general performance increases

[kaptr1d]

Hi.

Im brand new to this board. This is my 2nd post!

Neway, I have a pretty nice machine, but I feel that most of the time its performance is below where it should be.

Im looking for general performance tweaks, whether it be links to guides or something uve personally realized with similar hardware/software that u run or have run. My specs:

athlon64 3200+
radeon9600xt 256mb
winXP Pro SP2.

I have 3 harddrives.
My OS is on a 13gig 7200rpm IDE drive.
I have a 2nd drive for only bittorrent, 40gig 7200rpm IDE.
I have a 3rd drive for bulk storage, 160gig 10000rpm sata drive.

I run ZoneAlarm, Pest Patrol, Norton Corporate, and TweakNow Powerpack 2005 in the background at all times.

Thanks,

-Grant

[RamonGTP]

What makes you think its not performaing up to par?

Btw, all that stuff in the background does slow things down.

[MJCfromCT]

If anything, your video card is your bottleneck, but how much RAM do you have?

[Magua]

Like MJC said that video card is really holding you down, however it will run this generation of games so upgrading is not absolutely needed.

Try downloading 3dMark03 and posting a scoree, we can figure out if you are really running below average from that.

[ThorLax]

i know this is very off-topic, but HOW ABOUT THEM REDSOCKS??

[Tech^salvager]

A 13gig HDD running at 7200rpms, I say thats way out there. Are you sure its running at 7200rpms? Cause I bet thats a bottleneck right there. I suggest using the 160 or 40 gigHDD as your main drive for windows. I have never seen a 13gig HDD run at 7200rpms. Also your video card is a bottle neck but you probably know that.

Do you ever use ad-aware or spybot? I would run those in safe mode and see what you have on your system.

You know what if I were you I would just take the 13gig out of the system if it runs at 5400rpm, your slowing your computer down by using that as your main drive for windows.

If you have questions just ask. I will be glad to help.
Tech^:t

[MJCfromCT]

Originally posted by ThorLax
i know this is very off-topic, but HOW ABOUT THEM REDSOCKS??

There is a reason we have an "off topic" forum :rolleyes:

[kaptr1d]

My 3dMark score was a 3076

http://www.kaptr1d.com/frames.JPG

can i reinstall windows to my 160gig harddrive without reformating it? should i make a partition on the drive and put my OS on there? i really dont have any problem moving my OS onto a different drive if you think thats the bottleneck.


thanks.

[PacNW CE]

Originally posted by MJCfromCT
There is a reason we have an "off topic" forum :rolleyes:

Yes but...

The Red Sox haven't won a World Series since 1918. That would be Pre Depression america. That would also be when computers were still scientist's wet dreams. There for, I propose that until the end of the world series Red Sox fans can pipe in about the Red Sox when ever they want to!

Coarse...I am not a mod and have no power to grant this decree.

That's my way of saying ignore me....:D

[kaptr1d]

ive been comparing my score to other ppl with the same card as me and lesser cpus and theyre getting higher scores then me!

what is up with my machine!

[MJCfromCT]

How much RAM do you have? If you have 256, there's your problem.

[Rabbitrunner51]

Alot of things effect performance...

Example are ram and quality of.., Mobo, PSU, spyware or other running behind the scenes in your system ...and lack of VC driver updates and other...

Go into running processes..( ctrl/alt/ delete) and see if there are any suspects there ....

Do a HD defrag also....

The firstr thing I would do is go to the ATI site and see if there are any VC driver updates for your card...and also update DirectX to version 9c.

[kaptr1d]

1 gig of pc3200 ram. ram isnt the issue i dont think.

[kaptr1d]

i reformatted like 2 weeks ago. i have pestpartrol, zonealarm and norton corporate. no spy ware or ad ware here!

[Vitalka]

Might sound sound stupid, but did you shut down every other program running in the back ground, when running bechmarks.

This link leads to a program that can tell what you have inside your box. Install it, run it, just to check the speed for that 13gg hard drive of yours.
http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en&pageid=1

[MrBurns]

Originally posted by PacNW CE


Yes but...

The Red Sox haven't won a World Series since 1918. That would be Pre Depression america. That would also be when computers were still scientist's wet dreams. There for, I propose that until the end of the world series Red Sox fans can pipe in about the Red Sox when ever they want to!

Coarse...I am not a mod and have no power to grant this decree.

That's my way of saying ignore me....

i though there was a own thread about this.

f*** the baseball. f*** the red socks.

[MJCfromCT]

Originally posted by MrBurns

f*** the baseball. f*** the red socks.

a little intense....:rolleyes:

A way of telling if your video card is the bottleneck would be to slightly overclock your card and see if you gain in 3dmark. If you see this relationship, you'll know that the card is the bottleneck.

[kaptr1d]

ok. so i installed that program, thx btw.

my 13gig harddrive is 7200rpms.

i did memory tests... my read speed is right where it should be. my latency test is way above where it should be, but the memory write speed is way below where it should be. is this a clue?

i had programs running in the background last time i ran 3dmark. im gonna reboot and run it again with nothing in the background post what i score then.

thanks for ur help.

[kaptr1d]

with everything closed after fresh reboot i scored a 3071 on 3dmark03.... i dont think its background apps hurting my score.

[MJCfromCT]

are you running your memory in single channel or in dual channel?

[porsch1909]

Have you checked if the people with higher scores have overclocked their graphics cards????

[Tech^salvager]

I would still switch windows over to the 160gigHDD, but thats MO.

Did you run ad-aware and spybot in safe mode?

[Magua]

Running dual channel vs single channel helps, but probably not as much as he would like.

Honestly a little over 3k 3dMark03's dosen't seem that far off for a 9600pro.

[porsch1909]

Its a 9600XT is it not???

[Vitalka]

Originally posted by porsch1909
Its a 9600XT is it not???

Radeon 9600XT 256MB

[Magua]

I would expect that setup to score about 3500 3dMark03's.

Have you checked to make sure AA/AF is full performance? (right click, properties, settings, advanced, 3Dtab, set for full performance, then run again.)

[kaptr1d]

changed setting to full performance. no increase in 3dmark score.

[porsch1909]

My cousin bought what he thought was a 9600 pro. and the clock speed etc. where all 9600 pro. but when he got hardly any overclock out of it; he decided to change the cooler. so when he took the old one off he looked at the chip and it only said 9600 on it.

so my question would be are you sure you have a 9600 XT there and not just a bog standard one and you have been duped???

where did you buy it from??

[richard_cocks]

Originally posted by kaptr1d
ive been comparing my score to other ppl with the same card as me and lesser cpus and theyre getting higher scores then me!

what is up with my machine!

Check what driver versions they are using.

[Tech^salvager]

Wait which drive is 3Dmark installed on?

[kaptr1d]

i bought the card from xtremegear.com its an xtasy card, came with all paperwork and shows up with proper specs.

3dmark is installed on the 160gig sata drive.

i have catalyst version 4.10 drivers, core speed 499.5, mem speed 297.0

[Tech^salvager]

3dmark is installed on the 160gig sata drive.
Well there might be your problem. Uninstall it then install it on the main drive. Your creating more unneeded I\O traffic

[JediOfDarkness]

Defrag all your drives. Formatting is not the same thing. You need to defrag your system after each install of a large program, like a game. Installing an entire drives worth of data is definantly a need for a defrag. Remember: The more space used on a drive, the faster it will fragment.
And like others have said, install Ad-Aware and run it in safe mode. You can get new spyware within the same day of formatting your drive.

But like others have said, 3000-3500 is normal for a R9600XT, so don't expect to get a huge boost from anything. You might try getting a new graphics card, at least a R9800XT.

Also, someone asked, but I don't think you answered, are you running your RAM in Dual Channel? If not, you should look into doing that. Check your motherboards manual to see if your mobo supports Dual Channel and which slots to use.

[richard_cocks]

with modern drive with NTFS a highly fragged drive shouldn't be noticably slower than a defragged one.

[kaptr1d]

i really dont know anything about dual vs. single channel memory.

my motherboard is an Asus K8V Deluxe. How do I find if my memory is running as dual channel? and if it isnt how do I switch it to run dual channel?

[MrBurns]

Originally posted by Tech^salvager
Well there might be your problem. Uninstall it then install it on the main drive. Your creating more unneeded I\O traffic

i dont think, that this little more i/o traffic makes a difference. also the io traffic isnt really more, the only thing that sould slow down the system a little bit is, that 3dmark also needs system files from the main drive, so it will change the drives often and changing the drive allways leads to a little latency. but allmost all i/o traffic to the hdds is during the loading times. there is not much traffic during the benchmarks. so maybe it would speed up loading times a little bit, when 3dmark is on the main drive, but i dont think, that the difference would be noticeable in the score of a benchmark like 3dmark.

[MrBurns]

Originally posted by kaptr1d
How do I find if my memory is running as dual channel? and if it isnt how do I switch it to run dual channel?

it should say during boot up, if your memory is in dual channel mode.

to switch to dual channel you will have to arrange the memory sticks in the right way (read the manual of your mobo).

[kaptr1d]

i only have 1 stick of memory.

[MrBurns]

Originally posted by kaptr1d
i only have 1 stick of memory.

you need at least 2 stick for dual channel.

[Magua]

i only have 1 stick of memory.

Well I guess that closes the book on that theory.

How much memory is that one stick, I have a feeling thats your problem. And what speed is it?

[ShadeZeRO]

Shade to the rescue...:cool:

Hey buddy:t

Ok, i have the same mobo as you...and a step up in the processer line (3400+).

You wil not be able to get duel channel...the reason is that our mobo (and every other 754 chipset mobo) does NOT SUPPORT duel channel ram...that is why there is only 3 slots for ram... and make sure you put it in the blue one (that is the first bank on the left).

Second of all...Are you running any RAID...because if you have 2 drives in the SATA RAID 1 and SATA RAID 2 then it might be running in raid (and seeing that you have 3 DIFFERENT drives...that would be a bad thing)...

Also...check your RAM timings...mabey you got some bad ram by accident...

www.cpuid.com download CPU-Z and send a pic of the "Memory" and "Main"
Defrag does help...atleast on the starting times...and stop some of your background programs...

Any other questions...i am here, or playing counter strike...or playing FF-VII on here also. :)

[kaptr1d]

http://www.kaptr1d.com/mem.JPG

2 of the drives are IDE's
the 3rd is a SATA drive. I have a RAID controller that loads with bios, but that has loaded since before I had the SATA drive installed.

[ShadeZeRO]

Sorry to say...the RAM is holding you back just a TINY bit...

CAS 3: 3-3-6 is not good...im running CAS 2: 3-3-6...and that is at relaxed timings...

The drives are fine, i have the same thing, my raid controller is off though i think, saves about .5 seconds on startup lol...

Defrag your drive...
Run BootVis
Do some general tweaking...

[kaptr1d]

i ordered a 6800 GT yesterday. gonna just have to make due with the ram since its a month old and im not replacing it.

ill see how my score changes with the new card.

[porsch1909]

i never thought RAM timing made such a big difference.

[JediOfDarkness]

Shade, where do you get that 3-3-3-6 timings are bad? The only thing making that "slower" than your RAM is th CAS latency, which is only used when the program is first initiated. You'll normaly never notice the difference between CAS2 and CAS3, though if you have the option, go with CAS2 of course.

And Porsch, latency times do make a difference, but as I said, that's not bad memory timings. Bad would be like 3-4-4-8 or higher.

And as Shade said, socket 754 CPUs cannot run RAM in Dual Channel, sorry. But that 6800GT will give you a huge preformance jump, so don't worry about it. When I went from my GF5200 to my now 6800GT I couldn't believe how amazingly well it played games. There isn't a game out there that I can't play in eye candy mode :t

[porsch1909]

how do i check my RAM latency and timings. its not in the BIOS.

[richard_cocks]

should be in the BIOS (it might be that yours are set to auto so don't show?)

[MrBurns]

i once tested a lot of timings w/ 3dmark01 on my system (i use 3dmark01, because you see bigger differences than in 3dmark03).

The only timings that really made a difference were TRCD (I think, that is the pone which is normally listed on 2nd position) and TRAS. The differences were max. ~100 3DMarks for TRCD and max. ~50 for TRAS (I have nearly 14k in 01) and for the TRAS timing the lowest timing (4 or 5) was never the best, it was 6 or 7 depending on clock speed.

All other timings didnt make a measureable difference.


Btw, I have the nforce2 chipset.

[kaptr1d]

shade do u know waht nforce chipset our mobo has?

i should have the card by monday or tuesday at the latest. ill post again with my new 3dmark score. hopefully its just the 9600xt thats causing a bottleneck.

i have vsync enabled on all applications, but my monitor has high refresh rates at most resolutons. 120hz at 800x600, 100hz at 1024x768. i dont play anything above 1024. could this lower my scores?

also could vsync caus my mouse to lock for a split second from time to time? its not my mouse itself skipping, i have an mx510 running on a usb port with newest mouseware drivers.

thanks.

[MrBurns]

you have an athlon64, so if it is nforce, it can only be nforce3. but there are different versions of nforce3.

[JediOfDarkness]

Vsync, or Vertical Synchronization, tries to synchronize your framerates with your moniter refresh rate (ie 60fps to 60Hz). It makes it to you don't see tears in the screen every now and then. On some lower end cards, Vsync can lower preformance, sometimes by a lot, and that may be what you're getting, a sudden drop in preformance that locks the computer for a second. You might try shutting Vsync off and see if it continues. If so, it might be a problem with your mouse drivers and you should check Logitechs website for a driver update. When you get your 6800GT you should be able to play any game with Vsync on, so it shouldn't be a problem then.

[ShadeZeRO]

Originally posted by kaptr1d
shade do u know waht nforce chipset our mobo has?


We dont have NForce...we have that K8T800 by VIA

[kaptr1d]

first run with 6800GT installed... 10077 in 3dmark03.

so is that appropriate for my setup? was the 9600xt the bottleneck?

[JediOfDarkness]

10k 3DMarks is actually a little low on 3DMark03 with a 6800GT, but it's not a big deal, you'll be able to play any game on maxed out settings with that card. The 9600XT was the bottleneck in your system for sure.

[MJCfromCT]

Originally posted by kaptr1d
so is that appropriate for my setup? was the 9600xt the bottleneck?

I'd say its pretty much average, give or take a few points, and yes, the 9600xt was the bottleneck. Happy gaming :t

[ShadeZeRO]

Clean your computer up...
Safemode (off system restore)
run Everything...

-Ad-Aware
-Spybot
-AV programs
-Trojan Removers

then reboot in normal mode..

DEFRAG...a good healthy defrag...

retest...see the improvments..

[Tech^salvager]

Could you do me the favor of installing 3dmark on the first HD and see what you get? I want to see what difference would be.

Clean your computer up...
Safemode (off system restore)
run Everything...

-Ad-Aware
-Spybot
-AV programs
-Trojan Removers

then reboot in normal mode..

/me slams his head aganist the desk three times.

[kaptr1d]

i did all that. found almost nothing. im pretty good with spyware, etc.

havent run 3dmark again, but im pretty sure its not gonna affect my score.

[Recordlord]

That Hard Drive is most likely the cause for poor performance. It most likely has 2meg cache and is 66 ATA. Memory writes and seeks to the paging file are slowing the system down. Upgrade the HDD.

[Tech^salvager]

Originally posted by Recordlord
Upgrade the HDD.
Either that or switch the 160 as the main HDD.
Memory writes and seeks to the paging file are slowing the system down.
Yeah and gets worse since the two HDD have two talk to each other other then just one.

[kaptr1d]

can i install windows to the 160gig hd w/o having to reformat?

[Tech^salvager]

Originally posted by kaptr1d
can i install windows to the 160gig hd w/o having to reformat?
Depends if you have parttions (however they be spelled) avaible. If its only one big parttion then I highly doubt it though you could do some fancy work with something like parttion magic or bootit NG. What is the 160giga? How about all the drives? what are they FAT32 or NTFS?
Tech^

[kaptr1d]

theyre all ntfs. all of them are single partition.

[JediOfDarkness]

You should be able to install Windows on it just fine, though formatting wouldn't be a bad idea. You would probably want to format your other drive to get rid of Windows completely from it, but you can always just deleted the Windows folder and remove it from your boot.ini file and edited the registry manualy.

[kaptr1d]

can i create a new partition on my 160 gig and install windows on that?

i still have 66 free gigs on the 160 but i dont wanna have to backup the 100gigs of stiuff...

[MrBurns]

Originally posted by kaptr1d
can i install windows to the 160gig hd w/o having to reformat?

it depends on partitions. if you only hvae one partition on your 160gb hadd, you will have to creat an additional partition. when you do trhis in windows, you partituion is deleted, so you will have tpo reformat.

but you can use a program like partition magic, which can split partitios w/o reformatting.

but the program i very unstable, so you should make a nackup before using it.


But yu would also gain a performance increas, is you just movce the pagefile to the 160GB HDD.

[krazefinn]

I have always fixed the size of the swap file, inversely proportional to actual ram installed. With lots of memory (512 or more), a 200mb swap will work. With less than 128, use around 400 min=max.

Will be rewarded by much less fragmentation. Don't forget to defrag periodically, but with ntfs and fixed size swap, probably every 2 0r 3 months. Older OS like me/98 and fat 32 better defrag monthly or more frequently, esp if loading lots of programs.

Also with device mangler set the typical role of this machine to network server, uses memory much more efficiently.

And don't forget the obvious adware/spyware and malware eliminators.

[MrBurns]

200Mb is a little low for a 512MB system, at least when you play doom3 or hl2. i would recommend at least 512mb. but i have heared, that the performance is best, when you use the 2-3 fold pof your ram, so i think you should use 1024mb, even if there is never so much used.

[Tech^salvager]

kaptr1d you should be able to make a new partition with Bootit NG on the 160gigHDD. Just resize the orignal the one down to about 130gig then create another ntfs partition in the remaining space. Load windows onto that partition and there you go.

Now if only Bootit NG were able to use\mess with SkyFS.

[mowerss1]

same here never heard of a 13gig drive running at 7200rpm. adding a program like end it all would,nt hurt you, look it up on google, great program for shuttind down programs in the background.