slower then expected benchmarks

[Christopher Nichols]

Hey there... I've just build my new system... FINALLY... and I have some questions.

 

It is a dual AMD 2600+ with the gigabyte Mobo and 3x512MB 2100 ddr ram. two 60 gig IBM drives stripped.

 

I loaded WinXp and ran Sandra on it. On some benchmarks (the important ones like) CPU and RAM... I got slower then expected results. In some cases, much slower. The system is clean and very new... no apps on it... I can reload XP it if needed. It only takes 15 mins to load the OS. Any ideas as to what I can check that could cause the benchmark to be slow? Is there stuff in my bios that I should check? I think the CPU benchmark was even slower then a dual 1800+

 

Chris

[Greg Hess]

Christopher,

 

Make sure the FSB in the bios is set to 133. Alot of Athlon boards default to a 100 (200 DDR) FSB which makes the chips run SUBSTAINTALLY slower.

 

Press Del while the system is booting and check that the chips are running at 2.13 GHZ, or 133 (266 DDR) FSB with a 16 multiplier.

 

You can also check there at the right speed in sandra, by looking at the cpu information, which should tell you the Chips's GHZ rating.

 

Good job running sandra too. Some people run their machines slower then spec for over half a year before they realize something is wrong.

[Christopher Nichols]

thanks greg... I will check the FSB on the jumper and the bios... but I don't think that is it... on boot up, and on XP and sandra the CPU's claim to be 2.13 and say 2600+... I am assuming that that would mean the FSB is correct.

 

Also I have not run SP1 of XP yet... maybe that will make a difference.

 

The Bios is another thing...

 

This is the bios page for the mobo:

 

http://tw.giga-byte.com/Server/Support/BIOS/BIOS_GA-7DPXDW.htm

 

it looks like the latest (which i don't know if I have since I'm not home) supports 2400+... I am assuming again, that if it did not have the latest bios it would not see my 2600+ procs as such.

 

I will follow up once I've tried both the bios and the SP1...

[Greg Hess]

Do tell. Make sure to check in sisoft that it reads 2.13 ghz. Sometimes the bios will just report the actual chip designation, and not the current speed. (Aka it'll see the chip is a 2600+ MP and say its 2.13 ghz, when its actually running much slower).

 

If that, nor the pack works, we'll have to go through and find the root of the problem.

 

Have you installed the latest AMD chipset drivers yet? They make a pretty big difference sometimes.

[Christopher Nichols]

Very interesting... I thought I had the whole thing figured out last night... but now I really do.

 

I updated everything on it and reinstalled the OS. The Bios was updated, I used SP1, I used the latest chipset drivers from the net. etc... Ran sandra and all was well... I was happy... I was sure that it was the Bios that did it.

 

I ran the sandra this morning and again got much lower then expected results. On CPU's it was performing around the speed of a dual 1800+. I didn't do a thing on my computer... until I remembered. I installed the gigabyte monitoring software. I quit out of it and my results are back to normal... wow, didn't know it would suck that much juice form my cpus?

 

Well that's ok... I needed to update the bios anyway... and boy it is amazing how well and stable a computer can be when there is nothing on it.

[Greg Hess]

Christopher,

 

Wow. It sucked that much juice? Rediculous. I usually don't use monitoring software myself. I just set the bios to setoff an audible alarm/shutdown if anything goes haywire.

 

Rather do that stuff in hardware then software anyday.

 

Glad you found the problem! Enjoy the new system.