What is the choke point in my system? please help :(

[plexed]

I have a very nice system, i have built it myself, my problem is extremely low Benchmarking scores, and lack of performance. I am having problems finding my bottleneck i have a complete list of all the hardware in my system it follows now:

Motherboard:
KT3 Ultra-ARU(MS-6380E) Deluxe

Memory: 768mb Total
1: 512 PC2700 DDR
2: 256 PC2200 DDR

Sound:
Soundblaster Audigy Platinum

Video:
ASUS V8200T5 Geforce3 Ti500 Deluxe 64mb DDR

CPU:
AMD Athlon(tm)XP 1800+, 1.53ghz 133mgz FSB

Hard Drives:
WDC WD136AA-35BAA0
WDC WD800BB-32CCB0
ScanDisk ImageMate II USB Device

DVD:
SAMSUNG CDRW/DVD SM-308B

Floppy Disk Drive:
Standard Floppy Disk Drive

HID Devices:
HID-Compliant Game Controller
Logitech WingMan Extreme Digital 3D (USB)
Logitech WingMan Extreme Digital 3D (USB)
Microsoft USB IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0
SideWinder Game Pad USB Version 1.0

IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers:
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE CHannel
VIA Bus Master IDE Controller

IEEE 1394 Bus host Controllers:
OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller

Imaging Devices:
Veo PC Camera

Keyboard:
Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard

Mice and other Pointing Devices:
Microsoft USB IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0

Modems:
Lucent Win Modem

Monitors:
ViewSonic E70FB-2

Network Adapters:
1394 Net Adapter (DISABLED)
Linksys NC100 Fast Ethernet Adapter

Ports (COM & LPT):
Communications Port (COM1)
Communications Port (COM2)
ECP Printer Port (LPT1)

Sound, Video, and Game Controllers:
Audio Codecs
Creative Game Port
Creative SB Audigy
Legacy Audio Drivers
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Media Control Devices
Unimodem Half-Duplex Audio Device
Video Codecs

Storage Volumes:
Generic Volume

System Devices:
ACPI Fixed Feature Button
ACPI Sleep Button
Direct Memory Access Controller
ISAPNP Read Data Port
Logitech Virtual Bus Enumerator
Microcode Update Device
Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System
Numeric Data Processor
PCI Bus
Plug And Play Software Device Enumerator
System CMOS/real time clock
System Speaker
System Timer
Terminal Server Device Redirector
VIA CPU to AGP Controller
VIA Standard PCI to ISA Bridge
VIA Tech CPU to PCI Bridge

Universal Serial Bus Controllers:
NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller
NEC PCI to USB Open Host Controller
Unversal Serial Bus (USB) Controller (DISABLED)
USB Mass Storage Device
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
USB Root Hub
VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller
VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller

-------------------------------------------------

I know most of it isnt needed, but its a complete list you never know what some one might know about somthing, most things are at defualt my os is Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP1 Ver. 2002, any help at all would be appreciated. thanks in advanced
-Andrew

 

[mainegeek]

Did you close any running apps before starting
performance tests?

I'm curious, what do you have for a power supply?

 

[gargouille]

You'll likely get better performance from your hard drives putting them on the RAID IDE channels...

Do you have UDMA mode enabled on the IDE controller?

Is the OS/Boot sector on the newer, faster hard drive?

Mixing RAM I guess 'cause you had it? (you surely meant PC2100!)?

What brand is it?

As far as overhead: here's a link to an excellent source of stuff you can turn off...

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm

in the startups.

 

[plexed]

320w psu, yes the other ddr stick is pc2100 sorry for typo, and UDMA is enabled the os is on the older HD but they are both 7200rpm i believe?

 

[plexed]

sorry for message spamming couldnt find a edit option, so putting them on RAID Channels should help alot?

 

[plexed]

gah i wasnt paying attention again, i have tweaked my services already, did it a while back, im sure i could run through and take another look at them, i close all process's and apps that i dont need before i start benchmarking maybe i could post some of my benchmarks the pc2100 is crucial and the pc2700 is samsung

 

[paparazi]

Untill recently I had a very similar setup.
MSI 63080 (KT266a not 333)
512mb 2100
non raid
GF3 Ti500
2X 40gig 7,200's
In default settings Mad Onions 3Dbenchmark 2001SE
just turned as much off in the tray
It would bench around 8,900 points. + or - 200
What R U getting?
Have you tried removing one of your sticks of ram and rebenching? I had a similar problem with my new setup
Cured by getting a matched pair of ram modules.
Martin Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[plexed]

yeah i have benched with out the ram that way and with, not much of a difference, also in mad onion i am getting alot less than you, in 3dmark 2001 (i think thats the newest) im getting 2000-4000 its very sad

 

[plexed]

i am thinking it may have somthing to do with my bios, i have seen a friends with the same bios as mine, in the bios there is a option called MIPS Table version, his has 1.1 and 1.5 he has the same exact motherboard btw MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU, mine has 1.1 and 1.4 and if i ever set it to 1.4 my system is extremely unstable and crashes constantly, where as his is on 1.5 and works fine, now he has about the same setup as me and gets only thing different is he has a GF4 but in SiSoft sandra he scores higher in alot of the stuff too that wouldnt have any relation to the graphics card, and i have heard that the MIPS option actually just controls things for SMP (multi processing) if i am right? so it wouldnt make a difference in my single processer system?

 

[Morsing]

Your question doesn't make much sense if you don't tell us what your benchmarking and where it goes wrong.

The first an most important step to a well performing system is to never use IDE disks. Put in a SCSI system with preferably two or more disks.

Cheers Henrik Morsing
IBM Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration

 

[Grunt2002]

Hello,

Your system seems reasonably powerful. Have you checked it for viruses ? Have you overclocked it (bad idea)?

I disagree with Morsing, 7200 IDE is ok for most of users. This config seems to be that of a machine used for gaming and/or office purpose, not a streaming server that would require constant and heavy disk access. Don't nuke a fly ;-)

 

[plexed]

memory bandwidth stuff like that all the general stuff minus graphical items, SCSI is of no major concern for me thanks for the comment though, but its out of my price range, and these being a system for home use, its not even practical

 

[plexed]

no overclocking done, i score low even after default os installs, i benchmark before and after tweaking the os (registry, etc)

 

[Morsing]

Well, as I said I didn't know what it was supposed to do.
Unfortunately the IDE protocol is very inefficient and even a single user computer would benifit from it. Don't know why it wouldn't be practical (maybe in an economical sense ;-) ), SCSI is much easier and flexible to setup and use.

Cheers & Happy New Year Henrik Morsing
IBM Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration

 

[Grunt2002]

... (sorry for the split posting)

What I mean is your system is too powerful to search for an outside issue : you just don't need other components. It should just boom. I think you should search for software issues... viruses, bios settings, agp port drivers (mainboard's chipset drivers), graphic card drivers, directx drivers.
Are your problems specific to 3d rendering ? or do you encounter general low performance (for example, how many seconds does it take to boot until the windows sound ?)

 

[plexed]

Well, generaly software based things run fine some times its sluggish but im sure thats with any one, i run photoshop and cpp daily, besides that mainly 3dmark, which is yeah pretty much graphic issues, the memory throughput is a slight problem but i guess its not very far from where it should be, im going to benchmark and post all the scores i get after updating every driver i can think of, btw i dont have 3 joysticks just one and a sidewinder i guess its the way the logitech drivers work, but i dont have any of that stuff installed untill after i benchmark any ways. thanks for your guys help so far

 

[Morsing]

Grunt,
Plexed started talking about setting up IDE raid himself.
I'm talking from experience with my workstation at home, not servers. It's now five years old and just as fast as my 1GHz PC at work.

It is a common misconception that SCSI is better because it's faster. It's better because SCSI devices are intelligent and IDE is not. It's just like accelerated vs. non-accelerated graphics cards.

And it's not that expensive if you buy a second hand adaptec controller for £30.
How many of you have experienced IDE mouse (when the cursor moves in big delayed steps because your computer is writing to the disk).

A third to a quarter of what??

Cheers Henrik Morsing
IBM Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration

 

[tep0583]

I do not see anything in your hardware choice that really jumps out as being a bottleneck. The GF3 Ti500 should have no trouble with anything out there, you have pleanty of RAM and you Mobo/processor is pleanty powerful. This system should scream.

I do notice that you have a Via chipset. The most common thing I hear about Via and performance/stability issues is to be certin that you have the latest 4 in 1 drivers for it. I would also make sure you have the latest stable Detonator drivers from Nvidia, although I see no reason you couldn't get good scores with the standard drivers for the card. The latest Detonators should speed you up some, though.

Verify that your FrontSide Bus and mulitplier are correct, I have had my board reset these to the wrong FSB, which made the processor run significantly slower. I would also verify that your AGP port is set to 4x mode.

Use Sandra's online result browser to check you system aganst simular systems. You should be able to isolate your trouble area by compareing where you are vs where others are. If your memory bandwidth is OK and your processor is also, I would start looking at my graphics.

If your trouble is consistantly graphics, I would see I you can convince your friend to let you borrow his GF4 to test if it does significantly better. It really shouldn't, but you could have a bad video card.

Good Luck.

 

[BOAZ1]

MIX MEMORY WILL SLOW DOWN UR SYSTEM. THAT SIMPLE

 

[plexed]

i have tested WITH and WITHOUT the mixed memory... i have said this many times it still scores the same and its lower than it should be both times, also i have the FSB and agp 4x set correctly in the bios i also changed agp driving to CM because its faster than auto detect on MSI motherboards, i have benchmarked both ways still low i also have the latest drivers for everthing even the latest bios.