Athlon 3400+ running slow?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Robertson
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Bob Robertson

Hey guys, I upgraded my system this weekend from an XP 2000+ to an A64
3400+ and gigabyte motherboard. I ran some games and didn't see a huge
difference so I decided to run 3dmark on it (BTW I have a 6600GT which I
would have thought would be cpu limited with the XP2000+). The 3dmark
score is barely above what it was with my XP2000+ and the CPU mark is a
bit over half of what other 3400+'s are registering on futuremark's
site. I installed an o'clocking utility that came with the motherboard
just to get some visibility into the multiplier and bus speed it is
registering correctly - 2400Mhz (12x 200Mhz). Anyone know what I could
be overlooking?

Thanks

Bob

P.S. I noticed that the utility is registering my DDR3200 as running at
166Mhz....shouldn't this have been auto-set to 200Mhz? When I try
setting it to 200 with the utility, it attempts to change other values
like the fsb speed and the clock multiplier for some reason...
 
Bob Robertson said:
Hey guys, I upgraded my system this weekend from an XP 2000+ to an A64
3400+ and gigabyte motherboard. I ran some games and didn't see a huge
difference so I decided to run 3dmark on it (BTW I have a 6600GT which I
would have thought would be cpu limited with the XP2000+). The 3dmark
score is barely above what it was with my XP2000+ and the CPU mark is a
bit over half of what other 3400+'s are registering on futuremark's site.
I installed an o'clocking utility that came with the motherboard just to
get some visibility into the multiplier and bus speed it is registering
correctly - 2400Mhz (12x 200Mhz). Anyone know what I could be
overlooking?

Thanks

Bob

P.S. I noticed that the utility is registering my DDR3200 as running at
166Mhz....shouldn't this have been auto-set to 200Mhz? When I try setting
it to 200 with the utility, it attempts to change other values like the
fsb speed and the clock multiplier for some reason...
Click to expand...

the AMD64 3400 is in reality a 2400mhz processor..........its yet another
iffy description.
 
Gomma said:
the AMD64 3400 is in reality a 2400mhz processor..........its yet another
iffy description.
Click to expand...
Why's that - I mentioned that it is showing up as 2400mhz (12x200) yet
the ddr is showing up as 166 and the benchmarks aren't nearly as strong
as a 3400+ should register..

Bob
 
Bob Robertson said:
Why's that - I mentioned that it is showing up as 2400mhz (12x200) yet the
ddr is showing up as 166 and the benchmarks aren't nearly as strong as a
3400+ should register..

Bob
Click to expand...

I bought same processor (well more a combo board and processor deal) then
did a google and found out about its true strength............I still fitted
it and am happy with speeds. I only had a 1200 before so this is much
better.
 
On Sun, 15 May 2005 10:58:20 -0700, Bob Robertson wrote:

from what ive heard you could have a pair of sli-ed 6800gt's and you still
wouldnt be cpu limited in stuff like doom3 but then what do i know ive an
amd64 and geforce2mx
 
Hey guys, I upgraded my system this weekend from an XP 2000+ to an A64
3400+ and gigabyte motherboard. I ran some games and didn't see a huge
difference so I decided to run 3dmark on it (BTW I have a 6600GT which I
would have thought would be cpu limited with the XP2000+). The 3dmark
score is barely above what it was with my XP2000+ and the CPU mark is a
bit over half of what other 3400+'s are registering on futuremark's
site. I installed an o'clocking utility that came with the motherboard
just to get some visibility into the multiplier and bus speed it is
registering correctly - 2400Mhz (12x 200Mhz). Anyone know what I could
be overlooking?

Thanks

Bob

P.S. I noticed that the utility is registering my DDR3200 as running at
166Mhz....shouldn't this have been auto-set to 200Mhz? When I try
setting it to 200 with the utility, it attempts to change other values
like the fsb speed and the clock multiplier for some reason...
Click to expand...

You are probably running in a low power mode. It sounds like you are
using Windoze so go to the Power Options control panel. Under
Power Schemes pick Home/Desktop and see if that speeds your system up. The
A64 has Cool & Quiet which allows you to scale back the clock speed to
less then half of the max clock speed (on Linux the slow speed for a 3400+
is 800MHz, it's probably the same for XP). In the slow mode (which is
plenty fast most of the time) the system can turn off the CPU Fan which is
why it's desirable to use the Cool & Quiet feature. When you put it into
desktop mode XP cranks the CPU clock up to the full speed. On Linux
systems you want to be using the On Demand power governor which will
dynamically alter the speed depending on the CPU load. On Demand usually
requires a custom kernel, most standard kernels ship with the User Space
governor which requires you to write the speed into the
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_setspeed file.
 
Hey guys, I upgraded my system this weekend from an XP 2000+ to an A64
3400+ and gigabyte motherboard. I ran some games and didn't see a huge
difference so I decided to run 3dmark on it (BTW I have a 6600GT which I
would have thought would be cpu limited with the XP2000+). The 3dmark
score is barely above what it was with my XP2000+ and the CPU mark is a
bit over half of what other 3400+'s are registering on futuremark's
site. I installed an o'clocking utility that came with the motherboard
just to get some visibility into the multiplier and bus speed it is
registering correctly - 2400Mhz (12x 200Mhz). Anyone know what I could
be overlooking?

Thanks

Bob

P.S. I noticed that the utility is registering my DDR3200 as running at
166Mhz....shouldn't this have been auto-set to 200Mhz? When I try
setting it to 200 with the utility, it attempts to change other values
like the fsb speed and the clock multiplier for some reason...
Click to expand...

yes your memory should be at 200MHz, don't use the
utility... set it in the bios.
 
kony said:
yes your memory should be at 200MHz, don't use the
utility... set it in the bios.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately the Bios is fairly limited - there is nothing addressing
ram directly; all it lists is "CPU Overclock in MHz" - which is already
set to 200....other than the overclocking util not sure how to bump that
up (shouldn't the system have detected pc3200 in the first place?)

Bob
 
For me, with a 6600GT, going from a mobile xp o/c'd to 3000+ speed to an A64
Winchester o/c'd to 3800+, in 3d mark 03 and 05 there's not much difference
at all.

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Gigabyte motherboard? CTRL + F1 in the bios could bring an advanced menu
option.


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Bob said:
Hey guys, I upgraded my system this weekend from an XP 2000+ to an A64
3400+ and gigabyte motherboard. I ran some games and didn't see a huge
difference so I decided to run 3dmark on it (BTW I have a 6600GT which I
would have thought would be cpu limited with the XP2000+). The 3dmark
score is barely above what it was with my XP2000+ and the CPU mark is a
bit over half of what other 3400+'s are registering on futuremark's
site. I installed an o'clocking utility that came with the motherboard
just to get some visibility into the multiplier and bus speed it is
registering correctly - 2400Mhz (12x 200Mhz). Anyone know what I could
be overlooking?
Click to expand...

Hard to say, but perhaps you weren't CPU limited before, just GPU
limited? Depending on which games you're talking about, they could be
making greater use of the GPU than the CPU. The 3DMark is definitely
mostly examples of GPU-intensive simulations.

The other alternative is maybe your RAM is at fault? Since you're saying
it defaulted to 166Mhz rather than 200Mhz, why not check to see what the
RAM's SPD values are? There are various utilities to read the SPD, one
of them is called CPUFan. Are the sticks of RAM identical or different?

Yousuf Khan
 
Yousuf said:
Hard to say, but perhaps you weren't CPU limited before, just GPU
limited? Depending on which games you're talking about, they could be
making greater use of the GPU than the CPU. The 3DMark is definitely
mostly examples of GPU-intensive simulations.

The other alternative is maybe your RAM is at fault? Since you're saying
it defaulted to 166Mhz rather than 200Mhz, why not check to see what the
RAM's SPD values are? There are various utilities to read the SPD, one
of them is called CPUFan. Are the sticks of RAM identical or different?

Yousuf Khan
Click to expand...
Yah from what I can tell, the memory has been intentionally underrated -
The package and manufacturer's site lists it as ddr400 - I've upped the
rate to 200mhz and things have been running fine for several hours now.
Regarding the GPU/CPU limitation I'm beginning to think that you are
right - I ran som Doom 3 benchmarks and they are looking correct for my
cpu/gpu combo. Thanks for the advice.

Bob
 
Bob Robertson said:
Unfortunately the Bios is fairly limited - there is nothing addressing
ram directly; all it lists is "CPU Overclock in MHz" - which is already
set to 200....other than the overclocking util not sure how to bump that
up (shouldn't the system have detected pc3200 in the first place?)

Bob
Click to expand...

If you're bios detects your ram at 166 instead of 200 then the only thing
you can hope for is a updated bios that works corrctly.
I have the same problem. My BIOS(Chaintech VNF3-250) has manual FSB
settings of 100,133,166 and Auto. Auto should be 200. My ram is detected
only as 166. So I set my HTT to x3 and the set "Overclock in mhz" to 245. My
CPU(A64 2800+) is now running at 2225 and my ram is running at around 400.
It actually reads 410 at boot but I've been told that's not quite
right.It's more like 405.
 
FYI - 4 sticks of pc3200 are supposed to drop to 166, but many run ok at
200.

--
Ed Light

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MS Smiley :-\

Send spam to the FTC at
(e-mail address removed)
Thanks, robots.
 
Which gigabyte board is it? Not a micro I hope because this could be a ram
issue causing your memory speed to be running lower than 200mhz. Is this a
754 processor?
 
skeeter said:
Which gigabyte board is it? Not a micro I hope because this could be a ram
issue causing your memory speed to be running lower than 200mhz. Is this a
754 processor?
Click to expand...
It's a GA-K8NS Pro (754, ATX) - Thanks to Ed Light's CTRL-F1 tip, the
memory is now successfully running at 200Mhz x 2

Bob
 
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