Slow EVERYTHING on stock clock

[Solouko]

I've just built a system for a friend and it's PAINFULLY slow at everything!

Spec:

Intel Core 2 Quat Q6600 2.4GHz
MSI P6N SLI-F v2 650i motherboard
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX
2X: XFX GeForce 8500 GT Silent 256MB DDR2 (SLIed)
Enermax Liberty 620W ELT620AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU
4X: Maxtor Diamondmax 21 250GB SATA-II 8MB (RAID 5)
Thermalright SI-128 CPU Cooler (with AcoustiFan DustProof Quiet 120mm Fan)

now, problems are:

USB 2.0 transfer rate is slower then USB 1

DVD transfer rate incredibly slow

windows seems very sluggish

3D mark 06 score of 4216

Prime 95 when running 4 instances with an affinity set to each core will fail within 20 minutes on every core.

tried installing an additional 2 sticks of Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2 memory but it would not boot with it until i increased the DRAM voltage THEN it only detected 3GB and would not run 3D mark 06 without crashing

also, loading files and applications takes a very long time, it should be faster then this with a RAID 5 array! *kicks it*

any ideas?

 

[Solouko]

Q. why have you SLi'd two low end graphics cards?
A. I did it because they are the most powerfull passivly cooled boards available to me at the time and within my budget because the spec required a near silent setup.

Q. Have you checked all 4 cores are recognised by windows?
A. All 4 cores appear in device manager, other than that i dont know how to ckeck if windows can recognise them correctly.

Q. Have you given your ram the correct voltage and timings in the bios?
A. yes, set timings to 5-5-5-15 and the DRAM voltage to 1.9 after looking up the info on the corsair website.

Q. what OS are you running?
A. OS is windows XP pro 32-bit SP2 with most of the hotfixes I could find

Q. Are you booting off the RAID 5 array?
A. yes all 4 drives are in the one arry and booting from it, I thought it'd be better for the sustained transfer rates the PC is designed to undergo, I may look at slipping another drive in the for windows though.

Well your 3Dmark score looks spot on for a pair of 8500GT cards
That's reasuring, thank you

And if you have a 32bit OS it will only detect between 3 and 3.5gb of RAM
Thank you, i didnt know that.

Perhaps he likes the option of being able to use 4 monitors when required
I dont persoanly, but the guy I built it for does

 

[Solouko]

it's been over 2 weeks since i bought them, overclockers was out of stock of some parts so i had to wait untill i could even turn the system on, and like i said, those cards were the best available at the time... also i dont trust anything from gigabyte, i'm a bit of a nazi when it comes to them after having a string of gigabyte hardware go consistantly wrong on me.

in addition the guy i'm building it for is anti ATI for the same reasons... =/ so what can you do.

i like your thinking though and it would have been nice to have had the advice when i asked for it on the forums two weeks ago XD

better late than never though =3

I'm going to try instaling windows on a seperate drive because after thinking it over the only thing that seems wrong or different from nayhting i've tried before is a 0.7 terabyte raid 5 array booting windows.

i'll post an update shortly (thanks again to all of you who have helped so far!)

 

[Solouko]

thanks gt_junkie, i passed on your advice to my m8 and he said he was happyier with the SLI, maybe i'll give you guys more advanced warning next time i build a rig.

to get back on topic now the computer for the most part is sorted.. it was the RAID 5 array that was slowing everything down, i've now switched to a RAID 0+1 array and it's lightning fast!!!

it puts my AMD X2 to shame =/

i've put in it an IDE drive for now and installed windows on it and hamfistedly moved the program files folder and my documents folder to the RAID array... but the way i've done it using nlite has messed stuff up a bit and the raid array has decided to turn itself into 2 broken arrays for some reason.

What i'm planing to do now though is to go back to using the RAID 0+1 array to install windows on and have the IDE drive as a swap file... i know the burst speed of SATA is 300Gb/s but isn't the sustained average read and write closer to 40MB/s? and isn't that sustained average speed the same on IDE drives?

i really need the windows install on the raid array to speed up boot times, with the IDE drive it's painfully slow, but i'm worried that putting the swap file on the seperate IDE drive might slow things down as badly as putting it on the RAID array with the windows instal.

oh the desisions x_X in an ideal world i need 3 RAID arrays, one for windows (RAID 0) one for my documents (RAID 0+1) and one for the SWAP file (RAID 0).... i will one day get that bored and build a rig just like that!

but in the mean time, what would you recomend i do with the 5 drives i have:
4X SATAII 250GB
1x ATA 40GB

 

[Solouko]

I notice you have a 7900GTX in your old rig, would be best to put that in your new.

this isn't my rig, i'm sticking with my AMD X2 for now, this new rig is for my best mate, hence the tight budget.

but then again, i've got 2 cars, one of which is very fast and italian so my budget for upgrades is even worse!

 

[Solouko]

It -IS- a FIAT yes... but it's a fiat coupe 20VT, 240bhp over the front wheels is more than enough for me, and i get a nice leather interior too with aircon, what more could you ask for.

ok... satvan, but you cant have everything

the computer's working fine now apart from one little thing... the onboard realtek HD audio doesnt work, it's enabled in the bios and i've tried reinstaling it again and again but it wont work. in addition it will not UNinstall, that's not option anywhere to delete the driver or remove it.

also i googled this problem and found that to use HD audio windows needs to install an AUU driver, forget what that stands for... but anyway, supprise supprise that driver is not there so i'm guessing that interface driver just hasn't worked or bene installed for some reason.

Glad you got it sorted - who was it who guessed the raid 5 array was at fault...?

Good, now you can say "I am always right" and give this as an example. make sure you remember it because no one else will