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stunted performance on a P4...?

U

Ungoliant

n00b
Joined
Jul 19, 2005
Messages
33
took me a few days to figure out, but i think i finally know why gaming performance drops sometimes. only problem is i don't have a solution.

i have a P4 640 @ 3.2 Ghz, 800mhz FSB, ABIT-Ni8-SLI motherboard, 1gb Corsair DDR2 675 and an XFX 7800GT. i noticed that the frame rate would be dandy sometimes, and other times, it would be downright bad. at first, i thought it was hyperthreading and so i did the registry edit patch (thought it might be that XP was having a problem with HT), then i updated the chipset drivers (nForce4 7.15) and still no luck. i'm running SP2 and the latest 81.98 drivers from nVidia...but i'm positive it isn't a video problem. i ran task manager in the background and it appears that whenever i get frame rate problems, my cpu is not being utilized to its fullest, only around 40-50% my fps can literally be halved at times... or worse. :mad: two interesting things are that it's a hit and miss problem, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's pretty bad; i also went to intel's site and downloaded the "hyperthreading test utility". it checks processor, chipset, and the BIOS. when i ran it, everything passed except the chipset... :confused:

anyone know of a fix? i'm out of ideas :(
 
Ungoliant said:
took me a few days to figure out, but i think i finally know why gaming performance drops sometimes. only problem is i don't have a solution.

i have a P4 640 @ 3.2 Ghz, 800mhz FSB, ABIT-Ni8-SLI motherboard, 1gb Corsair DDR2 675 and an XFX 7800GT. i noticed that the frame rate would be dandy sometimes, and other times, it would be downright bad. at first, i thought it was hyperthreading and so i did the registry edit patch (thought it might be that XP was having a problem with HT), then i updated the chipset drivers (nForce4 7.15) and still no luck. i'm running SP2 and the latest 81.98 drivers from nVidia...but i'm positive it isn't a video problem. i ran task manager in the background and it appears that whenever i get frame rate problems, my cpu is not being utilized to its fullest, only around 40-50% my fps can literally be halved at times... or worse. :mad: two interesting things are that it's a hit and miss problem, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's pretty bad; i also went to intel's site and downloaded the "hyperthreading test utility". it checks processor, chipset, and the BIOS. when i ran it, everything passed except the chipset... :confused:

anyone know of a fix? i'm out of ideas :(
Click to expand...


Newest BIOS , chipset drivers , cooling ( are you under 65C full load , aka prime or burn in ? )

The games you play and their settings are important too...

It is perfectly normal to have only 50% CPU utilization with HT enabled.It means the game is not SMP aware...
 
i flashed the BIOS to the latest version and the chipset drivers are the latest 7.15's off of nVidia's site. i idle around 35C and get up to 50C full load. what's odd about the game settings is that when i start having this problem, it doesn't matter what resolution i'm at, it'll give the same frame rates, almost as if the CPU is bottlenecking my video card to a very low frame rate because it isn't being utilized to anywhere near its fullest. i'll post screenshots soon...
 
I had simular problem on p3 800mhz a while back. I have no idea how to fix it, but I think it might be just Intel :(
 
i ran the performance benchmark within the FEAR MP demo. for some reason, it wouldn't let me take a screencapture when it reported the final frame rate results, so i just copied them down and just took the final screenshots of the CPU usage during both demos. both benchmarks were the exact same settings.
#1 1024x768 autodetect settings (high)
min:42
avg:91
max:221

why4.jpg


#2 1024x768 autodetect settings (high)
min:23
avg:34
max:46

why3.jpg


sorry if they're a little hard to see, photobucket resized them :\
 
Have you turned off Soft shadows for Fear, i heared that is big problem with alot of peoples machine, also it is almost recommended to have 2gb for fear, and BF2, i had the demo for fear on my system and had alot of studder going on, but my other games won't have a problem.

What other games are you getting bad frame rates on?
 
are you sure that chip is hitting 50C at load? did you test with prime95 or some other stress program only?

reason i ask: even if your chip goes to a certain point under full load... only the CPU is under full load. that graphics card being stressed like it is in something like fear is going to produce a lot of heat and put a lot more heat in teh case to deal with, and it really sounds like your CPU is throttling down becuase of heat.

try running dual instances of prime95 and the ATItool stresstest at the same time, full blown gaming load. see what happens...
 
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