Underwhelmed by new machine

V

Vague

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 17, 2008
Messages
253
I built this machine between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm running a legit Vista 64 ultimate install on a samsung 226bw.

Upgraded from a p4 3.0, 3GB, with a Radeon x1300.

I've been pretty underwhelmed at this machine. Really the only difference I've noticed over the last machine was the frame rate in TF2 got better. I game at 1280 x 960 in TF2. In game, when I'm in a room I get 70fps, in the open it drops to 45

After a while the network traffic seems to have trouble, stuttering and not being able to maintain a connection to a network share. This is local to this computer, other machines on the network do not have any disruption at all. Router is a WRT160n

When I first built it I got some artifacts playing GTA4 and TF2. Sometimes it would reboot and the artifacts would still be present during the POST. That hasn't happened in about 3 weeks now.

I've updated all the drivers from the gigabyte site. Windows is patched. I've run memtest for 10 hours.

I'm not sure what else to do, Everything runs, there's no discernable cause or bottle neck I can find but this machine is just kind of bleh I expected to be blown away. Where can I look for mistakes or problems?


GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

SAPPHIRE 100245L Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP

Antec EA650 650W ATX12V Ver.2.2 / EPS12V version 2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire

Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - Retail

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor Model

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ - Retail

XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler - Retail
XIGMATEK ACK-I7751 Retention Bracket - Retail

640AAKS hard drive

Antec 300 case.
Click to expand...
 
Well I don't play either of the games you mention so I can't say if your performance is on par or not. If I were in your shoes I would be looking at running a few benchmarks and then compare them to on line results from people with similar hardware.

I moved from a P4 2.8c to a C2D E6400 2 years ago with Vista 64 and noticed a nice performance improvement in the things I do with my PC. I have since moved to a Q6600 and couldn't be happier.

But just your move from an X1300 to a 4850 should have been a large improvement in games.

As for your network problems I had a friend with similar issues when he moved to Vista. He was complaining of unstable and slow file transfers over his home network to local machines. I did some searching at the time and found some info that suggested some network protocol that is enabled by default on Vista combined with network hardware that doesn't support said protocol was to blame. He however had already gone back to XP at this point so I didn't look in to it any further and this was over a year ago that I looked in to it. So don't just take my word for it. But at least maybe if will give you enough insight to Google for a solution.

good luck
 
search


enjoy.
 
Brashen said:
search


enjoy.
Click to expand...

fail,

You want to make Vista faster? Let it alone and use your PC it will get faster with age.

Vista = leave it alone unless you got a problem like the one you have with network transfers.
 
You're gaming at a pretty low res - your FPS should be much higher, even with AA/AF on. Considering you have a q6600/4850, your floor FPS should be close to 90FPS+. There is no reason it should anywhere close to what I was getting with my Opteron/8800GT setup.

First thing I'd check is probably temps - I think your CPU may be getting throttled, considering the performance you're getting. Secondly, I've never used a Gigabyte mobo, so someone else is gonna need to step in for that - only one thing I'd check is the tRFC setting (make sure it's in the 50's and not 30's since you have a 2 x 2 setup).
 
Yeah, if you're getting artifacts then something might be overheating.

Make sure you have the latest drivers from ati.com, not the old ones that came with the graphics card.

You ran memtest, so run orthos and some 3dmark loops too to make sure you're stable.
 
I spoke too soon about the artifacts being gone.

I loaded TF2, then changed teh resolution to 1680. Entered a game and the range of fps was much higher, 120 in closed spaces and 50-70 during action.

After about 10 minutes of playing the screen froze with lots of artifacts. I got an error message saying atikmdag.sys had stopped working but it had recovered, TF2 crashed.

I looked for values tRFC, but I have no idea what they mean, here's what i found:

tRRD 3
tWTR 3
tWR 6
tRFC 52
tRTP 0

Ran atitool. Went for 8:53 with no erros and then stopped.
3dMark03gave me a score of 39633

I updated the BIOS. Afterwhich the NIC would not longer recieve an IP. I uninstalled it, rebooted; vista installed it automagically and now it seems to work fine though it's only been a few hours.

Disabled Hotkeys in the Catalyst Control Center, a few posts on other fora mentioned that can sometimes cause conflicts.

Is there a more effective way to measure cpu temperatures than in the BIOS? I imagine there would be.
 
You can use CoreTemp or RealTemp to get temperatures for your CPU while you are in windows. Useful so you can run it while you are stress testing with Prime. Although artifacts appearing is usually more likely I think that your video card is overheating or has some kinda error. Have you dled drivers from ati? I know you said you updated drivers for gigabyte but didn't see if you did for your vid card. I'd probably try to run ATI Tool for at least 30 minutes and get something to monitor temps for it.
 
Just wondering, what did you use to prevent static electricity?

Vague said:
I built this machine between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm running a legit Vista 64 ultimate install on a samsung 226bw.

Upgraded from a p4 3.0, 3GB, with a Radeon x1300.

I've been pretty underwhelmed at this machine. Really the only difference I've noticed over the last machine was the frame rate in TF2 got better. I game at 1280 x 960 in TF2. In game, when I'm in a room I get 70fps, in the open it drops to 45

After a while the network traffic seems to have trouble, stuttering and not being able to maintain a connection to a network share. This is local to this computer, other machines on the network do not have any disruption at all. Router is a WRT160n

When I first built it I got some artifacts playing GTA4 and TF2. Sometimes it would reboot and the artifacts would still be present during the POST. That hasn't happened in about 3 weeks now.

I've updated all the drivers from the gigabyte site. Windows is patched. I've run memtest for 10 hours.

I'm not sure what else to do, Everything runs, there's no discernable cause or bottle neck I can find but this machine is just kind of bleh I expected to be blown away. Where can I look for mistakes or problems?
Click to expand...
 
TF2 is all about processor speed since it does not support multithreading... yet. You can overclock to 3ghz easy, maybe more if you take some time. I just upgraded to an E8400 from a socket 939 X2 and am completely blown away.
 
Old Hippie said:
Let me Google that for you. :D
Click to expand...

That never gets old.

atikmdag.sys stopping can be for a number of reasons. I don't expect you to have actually googled it for yourself, because you googled it for me, but just because the driver stopped does not indicate a specific problem, cause or solution. Vista now supports this feature that instead of just throwing a BSOD, it will try and restart the driver and recover.

So thanks, but the problem is a probably a little more in depth.

I've been running prime95 for about 9 hours, using core temp. This morning none of the temps are above 45 C.

For grounding I used a grounded wrist strap.

Using the latest ATI driver/CCC combo I uninstalled the ATI driver and reinstalled. Played tf2 for about an hour and it ran pretty well.

I'll run ati tool for longer and report back.
 
I don't expect you to have actually googled it for yourself,
Click to expand...

Au contraire, I did, that's why I sent the link.

There were many references to that driver and problems with Vista.

If it were my problem, I'd be looking at the Google results.

PS. Have you looked in the event viewer?
 
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