ANUS update?

Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2002 12:53 pm

Hi!
I have finally built a new computer based on the Asus P4B266-E mobo.
I have a P4 1.6gHz northwood CPU and 1GB of ram.

Everything works ok, but the speed and feel of it is very similar to my old P3 500mHz/768 ram on an ABIT-board.

When running GigaStudio I get CPU-usage around 40-45%. Even with no samples loaded or anything going on. It used to show 2-5% on the old computer.

I have two suspicions:
1. A BIOS update is needed. Can someone please point me in the right direction for downloading this update. And some basic instructions for how to do it.

2. I out in a Zalman silent CPU-cooler. Maybe I didn't do it right so that there's some air-pockets between the cooling device and the CPU...
Could this cause a significantly poorer performance from the CPU?
The CPU-temp shows around 47 degrees celcius. That should be normal, shouldn't it?

Any other suggestions is very welcome as well...

Other components:
Matrox Millennium G400 dualhead AGP
Soundscape Mixtreme PCI
Soundscape Mixpander PCI
Soundscape controller-card PCI
Pyro 1394 Firewire PCI

Grateful for any kind of help on this.
Fredrik Lidin

Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2002 2:36 pm

Umm...is that a Matrox G450? I hope so...I don't remember the G400. I personally hate the Mixtreme Soundscrape cards(sorry Bert, just a personal preference! :p )
The Zalman heat sinks do have to go on a very specific way but I doubt that would cause your CPU usage issues. Something ain't right there. The BIOS fixes aren't performance related in any way and the temp you stated seems about right.

What are you using the FireWire card for? External hard drive?
Tell me how you have your drives configured please
Opus

Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2002 4:28 pm

Hi Opus!
Thanks for the reply...
No, it is the G400 that I have. Should I replace it with a G550? G400 seem to work fine, but maybe it is slowing down the system?

I personally love the Mixtreme Smile

...and sorry for my ignorance... Rolling Eyes

....ooh, and another thing... I would like to try and overclock this machine sometime. What do I set the VCore to? It is 1.7v right now. Is there any other things to configure when you overclock?

Best regards,
Fredrik Lidin

Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2002 7:23 pm

Well, the only reason I would see a video card would slow down a system would be that it was a PCI card and not an AGP card....does the G400 have the split core 1.5 volt on it? That would be my only guess but since it's booting up in that system most likely it does...if it didn't your system wouldn't power on at all!!!
So in the long run, no you don't need a new video card...what you need to fill me in on is what UDMA speeds are you seeing? This may be your issue. Under XP go to the device manager and under the IDE Primary and Secondary Advanced Settings what do you see for each Master and Slave device? Do you see UDMA 2 for everything? If so, there's your issue. You are somehow slowing things down and this drive switcher could be your culprit. Also are you sure you are using ATA 100 cables and that they are plugged in the correct direction? If not that also would cause UDMA 2 instead of UDMA 5!!!
As far as the heat sink and thermal paste, yes you can clean it off and re add the paste and so forth...done it several times before! No problems and I have also spread the paste on with my finger with no worries either!
Remember RAID won't cause performance decreases in any way like that unless again you don't have the proper cables on them. ATA 100 cables have more conductor shields...basically 80 wires..one end should be blue which goes to the mainboard...if the blue end goes to the drives...turn em around!
Let me know and we can go further on this one
Opus

Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2002 5:21 am

Ohh Gee!
What things you know!!!
I am beside myself with gratefulness. I will check these things and get back to you as soon as possible with a report.

Once again, a million thanks Smile

Best regards and all respect,
Fredrik Lidin

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 4:35 am

Ok...
Strange things happening...
I checked the properties of Primary IDE..
Advanced tab:
Device0
Device Type: Auto Detection
Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Current transfer mode: Not applicable

Device1
Device Type: Auto Detection (greyed out)
Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Current transfer mode: Ultra DMA Mode 5

Secondary IDE:
Device0
Device Type: Auto Detection (greyed out)
Transfer Mode: Pio only
Current transfer mode: PIO Mode

Device1
Device Type: Auto Detection
Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Current transfer mode: Not applicable

I tried to change the Secondary IDE Device0 (this is the CD-rom) to "DMA if avilable" and restarted.
Then I checked the properties of Primary IDE again. It now read:
Device1
Device Type: Auto Detection (greyed out)
Transfer Mode: DMA if available
Current transfer mode: PIO Mode

And things were really slow...
Do you have any more clues? Or should I open the box and check the cables? I suppose the CD-rom doesn't support DMA mode 5... Maybe it should be in PIO Mode?
I tried to change the setting back with no luck.
The primary IDE is now in PIO mode or DMA Mode 2 (different from restart to restart) and the driver for the CD-rom won't load.
If this is the problem could it explain the strange behaviour of the GigaStudio CPU meter?
...which, by the way, in XP shows 3-4% and occasionally goes up to 348%!!!???

What to do?

Thanks for all your kind help,
Fredrik Lidin

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 7:51 am

Ok, I'm royally confused.....
Let me know what drives are where physically...
Basically anything that shows up as PIO or UDMA 2 should be the optical(CDROM) drives.
You want the hard drives to be master and not slaves.
Please list the drives and where they are attached physically to the IDE connectors.
Opus

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 8:33 am

Opus, Frederik - Are you using software raid, or an actual hardware controller (either onboard or PCI) ? Think I read somewhere about several peeps having slowdowns trying to use software raid in either 2k or XP - Just another brain-fart... Steve

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 10:39 am

Hmmm...
Let me see... What happened since last time...
Oohh yes, I tried to start Win98 and it wouldn't boot. This is strange since that OS is on another physical disk. All of the sudden it stopped working.
I switched back to XP and it booted fine. I checked the properties of Primary and Secondary IDE. It showed what I posted before. The CD-rom is not optical but shows "PIO Mode". The system disk shows "DMA mode 5".

This time the computer felt a bit faster than before and GigaStudio showed a CPU usage of 2-4%. So it seemed very normal. I haven't solved the Win98 boot yet, but I'm trying to sort that out now.
Could one disk accidently give access to the other disk when connected to the Nicklock?
In that case maybe XP has overwritten some files on the Win98 disk?

The disks are connected as follows:
Primary IDE:
Two masterdevice disks connected to a Nicklock HDD-switch. Only one is active at a time.
Secondary IDE:
CD-rom as master device

Two striped disks are connected to the onboard RAID controller from Promise.
That's it.

Do you get any wiser by this? I don't...

Thanks a million once more,
Fredrik Lidin

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 11:00 am

Umm...any CDROM, CDR/W or any such device as that IS optical....it has an optical lense..get it?!!
That's why we say Optical to make it easier than typing out CDROM or CDR/W....
So, back to the issue at hand...I would have to guess that this switch thang you use is causing this in some way and could possibly cause XP to read it and write some MBR or other oddity files to it....
Take it off completely and do a dual boot rather than two seperate drives...dual boots are very easy to do...
Get one large disc and partition it into two parts...the first partition for FAT32 for 98SE and the second partition for XP. Install 98SE than install XP...voilla you now have a dual boot system. Sure I never recommend doing this but it is doable and not too bad for OS drives. I would do it that way and I can guarantee you better performance!
Opus

P.S.....the more I do this the more of a wise ASS I become....woohoo!! lol Very Happy

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 11:12 am

Fredrik,
I use the dual boot setup that Opus described above and it works very well. Install the oldest OS first (9 Cool

and then Xp, each on their own partition. Otherwise, my system is very similar to yours and I get pretty good performance, except for plugins, but that is becasue of my processor. Let us know how it turns out,

ian

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 11:33 am

Ok, ok...
Sorry for my ignorance :p .... :confused:
I'll remove the HDD-switch and see what happens...

Just a few more questions:
Is it possible that the overall performance is lower because the harddrives are overheated?

Can you please tell me what I need to do to overclock this machine?

Thanks, and thanks again... all of you who have replied and tried to help me in this matter. Thank you! Truly a great resource!!!

Fredrik Lidin

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 12:28 pm

Ahhh...the overclocking issue!! You ready...this is reallllllly hard...NOT! lol
Simple as this...go into the BIOS...go to the Advanced page..you'll see the clock speed...simply set it to 2.13Ghz and and exit with saving changes.....pretty complicated eh?!! lmao!
Enjoy!
Opus Very Happy

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 4:12 pm

Ok...
I'll try that. No need to worry about the volt core setting then?

Thanks,
Fredrik Lidin

Posted: Wed Sep 18, 2002 6:40 pm

Opus,
I have a P4 1.65ghz processor and an Intel mobo. Will it let me overclock like the ASUS? If not, any way to overclock? How stable will it be after a little overclocking?

Ian

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