Dual Core Gaming Fix Guide

Yeah, stopped messing up so far when I took one of my sticks of RAM out. We'll see though...
 
J3RK said:
I think I know what this is. There is a problem with configurations like his, and mine (see sig.) Riptide_NVN and I have been discussing it here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=975231 and here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=966318&page=6

If he hasn't set Windows to show blue-screens instead of resetting, that's why it shuts down instead of blue-screening. You can right click on My Computer, Advanced tab, select Settings under Startup and Recovery, and uncheck Automatically Restart.

If you have him do this, he should start seeing a blue-screen entailing problems with some NV4 drivers.

This tends to happen on a lot of NF4 (A8N SLI in particular) board when using the 81.XX Nvidia drivers. He can either go back to 78.XX (and lose some dual core optimizations,) or there's a trick that I did to get it to work with the 81.XX drivers. (doesn't seem to work for everyone though)

Tell him to go into the BIOS, find the option for "PEG Link" and change it to "Normal" It is probably set to "Auto" by default. When I switched from Auto to Normal, my blue-screens/restarts went away completely. I haven't yet tried the latest drivers. (I'm still using the 81.85s, so it's possible that the newer ones fix this.) A couple of emails have been sent to Nvidia about this, so we'll see what happens.
Click to expand...

I passed along the message, I haven't heard back from him, but it makes sense. Thanks.
 
No problem. This only started happening with the 81.XX drivers for me and a few others, so I'm hoping Nvidia can squash it in a future release. The Auto setting in the BIOS should be fine I would think under normal circumstances.
 
J3RK said:
No problem. This only started happening with the 81.XX drivers for me and a few others, so I'm hoping Nvidia can squash it in a future release. The Auto setting in the BIOS should be fine I would think under normal circumstances.
Click to expand...

Is that the only game you had issues with the drivers for? I had some problems with the 81.85's, but most of them were fixed in the 81.95's.
 
I mentioned previously in this thread that I was suspicious of the imagecfg program making some kind of physical change to the .exe files. I can confirm this for sure this time. :) I used the program to change the CPU affinity on the World of Warcraft wow.exe file to see if it made any difference on my machine. I did this at the same time as the game I am beta testing, so I didn't make a backup of the .exe files in either case. When I tried to install the v1.8.4 patch, it bombed out at the end complaining of a checksum error or the like with the wow.exe file. Had to run the repair.exe in the game directory to replace the "damaged" .exe file so I could get the patch to take.

I think I am going to stop using the imagecfg program and just use the launcher program listed in the OP. Folks, make sure you BACKUP your .exe files before using imagecfg!!
 
ir0nw0lf said:
I mentioned previously in this thread that I was suspicious of the imagecfg program making some kind of physical change to the .exe files. I can confirm this for sure this time. :) I used the program to change the CPU affinity on the World of Warcraft wow.exe file to see if it made any difference on my machine. I did this at the same time as the game I am beta testing, so I didn't make a backup of the .exe files in either case. When I tried to install the v1.8.4 patch, it bombed out at the end complaining of a checksum error or the like with the wow.exe file. Had to run the repair.exe in the game directory to replace the "damaged" .exe file so I could get the patch to take.

I think I am going to stop using the imagecfg program and just use the launcher program listed in the OP. Folks, make sure you BACKUP your .exe files before using imagecfg!!
Click to expand...

Thanks...noted this in the OP.
 
Lol...thanks for the friendly bump ;). I suggested a sticky to the mod, but he said to just keep bumping it :).
 
I just installed my new 4800 X2 a couple of days ago and finally was able to play some BF2 last night. I didn't notice any stuttering or problems. I also installed the Q4 MP patch and got some AMAZING results. There were some situations that brought my computer to it's knees. Smooth as butter now! Hopefully some other coders will optimize their games for MP systems!

Here's my question. Should I go ahead and install the AMD drivers or not?
 
shipster said:
I just installed my new 4800 X2 a couple of days ago and finally was able to play some BF2 last night. I didn't notice any stuttering or problems. I also installed the Q4 MP patch and got some AMAZING results. There were some situations that brought my computer to it's knees. Smooth as butter now! Hopefully some other coders will optimize their games for MP systems!

Here's my question. Should I go ahead and install the AMD drivers or not?
Click to expand...

If you're not having problems, I wouldn't install (unless you are using CnQ).
 
I spoke too soon... Played BF2 for a couple of hours last night, got some serious stutter. Tried all of the fixes, still have the stutter. Set affinity to CPU 1 stutter was gone.... Do you have to set the affinity each time you start the game? Or is there a way to make XP remeber which CPU you want to use?
 
shipster said:
I spoke too soon... Played BF2 for a couple of hours last night, got some serious stutter. Tried all of the fixes, still have the stutter. Set affinity to CPU 1 stutter was gone.... Do you have to set the affinity each time you start the game? Or is there a way to make XP remeber which CPU you want to use?
Click to expand...

I ordered an opteron 175 from newegg and I am hoping the same thing, because from what I've been reading about dual cores, it looks like it is more trouble than it is worth, if you're a gamer.
 
I have an Opteron 175, and I love it. Running at 2.5 stable with a crappy RAM. I just ordered 2 sticks of red lines to see if I can fix my problem.

I have no stuttering at all in BF2 actually plays way nicer than my old P4 3.2 @ 3.8. But I have something that has been killing me for days and I don't know what to do.

Here is what I posted at Logitech's forum hoping to get some help. Nobody has been able to figure this out:

I'm a hardcore gamer and I recently migrated from a P4 machine to an AMD64 Dual Opteron system under Windows XP.

Before, the mouse used to work just fine. Great mouse. After the migration my mouse (MX510) is experiencing Left-Click delays. Basically when playing Battlefield 2 or any other games I will shoot but there will be a few seconds delay and then it will get stock shooting until I click again.

When I use the vanilla/default Windows drivers I won't see that lag at all but I can just use the generic 3 buttons type of mouse. So it's not an option for me.

I have been reading, googleing, testing and asking for many days until I have no more choice to either have the Logitech experts or buy another mouse.

This is what I have done with no results:

- Reformated/Re-Installed Windows. Service Pack 2 Installed.
- Installed Latest Mouseware, Setpoint, Ubertweaks app.
- Increased Mouse rate back and forth.
- Increased Buffer Length Package back and forth.
- Checked for IRQ conflicts.
- Disabled serial ports/ 1394/ and any other device I don't need via BIOS.
- Tried under USB and PS2 connectors.
- Installed latest chipset drivers, mobo BIOS.
- Installed AMD Dual core patch.

Any advise would be great.

Thanks in advance..
 
shipster said:
I spoke too soon... Played BF2 for a couple of hours last night, got some serious stutter. Tried all of the fixes, still have the stutter. Set affinity to CPU 1 stutter was gone.... Do you have to set the affinity each time you start the game? Or is there a way to make XP remeber which CPU you want to use?
Click to expand...

Try the ImageCFG program, but be careful.
 
xXxDieselxXx said:
I have an Opteron 175, and I love it. Running at 2.5 stable with a crappy RAM. I just ordered 2 sticks of red lines to see if I can fix my problem.

I have no stuttering at all in BF2 actually plays way nicer than my old P4 3.2 @ 3.8. But I have something that has been killing me for days and I don't know what to do.

Here is what I posted at Logitech's forum hoping to get some help. Nobody has been able to figure this out:

I'm a hardcore gamer and I recently migrated from a P4 machine to an AMD64 Dual Opteron system under Windows XP.

Before, the mouse used to work just fine. Great mouse. After the migration my mouse (MX510) is experiencing Left-Click delays. Basically when playing Battlefield 2 or any other games I will shoot but there will be a few seconds delay and then it will get stock shooting until I click again.

When I use the vanilla/default Windows drivers I won't see that lag at all but I can just use the generic 3 buttons type of mouse. So it's not an option for me.

I have been reading, googleing, testing and asking for many days until I have no more choice to either have the Logitech experts or buy another mouse.

This is what I have done with no results:

- Reformated/Re-Installed Windows. Service Pack 2 Installed.
- Installed Latest Mouseware, Setpoint, Ubertweaks app.
- Increased Mouse rate back and forth.
- Increased Buffer Length Package back and forth.
- Checked for IRQ conflicts.
- Disabled serial ports/ 1394/ and any other device I don't need via BIOS.
- Tried under USB and PS2 connectors.
- Installed latest chipset drivers, mobo BIOS.
- Installed AMD Dual core patch.

Any advise would be great.

Thanks in advance..
Click to expand...

If anything, it sounds like a motherboard problem, not necessarily a dual core one :(. Did you try in other USB ports?
 
Leright said:
I ordered an opteron 175 from newegg and I am hoping the same thing, because from what I've been reading about dual cores, it looks like it is more trouble than it is worth, if you're a gamer.
Click to expand...

Nah...they aren't that hard to get running ;). It's just a few games here and there that give some problems :).
 
kirbyrj said:
If anything, it sounds like a motherboard problem, not necessarily a dual core one :(. Did you try in other USB ports?
Click to expand...

Yes, I tried that too and no luck. The weird thing is it will work just fine if I use the Windows drivers but i can only use 2 or 3 mouse buttons.
 
xXxDieselxXx said:
Yes, I tried that too and no luck. The weird thing is it will work just fine if I use the Windows drivers but i can only use 2 or 3 mouse buttons.
Click to expand...

I'd call up their tech support and see if they have a driver that will address the problem you're having. It seems that it's a problem on their end of things.
 
I was wondering if anybody else has experienced the same problem I have. When I connect to a Battlefield 2 server, either immediatly or after a few minutes I lose my connection to the server. It's not a connection issue, I will be playing and all of a sudden it kicks me to the main BF2 menu saying "Connection to the Server is Lost". Normally if I were having network problems the game freezes for a few seconds or minutes and then displays connection problem. I am at work right now and just stumbled across this thread so I haven't tired any fix except for the "Set Affinity" but I am not satisfied with this method because once I disable one of the processors the game doesn't run as smoothly. Please let me know if anybody else has this problem, and if so did the #1 and #2 fix work? My computer specs are as follows:

AMD 64 X2 3800
1 gb dual Channel DDR2 400
ECS NForce 4 Mobo
ATI X 800 XL 256 PCI Express Video Card
 
Endless Nameless said:
I was wondering if anybody else has experienced the same problem I have. When I connect to a Battlefield 2 server, either immediatly or after a few minutes I lose my connection to the server. It's not a connection issue, I will be playing and all of a sudden it kicks me to the main BF2 menu saying "Connection to the Server is Lost". Normally if I were having network problems the game freezes for a few seconds or minutes and then displays connection problem. I am at work right now and just stumbled across this thread so I haven't tired any fix except for the "Set Affinity" but I am not satisfied with this method because once I disable one of the processors the game doesn't run as smoothly. Please let me know if anybody else has this problem, and if so did the #1 and #2 fix work? My computer specs are as follows:

AMD 64 X2 3800
1 gb dual Channel DDR2 400
ECS NForce 4 Mobo
ATI X 800 XL 256 PCI Express Video Card
Click to expand...

Fix #2 catches the broadest range of problems. I'd try that first. I'm not sure why a dual core would cause network problems though. That's new to me.
 
Nice guide but this re-affirms my feeling on dual cores for gaming. Whats the point? All this work for very little increase on current crop of games except a couple. Not worth the aggrivation I will stick with my single core cpu.
 
i have a question on fix #1
i tried it as described and when i want to boot windows, it comes up like when i have two or more os'es on the computer, like it has windows xp and then it also has /usepmtimer
under it, is this supposed happen? what is this fix actually doing?
ps: i have and x2
 
gotfrag? said:
i have a question on fix #1
i tried it as described and when i want to boot windows, it comes up like when i have two or more os'es on the computer, like it has windows xp and then it also has /usepmtimer
under it, is this supposed happen? what is this fix actually doing?
ps: i have and x2
Click to expand...

Copy your boot.ini file in a reply so I can look at it.
 
ok well this is what it made automatically
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /usepmtimer

but then i changed it to look like how you did it

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /bootlogo /usepmtimer
 
gotfrag? said:
ok well this is what it made automatically
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /usepmtimer

but then i changed it to look like how you did it

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /bootlogo /usepmtimer
Click to expand...

The only difference is the /bootlogo switch right? Are you still getting the problem?
 
im not getting the problem because i took both the /bootlogo and the /usepmtimer out
so should i just have the /usepmtimer in and not the /bootlogo?
 
gotfrag? said:
im not getting the problem because i took both the /bootlogo and the /usepmtimer out
so should i just have the /usepmtimer in and not the /bootlogo?
Click to expand...

I'd only use the /usepmtimer if you need it. If you don't have a problem with it out, then I wouldn't worry about it. But definitely install the hotfix.
 
ok ill just take the /usepmtimer out then
but i did the hotfix and it is beautiful! TY
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top