New System Seems Slow

Hi everyone,

I think I may be in need of some of your expertise. I beg for your time and consideration.

I built this system about a week ago, after some research and collecting the parts for a few months. The goal was to have an absolutely smokin' hot system that would blow my old system completely away for speed. Unfortunately there is little difference, if any, between the 2 PCs and this has me wondering if there is a limit with these things or did something go way wrong? I know the mainboard was reviewed many times as being quite a hot number. See specs below in my signature. I just have to wonder about this RAM. It is the one thing that I asked to purchase 1024 of and was told "here you go" type of thing. Did they miss something here or not? The RAM is as follows:

KINGSTON DDR NON-ECC PC3200 CL3 KVR400X64C3AK2/1G 1024MB (KIT OF 2) MEMORY 400MHZ

This Non-ECC and ECC confuses me and, yes, I am one paranoid person but could this be why the system is such a stick in the mud?

The CPU is putting out at 15 x 200 to it's full 3000. Heck, I even wound it up to 15 x 215 for 3.2 for a day and still no difference. It's long since been back at 3000.

Hard drives are brand new 7200 RPM units.

I know that I had a nightmare of a time with this thing at first and took it in to have the RAM tested as a free test I downloaded showed failure. (PC cwasn't even able to perform a restart) After working on this thing for almost a day, they flashed my BIOS to the latest, greatest, and the RAM then passed in dual channel mode.

My old system was a P4 1800, 512 of 266Mhz DDR RAM, sitting on an ASUS P4S333 board, throwing things out through a run of the mill 64 Meg GeForce video card.

I had both PCs here for a few days and I swear to you all that someone would have had to install possibly some wild game or something before you'd see anything in the way the 2 ran, be it booting up, opening up windows, launching something like PhotoShop......you get the picture.

I'm sorry for being so long winded here and I can only post back from time to time this weekend, but would you rally around this problem and help me out? Please?

Could it be that I'm expecting something that pretty much peaked out with my old system? I give up. You tell me.

Always indebted to you all here,
Randy

 

Wow, Randy, I started to get some ideas but after reading your whole post, you obviously know what you're doing. The RAM you've purchased should be fine as it's rated for a 200FSB. Anything higher is not guaranteed and might require you to increase your memory voltage (VDIMM). Disclaimer: Note that any VDIMM setting above 2.7 could theoretically damage your memory.

Forget about ECC, that's for servers not home PCs. If your board could take ECC ram and you got some, it would simply decrease your rig's performance. And regardless of what anyone says, ECC isn't going to let you sleep any better because of it's extra error correction.

I guess since you don't have your old system anymore, it's impossible for you to run any comparison benchmarks. Even still, you might want to run some benchmarks to see how your rig compares to other rigs in its "class ".

What video card are you using? BTW

We've all been underwhelmed by cpu and memory upgrades. Keep in mind that the one upgrade that has the most potential for speeding up your system is a hard drive upgrade. Going from an older HDD to a state-of-the-art one can have dramatic impact on the "speed feel" of your system. If your previous drive also a speed-demon, you might not notice that big an improvement.

Check your device manager and make sure that your drive(s) are running in the appropriate DMA mode. If that's off, they'll run like dogs. Also keep in mind that your upgrade will have it's biggest impact on 3D games and other intensive apps like say Photoshop but not word processing, net surfing and the like.

Gary

 

Update motherboard drivers?:
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/support/download/dld/spt_dld_detail.php?UID=433&kind=1

Search around the MSI forum?:
http://forum.msi.com.tw/board.php?boardid=10&sid=c2d8cb34e8247c20142081d63004cfc2

Run some utilities on your harddrives, Windows and HD manufacturer's.

Matt

 

Gary & Matt,

The video card is a SAPPHIRE RADEON 9600 128MB AGP8X VGA DVI TV OUT

I have now registered at the MSI forum Matt guided me to. There seems to be an astounding amount of info to be had there pertaining to my exact system. I can't wait to tap into it all.

I will post back soon, Gary, to answer a couple of concerns you had. We must get into this DMA thing. I have yet to update my drivers, Matt, but the BIOS is updated.

Thanx for the help. I shall post back soon and keep you apprised of what steps I have taken that may make a difference with this system, okay?

Thanx a million, guys!
Randy

 

Not to worry. Good practice building.

chameleon,

I learned a long time ago at the U. that for a human to see/feel a difference in speed between two computers there must be a difference of "an order of magnitude" between the two. That roughly equates to a multiple of 10 (note my signature). I have built a number of computers up to 2800Mhz and I can see that none run faster (and some not as fast) as mine. Benchmarks (special programs that measure speed) are required to find and measure the small increments in performance.

I advise anyone who inquires that it's not cost effective to pay high prices for small increments of increased performance.

Your experience is in keeping with mine.

 

sparrow,

Thanx for the raelity check. I have, personally, seen subtle differences with PCs in the 1600 to 2800 range. I have seen how a weaker setup sometimes blows away something supposedly faster and far more expensive.

I just took a kick at the cat and assumed that this much processor, on a hot board, with a Gig of Dual Channel, should really shine but it doesn't, really.

Before I passed the 1.8 down to a daughter, I cranked it up to 2.0 and there was absolutely nothing wrong with that machine at all. Strangely enough, my other daughter's PC, where I put an AthlonXP 1600+ into an MSI board could always boot up and do things quicker than my 1.8 could.

I'm glad to finally hear someone speak up and call it the way it is. I will, however continue to work with the folks at the MSI forum to fine tune this board. They are really something. They live and breath these boards. I suppose there are ASUS forums out there as well. Cool places to hang out at.

ONE MORE THING:

Anyone know how to shut up the horrible noise from these Vantec Tornados at 119 cfm? I unplugged, both, the intake and exhaust. Is it really the fans making all this racket that sounds like someone is vacuuming or could it be the case perforations still being there that causes them to whine the way they do. Vantec never replied to me when I asked them. Thing is, the intake fan, deafening as it is, keeps the HDs cool as cucumbers.....else you can almost cook dinner on them which scares me a lot. Beats me. You tell me what to do. You're the pros.

I LOVE these fans, though. I mean they MOVE air like nobody's business.....now how to hush them a bit. You should feel the temp within the case if I let them both go.......almost no heat at all....some parts luke warm on a bad day, maybe.

 

Quiet cooling?

This is the way I'd like to go some day. It's supposed to be quiet.

http://www.windowsbbs.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=52&stc=1

 

Okay....now that's gettting quite radical, sparrow. What about a regulated burst of liquid nitrogen whenever the CPU so much as flinches in temperature? Why stop with water? You're definately an extremist.

So....what's ideal temp, using Core Centre, for my CPU? Also, when I adjusted my settings from 15 x 200 to 15 x 215, was it the proper way to overclock to 3.2, not that any difference was seen? Just curious.

Now what about my Vantec Tornados????? Is there a solution, sparrow, or can I sell these to you, at a bargain price, to cool the Chevy 454 radiator you might use as a resevoir?

Kidding around respectfully,
Randy

 

Me???

I love to!

Maybe I sounded too conservative earlier, but was really radical- most folks would not go along with what I said. Like driving a Rolls rather than a Volkswaggon. (my Rolls takes too much of my time now going back and forth to the shop.)

 

Hey!

Had someone not been thinking "radically ", you wouldn't even have had "wheels" on the Rolls. The wheel would have never been invented, would it have?

Radical thinking makes new things happen....some for the good, some for the worse......but that's for us to sort out; pick and choose what to keep and what to 86.

Randy

Now what about my questions???? Any chance of getting answers from you, or are you already pulling the rad out of the Rolls, contemplating how it will look mounted just to the right of a mid-tower case?

EDIT The Tornado solution is obvious. I shall purchase the following controller from my favorite parts supplier up here:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=9178&vpn=NXP-201-SL&manufacture=VANTEC

 

I'm no help there.

I'm not an overclocker, for the same reason I mentioned in my original answer. However if you overclock and don't get errors, you're fine. I wouldn't expect to see/feel any difference, but whatever turns you on!! This is my 3rd abit overclocker's mobo, and on an earlier one I did experiment with overclocking a cyrix chip and had nothing but memory errors, probably due to inexperience, so gave it up.

So far as core temp etc, IMO the answer is the same; there's a range that's safe, and you'll probably see errors if you push too far before you see damage, assuming you don't push too fast. I personally have no experience with any of this, and have no wish to acquire any.

 

It's okay about the clocking, sparrow.

I just wanted to get some figures for CPU temp in this stock system to see what my Zalman is doing for me. Sort of a safe range of temps?

Randy

 

The info should be here.

This Intel tech page should lead to answers to the temp question.

 

Hehehe .......

Sparrow: So right re: orders of magnitude and machine performance. And, your MoBo remains one of my all time favorites but in KT7a versions. As to the water cooling - never done one, can get plenty of extra horsepower on air alone. (think about a leak too) My next "project box" is going to be a 2500+ or 2600+ Mobile that can be pushed to 2.4 - 2.5 GHZ right out of the box without serious core voltage increases - supposed to run very cool.

Chameleon: Not knocking your Vantecs, they're good but you also discovered the other part of their signature. Personally, its tough to beat standard Coolermaster case fans for longevity, performance, price and noise but the cfm's are admittedly much lower.

 

Hardware dummy wants info

A question since I don't know and would like to. Isn't a processor much like an engine? Too cool and it doesn't burn efficiently, too hot and it'll blow the top off, up to an optimal temp and it runs like a wildcat? Seems mine performs better once it heats up properly.(nothin special here BTW) If so, are the fans doing too good a job maybe??

 

Dave:

Good analogy, you're right on. At the same time, general rule of thumb is cooler is better, however, these things do have a range of temps for optimum performance. Another car analogy thats right on - they run better when one breaks em in properly. Although not noticeable to the everyday user, when one gets into overclocking, things like memory perform better after being burned in. You might get 10, 20 or 30 mhz more out of of the same memory once its been run for a while under stress. But - it goes back to Sparrow's order of magnitude comments - this is only going to be noticeable to benchmarking utilities - we aren't going to notice too much of anything as being faster or slower. As to the too cool question - a couple of tornado fans aren't going to make his CPU too cool to run properly. Then again, maybe Chameleon needs two pair of earmuffs - one for his ears and the other to wrap around the CPU heatsink/fan. You just might have something there.

 

Cooling Issue!

Can anyone here help me out of this bind?

I want to keep the 2 Vantec Tornado case fans but cannot tolerate the noise.

I f I went to a 5.25" bay type fan controller, it won't work because of the design of my case. The knobs would not allow me to close the door.

My small bays are used up by HDs.

See the "More Photos" of my case on this page:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=9871&vpn=SLK2600AMB&manufacture=ANTEC

Is there anything out there that will work from within the case whereby I can slow these fans down to where I can stand them and then close the case???

Randy

 

Thanks Rockster.

I would think you could pick up a potentiometer down at radio shack an splice it in the + lead to control the speed.

 

With this in it's specs, Noise(dBA): 56.4, you most likely won't get the noise level down to tolerable without slowing them down to the point of not moving enough air to cool properly.

 

I would suggest getting Everest System temps are under Computer > Sensor, but compare these to the readout of your BIOS and make sure they match. There is a temperature readout for the HDD's under Storage > SMART (and the HDDs have a sensor). Monitor the temp's, if you cannot afford to slow the fans then you will have to look at getting quieter ones. Maybe disable one to see the effects of a reduced air flow on the temperatures.

Matt