Dual Core Gaming Fix Guide

heh well I went to task manager and went to view then cpu history. One graph per cpu is already selected and greyed out so I couldn't select something else if I wanted too. what I am trying to see is if my computer is only using one core for some reason. Nothing is really detecting more than one core from the looks of it. I am downloading the newest mobo drivers from evga's website right now but its going really slow. I think its because their bandwith sucks or something. when its done I'll try that. If it doesn't work well I guess I'll be back here.
 
ITSTHINKING said:
heh well I went to task manager and went to view then cpu history. One graph per cpu is already selected and greyed out so I couldn't select something else if I wanted too. what I am trying to see is if my computer is only using one core for some reason. Nothing is really detecting more than one core from the looks of it. I am downloading the newest mobo drivers from evga's website right now but its going really slow. I think its because their bandwith sucks or something. when its done I'll try that. If it doesn't work well I guess I'll be back here.
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Oh ok. Motherboard drivers won't help fix the problem. A BIOS update for your motherboard is in order if your processor is not appearing as dual core.
 
Hmmm, well I've never done that before and I know that under support at evgas website they only have driver downloads listed. I don't think I can download bios updates from there. Any Idea where I could find a bios update? Also I don't know how to update a bios, never done it before. Seems weird seeing as it said x2 on the box that I would need to "make" the motherboard compatable with a bios update.
 
ITSTHINKING said:
okay under device manager when I go to processor it shows amd x2 4200+ twice meaning it is detecting 2 cores correct? Well under cpu usage in task manager it only shows 1 graph, shouldn't it be showing 2? Damn this is pissing me off.
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Take it easy. Relax... close your eyes and think of peaceful calm things. :D

ITSTHINKING said:
Could it possibly be because I just swapped out the 3000+ for the 4200+ x2 without a new install? My motherboard is an eVGA 133-K8-NF41-AX nForce4 SLI Mobo. Says right on the box it supports athlon x2 processors.
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That is exactly why, but.. it can be fixed. Here is how I did it on my last install. Go to device manager and click the + for Computer. You should see ACPI Uniprocessor PC or something like that. Doubleclick it, go to the driver tab, click update driver, then choose No not this time to search the web, install automatically, install from a list or specific location, dont search show a list... You will see about 4 other options. choose the one that says ACPI Multiprocessor PC.

Now IMportant. Make sure your system is stable before you do this. Back up your my documents folder and anything else JIC. After you reboot uninstall/reinstall your motherboard chipset drivers. Get all patches for dual core and you are good 2 go. Check the graph synergyo1 told you about and you should see 2.
 
well under device manager>computer it says ACPI pc when I click on it and go to driver update>no not this time>install from list or specific location> then click on don't search I will choose from list it only lists ACPI again and standard pc. Should I just nuke and pave and install new drivers from the disk or flash the friggin bios which I have never done before?
 
ITSTHINKING said:
well under device manager>computer it says ACPI pc when I click on it and go to driver update>no not this time>install from list or specific location> then click on don't search I will choose from list it only lists ACPI again and standard pc. Should I just nuke and pave and install new drivers from the disk or flash the friggin bios which I have never done before?
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Definitely, as one of those things could be holding you back. Some motherboards didn't even support dual core until a certain bios revision.

Here's what you shold see. This is a pic to show you that I'm not messin with you head,

 
Hmm well I don't know how to flash, and I don't have a floppy drive. And for some reason my computer isn't using my windows cd to boot from when I start the computer with it in the drive. Oh well I'm frustrated and its late. I'll go to bed and work on this tomarrow.
 
ITSTHINKING said:
Hmm well I don't know how to flash, and I don't have a floppy drive. And for some reason my computer isn't using my windows cd to boot from when I start the computer with it in the drive. Oh well I'm frustrated and its late. I'll go to bed and work on this tomarrow.
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you can flash your bios using Winflash and you can also change your bios to set your CD/DVD drive ahead of your hard drive for your boot priority.
 
I tried loading Thief 3, Deadly Shadows yesterday and found that is kept looping the intro video and refused to stop.

i assumed the problem was related to my dual core AMD. Oddly enough, I switched the exectuable to Win98 comp mode and it loaded up fine. Playing the game now and it appears to be working without issue.
 
blemaire said:
Pattern discovered!

On a first boot, the score is only 2400 3DMarks. After a reboot, the score is 3700 3DMarks. Turn the computer off and on again, and the score is back to 2400.

What's causing this? What can I do about it? Does this new finding bring a solution any closer?
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Anyone?
 
flynlr said:
does this apply to MCE 2005 also? it is XP based.
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Yes, I would say that these fixes apply to MCE 2005. The only XP it doesn't apply to is XP 64-bit.
 
The game I am having a problem with is Battlefield 2 (aka BF2). Within 15 mins. to 2 hours during online play I will typically get a message stating "Your connection to the server has been lost." at which point I am taken to the BF2 server list. If I reconnect I will either get extreme stuttering before another disconnect, or within minutes I will get the "Your connection to the server has been lost." and dumped to the server list.

Rebooting seems to work for a bit, but eventually the problem returns. For me, this started with the BF2 1.22 patch, before then I don't recall any issues.

I know my internet connection is fine as I have my IM running and host a Ventrilo voice chat server and while BF2 is crapping out my buddies can still hear me and my IM doesn't lose its connection either. I also have tried three different NIC cards to no avail.

So far the fixes numbered 2, 3 and 4 have failed, though I have an ATI video card and number 4 doesn't apply.

I partially implemented number 1 by adding the "/usepmtimer" to the boot.ini but it did not work. I am now trying the AMD patch which included a motherboard driver update. I'll post back the results in a few days for that one. So far I have played online two hours and it is fine, though I have gone nearly a week without the problem cropping up while setting the CPU affinity to CPU 0. [Edit 05/17/06: The AMD patch didn't work either.]

There is a nice tool here that I have been using to adjust the CPU affinity just by modifying the shortcut for the program.

www.valhallalegends.com/adron/prioaff/prioaff.zip

This tool is discussed here as well as listing the contents of the source code:

http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-3913-Making-a-program-remember-its-priority.html

http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70133

If none of the fixes work by themselves, as a last resort I'll apply all three and report back on that.

Thanks to all of the people who have contributed to this thread!
 
I just got my x2 computer built, and when I run GTA:SA, the game exhibits the behavior as stated in the first post. Did anyone try to resolve the issue with those fixes? (I'm just asking before I do it myself.)
 
ashe said:
The game I am having a problem with is Battlefield 2 (aka BF2)...
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Wow, what a gigantic PITA. Life with a dual-core shouldn't be that difficult.
 
aztec61 said:
Wow, what a gigantic PITA. Life with a dual-core shouldn't be that difficult.
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I agree. On the plus side, it is only one game I am having trouble with, and all of my video editing time has decreased by nearly 50%, which is quite a time saver considering some of the transcoding times used to take nearly 3 hours.
 
Well, I tried the AMD patch as well as its automatic insertion of the /usepmtimer line into the boot.ini, to no avail. BF2 still gives me the "Your connection to the server has been lost message."

Right now I'm going to try ALL of the patches at once to see if that helps, but somehow I forsee an FX-57 in my future...
 
I love it how there are no release notes, so you have no idea of what they're doing.

(PS. I play BF2 on X2 3800+ all the time, doesn't seem to be any inherent problem with the game on dual-core machines)
 
just upgraded from a 3500+ to a 4200+. no REAL performance diff. YET. havent used the PC much today. I did have some issues thou, i was watching The Unit in BS player and it would lag out like crazy. I opened up task manager and saw taht CPU was @ bout 100% then would drop down to 10% and up and down - wave patern. CPU 2 was idle basically. installed the AMD driver and all is well for NOW.
gonna run 3d mark 05 tonite and compare scores.
 
Got this: Shuttle SN25P X2-3800 2Gb G.Skill PC4000 ATI X850 PCIe Windows x64 /usepmtimer in boot.ini

Need help with graphics stutter

I can pull up the 3D FlowerBox screen saver and see stutter!!! System is at stock Volts/Clock. Vid card has stock Volts/Clocks. AMDx2 Driver installed. I tried system restore back to initial installtion point with no nFORCE or AMD drivers and the stutter is still there. PLEASE HELP! Games play alright, but if there's a cut-scene render, you can easily see stuttering. LMK what other info would be needed! BTW v-sync always on.
 
Yes, I'm sure /onecpu would fix the problem, but what's the point of having only 1 CPU active in a multi-core system?
 
kirbyrj said:
Yes, I'm sure /onecpu would fix the problem, but what's the point of having only 1 CPU active in a multi-core system?
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Well, if the problem still occurred, it would indicate that the chip, regardless of windows using one cpu or two, has problems.
 
Diseaseboy said:
AMD released a new processor driver today it seems- anyone try it?
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I tried the new patch (version 1.3.1) and I did not get any "Your connection to the server has been lost" errors.

I have played a total of about 8 hours of BF2 online today (normally just 2 or 3 hours, but to test this damn thing I played a few marathon sessions).

Also, I picked up an FX-55 yesterday and everything played fine (as expected). I thought I would post some info though. I ran 3dMark2005 a few times and got these results.

FX-55 (oc'd to 2.75 Ghz): 11275 3dMark points
X2 4200+ (oc'd to 2.5 Ghz): 11091 3dMark points
X2 4200+ (oc'd to 2.5 Ghz) with /onecpu in the boot.ini: 10215 3dMark points

That dual core sure does give a nice performance boost. I was fairly impressed that the $350.00 X2 4200+ chip is on par with the $650.00 FX-55.
 
ITSTHINKING said:
okay under device manager when I go to processor it shows amd x2 4200+ twice meaning it is detecting 2 cores correct? Well under cpu usage in task manager it only shows 1 graph, shouldn't it be showing 2? Damn this is pissing me off. Could it possibly be because I just swapped out the 3000+ for the 4200+ x2 without a new install? My motherboard is an eVGA 133-K8-NF41-AX nForce4 SLI Mobo. Says right on the box it supports athlon x2 processors.
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The problem is with the Windows install. At the time of the Windows installion your computer was detected as a APIC single core. If you reformat it should detect the computer as a MPIC multiprocessor. It has to do with Hardware Abstract Layer. The easiest way to create a new HAL is to reformat and reinstall Windows. Next time please be more patient with questions.
 
I've tried everything suggested in this thread and still no luck :(
The 2 games I'm testing with are BF2 and Rise of Nations

Here's my build:
MSI K8NGM2-FID
A64x2 3800+ (stock speed)
eVGA 7600GT
2GB (2x1gb) DDR400
1x 120gb SATA HD
Antec Aria case (300W PSU)
onboard sound and network
my bios version is 3.35 (started out with 3.20)
video drivers are 84.43, tried all the way up to 87.08 from guru3d, and down to 84.21.
all the latest patches, updates, whatnot
This was a fresh install of XP when I built the machine

I have no issues with power (tried different PSU with more Wattage), heat, or general stability (can run dual prime95 all night)

Things I've tried:
Different video card drivers (with a full uninstall in between)
AMD driver, /usepmtimer and not
BIOS update
MS hotfix (both with registry entry at 1 and 0)
disabling the dual core optimizations for the video card drivers
praying to the computer gods
uninstalled norton internet security, unistalled the Realtek audio drivers (using the microsoft supplied drivers for sound)
the /onecpu in the boot.ini (didn't do crap, probably because of the hotfixes and such)

Things I haven't tried:
disabling the onboard NIC, using a wireless card
disabling the onboard sound (then I don't have sound, which sucks as much as no gaming)
trying the onboard video
doing a repair install for XP
installing XP x64, I've used it in the past, I'm not too impressed with it

Any help or comments would be great, I can't go back to a single core, that would be admitting defeat. This is my second SMP build, my first was a VP6 with dual P3 @1Ghz and Windows 2000. I never had problems with that, I'm sad my second try isn't going as well

EDIT: I forgot to describe what the problem is: the game will hang for 15 seconds or so in both games and then keep going as if nothing has happened. In task manager the usage will spike to 100%, back down the 0% through the hang, and go back to normal The blips on one CPU is oppoiste on the other (100% where the other is 0%). The hang will affect the whole system, I can't switch between tasks. The hanging will start as little as 15-20seconds into a game. Occassionally it'll blue screen with a message that basically says "nv4_disp had a problem, it got into an infinate loop that it couldn't get out of. It's the drivers fault"

EDIT 2: my PSU has a 20pin ATX plug, should I get a 24pin adapter? I read somewhere that those extra 4 pins were to help power the PCI-E slots
 
HappyJedi
did you try alt-tabbing and using only 1 core for those games?
 
You might have to do a full format/reinstall. Seems to help a lot of people :(.
 
Woot! I reinstalled XP x32 with no success. But I took out my 7600GT and switched to the onboard video (6150) to see if it would work. The great thing is the 6150 uses the same drivers as the 7600 so I was only changing one variable.

Well, long story short, my games work with the 6150. I'm going to Fry's later today to pick up a 20 to 24pin ATX plug adapter. I'm pretty sure that is what my issue is now.

Thanks for the help guys!
 
aztec61 said:
Probs with XP64? :rolleyes: That one will start a whole new thread.
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i know xp64 has its own issues, i ran it for 6 months with few headaches once i had all my drivers in order.

i was simply curious if winxp64 has the same issues with dual cpu's and games?

i was thinking that even tho its a little slower in alot of games it might be worth giving a shot again.
 
tweaked said:
i know xp64 has its own issues, i ran it for 6 months with few headaches once i had all my drivers in order.

i was simply curious if winxp64 has the same issues with dual cpu's and games?

i was thinking that even tho its a little slower in alot of games it might be worth giving a shot again.
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It's probably worth giving another try, but beware the bugs!
 
tweaked said:
i know xp64 has its own issues, i ran it for 6 months with few headaches once i had all my drivers in order.

i was simply curious if winxp64 has the same issues with dual cpu's and games?

i was thinking that even tho its a little slower in alot of games it might be worth giving a shot again.
Click to expand...

I believe XP 64 doesn't have nearly as many issues in games from what I've read.
 
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