Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

possible RAM and AGP problem

Status
Not open for further replies.

mygb

MIS
Jul 11, 2005
23
CA
I used this benchmark/diagnostic program called Sandra by
At the end of my "main board" information the program tells me the following "performance tips"

=======Warning 100 : Large memory sizes should be made of Registered/Buffered memory.
Tip T100 - Large memory systems (1GB or greater) should use Registered/Buffered memory, especially if more than 2 are installed on the same channel. This improves signal quality by reducing the load on the chipset channel. While these modules add an extra clock delay due to the on-board buffers (thus CL2 effectively becomes CL3), the stability will be worth it. Server chipsets with many memory slots generally require Registered memory.
Fix: If you plan on adding more memory, consider replacing the modules with Registered/Buffered modules. Do note that you cannot mix Unbuffered and Registered/Buffered modules on the same channel, but you may be able to if the chipset has multiple memory channels.

=======Tip 2546 : Large memory modules should be ECC/Parity.
Tip T2546 - Large memory modules (512 or greater) should be ECC/Parity. Since the probability that a bit will be corrupt is the same or increases with module density, the bigger the module, the bigger the overall probability that you will get one or more corrupted bits. While these modules add an extra delay on partial writes (e.g. less than data width) as parity for the whole line must be re-calculated, the stability will be worth it.
Fix: If you plan on adding more memory, consider replacing the modules with ECC/Parity modules. Do note that running plain and ECC/Parity modules will turn off ECC/Parity for the whole memory array.

=======Tip 2513 : AGP Bus is unused or AGP card not fully AGP compatible.
Warning W2513 - The AGP bus is disabled.
Fix: If you have an AGP mainboard, you should get a AGP video adapter to take advantage of it. An AGP adapter would greatly improve 3D performance. However, it should still have at least 8-16MB of local memory.



===Tip 2525 : Current AGP data rate not optimal.
Tip T2525 - Current AGP data rate not optimal, i.e. less than chipset’s maximum AGP data rate. E.g. current AGP data rate is 1x while the chipset and the AGP card both support 2x. You should get better performance with a higher data rate but this depends on the application.
Fix: First, use the PCI & AGP Information module to confirm that the AGP card also supports the maximum chipset data rate. If it does not, don’t worry about it. For non-Intel chipsets, make sure you install the latest version of their AGP mini-drivers. You should update the video card drivers as well. Some non-Intel chipsets can only work in 1x mode with some video cards.

OK however for the AGP part, I have a AGP slot with a AGP card in it, infact its a geforce 6800, why wold it say this?



and for all those ECC things with the ram, what do I do to fix it? I have 2 chips of 256 ram


If you're interested in my PC stats here is a txt that tells everything

SiSoftware Sandra Help Fi
 
Since you only have a pair of 256's you don't really need to worry about the ECC thing. If you are NOT a gamer nor a hi-res editor you needn't worry about AGP settings. Many, if not most, diagnostic software applications give erronious readings and make erronious recomendations. Like the thing about not having AGP bus..........you have a AGP card right? It works....right? Well then, it doesn't take a MCSE to figure that the AGP bus is turned on.
 
Well I am a Gamer. Thanks to my husband. (hehe)
What should I do to the AGP settings to get better gaming performance?
 
Your system is probably fine. If you are that worried, then you might try running some gaming benchmarks (or 3D Mark tests), and then comparing your scores with scores of similar systems (widely available on the web). Odds are, there's no problem though. Sandra is a bit notorious for providing inaccurate info to begin with. I would disregard whatever Sandra said about your AGP settings since it's obviously incapable of recognizing your AGP setup correctly to begin with.
 
Well the ram thing kind of scared me. I play this RPG game online and it stutters a lot when something new happens on the screen. I upgraded my video card(a geforce 4 to a geforce 6800!), but the problem is still there. Someone told me they thought it was my RAM that was giving me problems, and now I think they're right..

Here's my ram info..

System Memory Controller
Location : Mainboard
Error Correction Capability : None
Number of Memory Slots : 3
Maximum Installable Memory : 3GB
Bank 1 - DDR 1 : DIMM Synchronous DRAM 256MB/64
Bank 2 - DDR 2 : Empty
Bank 3 - DDR 3 : DIMM Synchronous DRAM 256MB/64
 
I doubt your RAM is giving you problems, it's more likely you just don't have enough of it. Which game is it, and what kind of CPU are you using?
 
The stuttering also happened with my old video card
 
The question is : how much memory do you have on the video card?
 
It's really hard to get worked up about about one thing or another on a supposedly identical system. He says that he has the same system, is the motherboard the same? Does he have the same chipset? Is there perhaps something in a chipset driver that causes performance issues?

Is he using the same display settings as you?

Are you both using the same driver revisions for video card and other hardware?

Does he have a dedicated hardware audio card while you're using an integrated software-based or software-assisted solution?

Does he have the same programs running in the background?

Is it possible that you have antivirus and antispyware running that he doesn't have running and it is consuming resources?

Is it possible that you have a virus or malware infection that is slowing your system down?

Is it possible that you have a lot of software installed that installs helper programs (toolbars, system tray applications, etc) that are eating up resources?

Is his system a fresh install while yours has been used for a year or more?

Are you both running the same OS?

Did you possibly upgrade from a previous OS to the OS that you are running now? A lot of times there will be bits of the old OS floating around that cause problems.

You said it's an online game. Does he have the same network card that you do? Same ISP? If you have a slower connection to the game (or if your traffic follows a route with high packetloss) then you'll gety stuttering as well.

There a about a million factors that can cause two "identical" systems to behave differently.
 
Reading the full Sandra output that you linked to shows that the AGP slot on your motherboard is capable of 4x maximum but your graphics card is 8x. That means that your graphics card could perform slightly more efficiently if youre motherboard had an 8x AGP slot. Sandra is just being diligent ant telling you about every little thing that you could potentially improve - in this case it isn't telling you that there's a problem, just that things could work better.

The AGP thing really is nothing to worry about. I read an article some time ago on Tom's Hardware about AGP speeds and it concluded that although 8x AGP was measurably faster than 4x, it was certainly not even vaguely near twice as fast.

The speed of your AGP bus is mainly important when moving data between your system's main memory and your graphics card. Seeing as all GeForce 6800s have loads of memory - I bet yours has at least 128MB - data won't have to be moved quite so often. If you went to all the trouble and expense of upgrading your motherboard you would notice a slight improvement in performance.

It's a similar story with your memory. Registered/buffered memory is more expensive (and more rare) than normal memory and adds stability, but you're not having stability problems so there's no point buying it. If you're running a server with gigantic amounts of RAM then yes, buy registered memory, but you're not, so stick with the cheaper stuff!

I'd recommend that you buy more memory though - 512MB is OK but not huge. I just bought some for my home machine very cheaply direct from Kingston - you can look up your motherboard on their site and it will tell you which kind of memory you should buy.

Regards

Nelviticus
 
micker377
The video card has 128 MB of VRAM


kmcferrin
you bring up a lot of good points.
Especially about packetloss. I ran some packet loss test and this was the result..
I'm worried about that 48% loss...


Nelviticus
I remember asking someone if my motherboard had AGP8x and they said this:

AGP 3.0 = 8x
AGP 2.0 = 4x

Any board that supports 8x is backwards compatible with 4x. And you have a board that supports 8x.

I believe this is my mobo and it says Expansion Slots 1 x AGP 8X
 
The problem with that speedtest is that it shows the amount of packet loss you're seeing between your PC and the test servers at DSL Reports. It could be indicative of a problem with your connection to your ISP in which case you'll have problems with all sites. Or it could be a problem with the route that the traffic is taking. You could have lots of traffic problems connecting to one site and no problems connecting to another. You might even have problems that only occur during certain times of day.

What would be more telling for your particular problem would be the ping times and packet loss levels when you are testing between your PC and the game servers that you connect to. I know that back in the day when Ultima Online was popular, there was a UOTrace and UOPing utility that did just that for the UO servers.
 
Assuming you have broadband, do you have a modem that connects via USB or via ethernet? USB modems can slow down when your system is under heavy load - if you have one of those then buying an ethernet one instead could help connection speed.

Nelviticus
 
I have a ethernet card it comes on my motherboard or something, my mobo is a A7V8X-X w/ X-LAN i guess that X-Lan means something like that.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top