/s
Memory fillrate SSE movntps 16 bytes blocks : 573 MB/s
Memory fillrate SSE prefetch movntps 32 bytes blocks : 577 MB/s
Memory fillrate SSE2 prefetch movntps 16 bytes blocks : 383 MB/s
Insertion Sort : 22 K Items/s
Shell Sort : 498 K Items/s
Merge Sort : 938 K Items/s
Heap Sort : 337 K Items/s
Quick Sort : 1,950 K Items/s
Large Objects Sort : 306 K Items/s
Fast Fourier Transformg (Standard) : 1,229 KB/s
Fast Fourier Transformg (Optimized) : 2,603 KB/s


These results using Everest 2.20.405 2003-2005 (by Lavalys)

Benchmark Mem read: 530MB/s Other Celerons quoted are around 1400 -1800 MB/s
Write: 269MB/s Other Celerons quoted are around 640 - 750 MB/s
Latency: 426.8ns Other Celerons quoted are around 169 - 190 ns

These results using SiSoft Sandra Lite ver 2007.4.11.22

Memory Bandwidth
468MB/s in. buffered 1sse2
487MB/s Flt. buffered 1sse2

Memory Latency Random access: 686ns 163.8 x Speed factor

Caches & Memory: 1443MB/s 33.6 x Speed factor

CPU gives good results in all above tests if good is the right word as a true Intel Celeron 335 2800Mhz x86 a 21 x133 Intel, all temperatures for CPU case and graphics were good to low no overheating under load, and I do not know how to overclock anything so system is still running at stock rates for everything as supplied.

Many thanks in anticipation of your help and assistance in these matters

 

[Cupra]

download a hdd checker... that can slow a system if its failing

 

[Corasik]

It's not always easy to guess the cause of a 'potential' slowdown like this, but there are always a few things worth checking.

Firstly, the motherboard only supports 'Single' channel for its memory. So its memory performance will never be as good as a motherboard that supports 'Dual' channel. (Difference is Single = 64bit wide bus, and Double = 128 bit wide bus)

However, 530mb/s seems low to me, my old 400mhz P2 pretty managed that with PC133 memory!. It's possible that the bios is incorrectly detecting the memory speed. Somewhere in bios you should be able to set the memory ratio, 1:1 CPU:RAM would mean that the CPU's 133mhz FSB, and the Memory would also be 133. You may be able to select a ratio of 4:5, so the CPU will be 133, and the Memory at 166. That may increase memory performance slightly. You may even have a 2:3 ratio which would allow the memory to be running at 199mhz (Same thing as DDR400) which would be as fast as your ram can go. It all depends on what options the motherboard supports.

Properly configured I would have expected a single channel motherboard + Celeron with PC3200 to be able to give 1000+ mb/s at the very least.

Moving on to the Graphics, there is a possibility that when they changed the motherboard, they didnt uninstall the old SIS motherboard drivers, and install new ones. This can cause the graphics card to default to PCI emulation, while it should actually be running in AGPx8 Mode. This is a HUGE performance hit for gaming.

If this is the case, you should install an SIS AGP driver, this will enable the motherboards AGP slot to run at full speed.

There is a sad truth that many computer shops and factories emply people with little to no understanding of computers. While its true that your computer may not be the fastest thing in the world, it should blow away a 667mhz computer with ease. 6200's are not that fast, but again compared to a 5200 its certainly not a downgrade, so anything you could play before should run just fine now.

XP with SP2 does run quite a lot smoother if you have 1gig of ram instead of 512, but it should not be as bad as you describe.

Im quite surprised about the low memory speed, and I strongly suspect that the AGP driver hasnt been installed. (Please note, I am talking about a driver to enable the AGP slot itself, a requirement for SIS motherboards, not the Nvidia graphics driver itself.)

Just thinking further, make sure you have an Nvidia driver installed, not just the Microsoft written 'basic' Geforce driver. The real Nvidia one is considerably faster, and has more features. The control panel on the Nvidia drivers will even tell you what mode your AGP Bus is running in. An easy way to spot if the SIS drivers are properly installed.

Explore your system bios settings, writing everything that sounds interesting down, and then post back here with what options you have, especially the memory ones.

Finally if you do try to change the bios settings, remember as far as the memory is concerned you have to run it at the speed of the slowest memory, so the timings will be limited to 3-4-4-8 based on the second memory chip.

 

[kevin.barnes]

Help please again with more info

Hi, Got this info from my computers Bios screens with some input from the Motherboard manual such as it is. I have included anything to do with VGA, AGP, Graphics, memory or timings.
Not that I’m fully with what it all means?
Figures in brackets are what bios is set at now.

PHOENIX AWARD BIOS CMOS SET UP

Section on BIOS FEATURES

Superboot (Disabled)

Super Bios Protect (Disabled)

Super Speed

CPU Clock (133) options Min=133 Max=199 Key in a DEC number

CPUram Frequency Ratio (SPD)options SPD or 4:3 or 1:1 or 4:5 or 2:3

Dram Frequency set by SPD display shows 200Mhz

Section on Advanced Bios Features

Video Bios Shadow (Enabled)

Manual states that if you enable this option the video bios will be copied to RAM. Video shadow will increase the video speed, it improves the performance.

Section on Advanced Chipset Features

Dram clock / Timing Control (SPD)
Display shows set by SPD x Dram CAS Latency 2.5T
x Ras Active Time (tRAS) 6T
x Ras Precharge Time (tRP) 3T
x Ras to Cas Delay (tRCD) 3T

Options SPD or Manual
Manual options are Dras Cas Latency 2T or 2.5T or 3T
Ras Active Time (tRAS) 6T or 7T or 5T or 4T or 8T or 9T
Ras Precharge Time (tRP) 3T or 2T or 4T or 5T
Ras to Cas Delay (tRCD) 3T or 2T or 4T or 5T

AGP & P2P Bridge Control

AGP Aperture size (64MB) Options are 32MB or 64MB or 128MB or 256MB or 512MB

Manual states this option defines the size of the aperture if you use an AGP Graphics Adapter
The aperture is a portion of the PCI memory address range dedicated for Graphics memory address space.
Note: This function does not work when onboard VGA is used

Graphics Window WR Combin (Disabled)

AGP Fast Write Support (Enabled)

AGP Data Rate (Auto) Options are Auto or 4x or 8x

Onchip AGP Control (32MB) Options are 16MB or 32MB or 64Mb or 128MB
This option is used to set the onboard VGA share memory size.

System BIOS Cacheable (Enabled)
Video RAM Cacheable (Enabled)
Memory Hole at 15M –16M (Disabled)

Section Integrated Peripherals

Init Display First (PCI Slot) Options are PCI Slot or AGP

Section Power Management Set up

Run VGA BIOS if S3 Resume (Auto) Options are Auto or Yes or No

Section on PNP / PCI Configurations

PCI / VGA Palette Snoop (Disabled)

Manual states if you use a non standard VGA Card use this option to solve Graphic Accelerated Card or MPEG Audio Card problems (E.g. Colours not accurately displayed)

My Pig sorry Rig

Intel Celeron D 335 2.8Ghz 533 Mhz FSB, Foxconn Sis661FX MO4 MOB. AGP 8x.Onboard AC97 2.3 Realtec 5.1 channel Audio.Lan 10/100 Ethernet 512mb (2 x 256mb) Generic memory sticks. Dimm 1 ******** brand unknown 256mb PC3200 DDR SDRAM Timings CL3.0–4–4-8 @ 200mhz; and Dimm2 ******** brand Nanya 256mb PC3200 DDR SDRAM Timings CL3.0–3–3-8 @ 200mhz.
Nvidia Geforce 6200 128MB AGP graphics card. Win XP SP2. WD Caviar 160mb 80% free HDD