Updating CPU kills performance on 3 systems?

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

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Well, this is a turn up for the books...

I just got myself a new E5440 and so the Q6600 went to my old E6600 PC, the E6600 went to the E6300 and the E6300 went to the E2180 system and this has freed up that for another PC that I might cobble together for kicks later on.

The thing is that now, all of a sudden, the E6600 PC thats now running the Q6600 has actualyl slowed down a tad and is no longer anywhere near as responsive as before, and the same thing has happened with the E2180 MAchine thats now running an E6300... Deadly slow?

In fact on the now E6300 Machine it was so bad, that I have decided to reinstall Windows and its running perfectly fine now?

What the F...?

Has anyone else had this? - I have never had anythign like this before but for it to happen on 2 other PCs at the same time for the same reason means more than just pure luck surely?
 
Hmmm I know that when you change motherboard it's always a good idea to reinstall Windows - I didn't think the same applies for replacing a CPU. Perhaps it is? I'm not sure really because I think all three can run from the same socket.
 
Oh yeah, they are all Conroe's ( Ok, Conroes, allendales etc - LGA775 - you know what I mean ) and they are all interchangeable...

I wanted the best CPU for my Main PC, the second best for my No2 PC, and my boys get an upgrade of their CPUs, but for some anoying reason they are all running really poor... Ok, in truth on the E2180 that upped to an E6300 was too slow to use - the others are stil more than useable, but they still suffer noticably and they definitely are not as fast as they should be by a long way.

The thing is with the Motherboards is a given, but the CPU ??? - sure, the CPUs need drivers these days ( For what? ) but still...

--ADDITIONAL--

My main PC will soon be going to an ASUS board that I was hoping to get today, but alas no!
I will be reinstalling that tomorrow then so thats not a problem... I just hope that this will be the only one now that the other I did today is now back on track...

Several years ago, when I first setup the LAN, I used mostly the same kit and so ghosting was a good idea... These days I like experimenting and dont have 2 of the same thing so ghosting is useless.
 
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Did you clear the BIOS after changing the CPUs, when I swapped out my P4 641 for a Q6600 the mobo didn't/wouldn't pick up the CPU correctly till I had reset the BIOS.
 
Of course yes.
I do that as a matter of course whenever I change anything for anything else.

Im now getting some concerns about errors that I have never come across before???
Mass Effect has just hung stating that it is trying to access memory, this is the games own error capture as I have not seen anything like that before.
Jericho is the most uselessly slow game Im tryign to play, and its so slow at bringing up the games menu, that I give up completely... The game itself seemed to play fine after I went for a shower this morning and it had come up by then, and Rainbow six Vegas 2 is another failure to play... COD4 is sweet as a nut however... as is UT3

All these games played just fine on a dual core but they are all seemingly not happening on either of my Quads?

Like I said, this Mobo is being replaced tomorrow, and I will simply just have to reinstall Windows before I make too harsh a decision.
 
Well, yes and no.

If a program was designed to only use one core, then it will only use one core.

The O/S will let out the other 3 cores to other apps.

In many ways, I think that Apps that only use one core are better off than apps that take up all cores, for example :-

One core can concentrate fully on that one app, the other core gets to conentrate its time on a second app... If both apps share both cores, then the switching between each core will take time and therefore, the efficency will be lost a little.

This is also noticable with some apps that have moved from single, to multi capable...

I wont say the program in particular, but I use a program to convert AVI to DVD ( Legally ok, my own home movies etc ) and the version I use, does not understand multicores... I can run 4 instances of that program on my PC and they all get done in about 20 minutes right.

Now, here is the funny thing, but I have recently gone to upgrade to the latest version of this program, that one does understand multiple core, and, if I was to run one instance of the program, it converts a home movie 10 minutes.

Now, look at the logic of that for a minute??? - Single threaded and it can do 4 in 20 minutes, multithreaded and it halves the time??? - shouldnt that be quarters it?

So, lets try to do all 4 at the same time, and what happens? - because all 4 instances of the program is taking up all 4 cores instead of them each having total CPU time to itself, the encoding now shoots up to well over half an hour!!! - thus making the whole process a fair bit slower.

Pure logic then says that single threaded apps in a multithreaded system can in fact work better in some cases.

Actually, just for you to know, with my E6300, I also used to run 4 instances at any one time, and that too does the videos in about 30 minutes...

That then tells me, that a daul core CPU is no slower than a 4 core CPU at the same speed...leading me to believe that I no longer care WTF anyone says about muylticore systems... 2 is all you need and it is all you will need for some time to come.
 
What about things like clock speed, RAM speed and RAM timings? are they all OK?

Where you've replaced the E6600 with a Q6600 I'd expect the same level of performance with 2 cores to spare.
 
I'd imagine a reinstall of Windows will fix most of the problems. What version are you using x32 or x64 XP or Vista?

If you're using a Quad Core I'd go for an x64 variant (currently using Q6600 on Vista x64 which is great).

Check the event logs as well to see if anythings being reported there. However I'm adamant that a reinstall will fix it.



M./
 
Well FakRakoon all you have prooven is the incompetency of the programmer then? If a program is designed well and scalable over cores (most server stuff usually because consumer programs haven't needed to worry about "cores" until the last few years, and no, HT doesn't count). Then it will out perform its single brother (and also be more power efficient hopefully). When you say about swapping and concentrating, that has nothing to do with it, the CPU's don't care whats passed to them, they do the work, its whatever is passing it needs to do it efficiently. CPU's don't get faster the more of the same work they're given they don't learn or have memories... 4 cores will have its day properly, but for now thanks to hyperthreading and the surge of 2 core CPU's a lot of programs are statically designed for one or two cores with 4 then being added as an after thought. What should have happened is the programs where designed to be multi core scalable. Four cores can get a bum deal in some cases, but it should come into its own as time goes by.
 
not sure if this really has an effect on anything, or even if I've got the right end of the stick but, when installing windows it will detect what kind of system you have and seems to assign the correct label, i.e. Standard PC, ACPI Multiprocessor System, MPS Multiprocessor PC etc.

if anyones used n-lite to make a new windows disk with SP's slipstreamed into it etc i believe theres an option for you to specify what type of system your building with the above options in.

I guess it's possible that these different system types may affect the way the system actually runs, and so swapping a cpu that runs better on a different system type may give you worse performance than before??

Some information on HAL types etc here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309283
 
IAmATeaf said:
What about things like clock speed, RAM speed and RAM timings? are they all OK?

Where you've replaced the E6600 with a Q6600 I'd expect the same level of performance with 2 cores to spare.
Click to expand...

On that system yes, they are 100% identical and so Id expect 100% the same but have 2 cores to spare too!!!

m4cc45 said:
I'd imagine a reinstall of Windows will fix most of the problems. What version are you using x32 or x64 XP or Vista?

If you're using a Quad Core I'd go for an x64 variant (currently using Q6600 on Vista x64 which is great).

Check the event logs as well to see if anythings being reported there. However I'm adamant that a reinstall will fix it.
Click to expand...

XP64 in all cases... Been 100% 64Bit for over 3 years now and will never waste my time going back to 32Bit.

Frankly Im shocked that people are still using 32 Bit O/S at all, but each to their own.

I have my new Mobo and I will reinstall as soon as I get time ( Tonight ) with my main PC, and that should cure it... If nothing else I will just have a laugh.


LeperousDust said:
Well FakRakoon all you have prooven is the incompetency of the programmer then?
Click to expand...

Not really, the program takes multi cores into account and it runs better..

The thing is, that when you run 4 apps then these apps seem to fight for a share of all 4 cores, while with the previous versions of this app not wanting to know about multiple cores, each app got full access to one core, thus making the newer apps quicker on its own, but the older apps quicker when running multiple instances of it.

I dont think this is down to good or bad coding, its just the way it is.


andy_n64 said:
not sure if this really has an effect on anything, or even if I've got the right end of the stick but, when installing windows it will detect what kind of system you have and seems to assign the correct label, i.e. Standard PC, ACPI Multiprocessor System, MPS Multiprocessor PC etc.

if anyones used n-lite to make a new windows disk with SP's slipstreamed into it etc i believe theres an option for you to specify what type of system your building with the above options in.

I guess it's possible that these different system types may affect the way the system actually runs, and so swapping a cpu that runs better on a different system type may give you worse performance than before??

Some information on HAL types etc here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309283
Click to expand...

Yes, but these CPUs are all fairly much the same thing as each other, they are all capable of the same stuff, MMX, SSE1,2,3, EM64T blah blah, the only differences being Cache & Speed, but either way, they are all much faster than what the PCs are running like right now... Hell, its like as if Im running on a celeron its THAT bad sometimes.
 
Don't forget disk IO, it may be fine encoding on 2 cores but at some point you'll hit a bottleneck which means that your CPU isn't the thing holding you back anymore. The system will only run as fast as the slowest component.
 
Of course, but this is somehtign that I have kept an eye on for years.

This is also why I have so many HDs :-

C: = Raptor 36
Windows and nothing else

D: = 2xSeagate 320GB
Apps & Games ( Also temp DVDs for when converting from the Camera )

E: = Seagate 500GB
Media, MP3 / Movies etc etc

F: = Hitachi 80GB
Junk, backups of My Docs etc... General trash

M: = Hitachi 80GB
Torrents & Downloads

T: = Maxtor 400GB
ISO Images ( Mostly games ) for Daemon tools

And yes, I usually convert 4 AVI files from the Camera, to DVD at a time, I am also burning 4 DVDs at the same time too ( 2 or 2.4 speed though ) and this is somehtign that I have done for quite some time, hell, even the Barton 3200 was capable of converting 2 and burning 2 at the same time, and while this is going on, I normally play a round of some game or other, but recently, the system has kind of trundled to a halt and yes, the Disk I/O is playing a magor part of course it has, but I tend to try to keep heavy disk useage to as much of a single direction as I can and this has done me well for several years, so while you are absolutely spot on, in this particular case it is not the cause, but certainly a factor I have no doubt.
 
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