Upgrade not as good as expected...

C

Corporal79

Gawd
Joined
Oct 28, 2004
Messages
889
Ok here whats up...

My brother "upgraded" his pc..
Old Rig is as follows:
P4 3.0Ghz w/HT socket 478
Abit IC7-MAX3 Motherboard
ATI X850XT Video card
2Gb OCZ PC3200 2-3-2-5 Memory
74Gb Raptor Hard Drive
Antec smartpower 2.0 400watt
Creative Labs X-Fi

Recently Purchased hardware
AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Gigabyte GAK8NSC 939 nforce3 motherboard

Memory and hard drive were used with the new hardware. Prior to the upgrade he was able to run BF2 with everything on high no stuttering and now running the new components BF2 stutters dramatically even when we fired up single player to eliminate any internet issues found in online play. We lowered his AA from 6x to 4x and it imporved somewhat but still not as smooth as his old hardware. Whats the deal? It was our understanding that the AMD 64 3000+ was on par with a 3Ghz P4? Looks like we thought wrong. He is thinking of upgrading again and getting a beefier cpu and mobo but would like maybe some confirmation that there is no way the new components would run on par or better than the old. Thoughts?
 
im not sure how they compare, but atleast he has the ability to upgrade to a different one!
 
If everything worked fine, why in the hell did you guys upgrade? I say, sell off the new stuff and go back to your old setup.
 
FoxhoundOp said:
If everything worked fine, why in the hell did you guys upgrade? I say, sell off the new stuff and go back to your old setup.
Click to expand...

Thanks for answering any of the questions that we had, stay out of my thread if you can't be helpful. :rolleyes:
 
You say he kept the memory and hard drive, what about the video card? What video card is he using now?
 
just had a (possibly) retarded thought, the power supply was new as of a couple of weeks ago and when it was installed the ATX connector had too many pins than the connector on the motherboard so the "extra" block of 4 (I think 4) pins isn't connected to anything, would that have anything to do with it?
 
Is this running a fresh XP install? I would think so but if it isn't there could be your problem. Other than that I would think the 3000 should totally outperform the old one.

Have you made sure to install all the most up to date chipset drivers? Check all BIOS settings? Try a different Catalyst / Omega driver?

The extra four pins are only needed if your motherboard has a 24 pin connector. Don't plug them in to anything if you aren't using a motherboard for them.
 
Yep it's a fresh install of windows xp pro, not even 12 hours old. BIOS was updated tonight around 2200hrs with a very small performance gain if any at all. Chipset drivers were updated just before the BIOS. Even installed the latest CPU driver from AMD's website. Haven't tried another set of catalyst drivers, didn't think of that, I figured the latest and greatest would be the best.

The problem is very obvious when in BF2 and he is on foot or a turret and tries to spin 360 degrees. The older P4 setup didn't have any stuttering at all, even when he first joined a game. Now it stutters and chops at the very beginning of the round and then throughout the round.

Oh yeah I forgot to add, he has a full copy of 3d mark 03 (yes we know it's old :D )so we ran that on the old machine and then the new one, 2500 point increase after the upgrade.
 
You for the most part got the same system just an AMD. A P4 3.0 and a A64 3000+ is basically the same in most respects.

Really I don't know why you would think it would be that much faster.
 
reading back through my thread I guess I don't see where I said I thought it would blow the doors off of the old setup, what we did expect was the same performance at least. He decided to upgrade to a Athlon64 to prep himself for Vista in a 64bit flavor and has been an Intel !!!!!! for quite sometime.

Point being if they are so similiar why the performance hit?
 
A performance loss has to be do to misconfiguration, drivers, or some other software related matter. The fact is, both of those systems are going to perform almost exactly the same (the AMD slightly outperforming the Intel in most games, but probably not really noticeble in general game play). As said, all he really did was switch from Intel to AMD.

If you can, have him return the "upgrades" and go back to the old gear. It was still a great system. If he has to upgrade, have him look into something that is actually considerably higher in performance. Maybe a new, lower end dual core processor, or one of the high end single cores.
 
Corporal79 said:
reading back through my thread I guess I don't see where I said I thought it would blow the doors off of the old setup, what we did expect was the same performance at least. He decided to upgrade to a Athlon64 to prep himself for Vista in a 64bit flavor and has been an Intel !!!!!! for quite sometime.

Point being if they are so similiar why the performance hit?
Click to expand...

In prep for Vista? Why not buy some 64bit hardware when Vista is released, it will be considerbly less expensive and his 'old' hardware was still pretty nice. Not too mention upgrading to Vista the day it is released is pretty bold. Lots of odd logic there.

Anyway, most of the points in my above post are still where I would stand on the issue, although at least we have gotten to the bottom of the hardware switch. Thanks for pointing that out :)
 
I see what you're saying, he wanted to put his P4 w/HT in his media center pc and needed a new cpu mobo for his gaming rig. Guess he figured if he got a 64bit processor he'd be set for whenever Vista came out. <shrug>

He refuses to put textures on medium to even see if that changes anything which I thought it would, "it ran perfect on the P4, fuck AMD" lol
 
Make sure you check your agp aperture setting, I know there was a big to do about the setting and BF2 when it first came out. Make sure it's at 128 or 256. With my x800xl in my agp system I had mine set at 256 and never had any problems.

Edit: just read about the problems when spinning 360 degrees, it's definitely your aperture size. Read more about the sitting here.
 
Corporal79 said:
just had a (possibly) retarded thought, the power supply was new as of a couple of weeks ago and when it was installed the ATX connector had too many pins than the connector on the motherboard so the "extra" block of 4 (I think 4) pins isn't connected to anything, would that have anything to do with it?
Click to expand...
It might....your motherboard might not be receiving sufficient power, I would advise getting a native 24 pin ATX power supply.
 
Tytanium said:
It might....your motherboard might not be receiving sufficient power, I would advise getting a native 24 pin ATX power supply.
Click to expand...

He has a 24 pin supply, i think he is saying the board is 20 pin.
 
Sorry but I just have to ask this and I know this has nothing to do with your question but...

Why did you upgrade a Pentium 4 3.0GHz to an Athlon 3000??? They are basically the same processor, what a waste of money. I agree completely with FoxhoundOp If it worked fine, why did you upgrade?
 
umm it might be the AMD Cool'n'Quiet Feature ? Download cpu-z and check your cpu mhz speeds during gaming and during idleing......Just a tought
 
Corporal79 said:
it ran perfect on the P4, fuck AMD" lol
Click to expand...
It is not AMD that is at fault. The CPUs are not the same in every relative respect...the P4 has HT... shouldn't that improve performance?

I would look towards the motherboard as the possible bottleneck, NF3?\
 
Did you set your BIOS up correctly?

Make sure fast writes are off, and your Aperature size is set to 256MB, as BF2 DEFINITELY gains a boost with that.

I'd also use driver cleaner pro, clean out your drivers and do a reinstall, of either the same drivers, or one's which are said to be the best in BF2.

And PLEASE don't live by the "latest = greatest" as that is a huge fallacy, especially in VGA drivers.
 
Alot of people are asking questions that have already been answered, go reread the thread.

I am going to second the AGP aperture, go check the setting in bios.

Then, if that doesn't work, I say switch back to the P43.0 and use the AMD in your media center PC :) it should at least be able to handle some video playback.
 
deadman_uk said:
Sorry but I just have to ask this and I know this has nothing to do with your question but...

Why did you upgrade a Pentium 4 3.0GHz to an Athlon 3000??? They are basically the same processor, what a waste of money. I agree completely with FoxhoundOp If it worked fine, why did you upgrade?
Click to expand...

Did you even read this thread? that question was answered and to really go into WHY you would have to speak with him directly I'm just the middleman here trying to help him out.

It is not AMD that is at fault. The CPUs are not the same in every relative respect...the P4 has HT... shouldn't that improve performance?

I would look towards the motherboard as the possible bottleneck, NF3?\
Click to expand...

I understand they are not the same in every aspect, that was typed with quotes around it indicating that my brother made that remark in his frustration, that all. I thought maybe the HT would be giving the P4 the edge and making BF2 run smoother.

Did you set your BIOS up correctly?

Make sure fast writes are off, and your Aperature size is set to 256MB, as BF2 DEFINITELY gains a boost with that.

I'd also use driver cleaner pro, clean out your drivers and do a reinstall, of either the same drivers, or one's which are said to be the best in BF2.

And PLEASE don't live by the "latest = greatest" as that is a huge fallacy, especially in VGA drivers.
Click to expand...

I'll have him check his aperature size and turn off fast writes when I talk to him.
 
He is saying his BIOS doesn't have anything regarding the aperature size? Is that possible?
 
Corporal79 said:
Thanks for answering any of the questions that we had, stay out of my thread if you can't be helpful. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I think it was Jack Nicholson said it best when he said .... well, you know the thing about the truth.

Some help you provided that guy with as well, so your feeling must be mutual. I think he made the best point thus far though, maybe you should reconsider.
 
No it should be in there since its an AGP mobo,in coulb be under a different name.set the Flexible AGP rate to 8X.

he doesnt need to lower to medium textures, he has 2GB of ram which is best with that videocard.
 
MadJuggla9 said:
I think it was Jack Nicholson said it best when he said .... well, you know the thing about the truth.

Some help you provided that guy with as well, so your feeling must be mutual. I think he made the best point thus far though, maybe you should reconsider.
Click to expand...

no I don't think I will reconsider, why he upgraded has nothing to do with anything. This was a thread about the differences in performance between an exsisting system versus an upgraded one not why he did it. Feel free to stay out of this thread as well, it is cute that you stuck up for him though :rolleyes:
 
the gamer said:
No it should be in there since its an AGP mobo,in coulb be under a different name.set the Flexible AGP rate to 8X.

he doesnt need to lower to medium textures, he has 2GB of ram which is best with that videocard.
Click to expand...

ok excellent point about the textures. I will relay this info to him on what to look for in the BIOS
 
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