still got performance problems with P4P800-E and Prescott

Paul wrote:
In article , "Johnny"
wrote:

Paul wrote:
I don't normally top post, but don't want to try to trim the
rest of this down.

Some random observations:

1) Could this be a Hyperthreading problem ? Is Hyperthreading
disabled in the BIOS ? I don't know my Hyperthreading policy
versus OS, but perhaps if you were quitting Passmark between
runs, maybe the program is running on a different virtual
processor each time, and one virtual processor has more load
than the other. If you disable Hyperthreading in the BIOS,
the perf difference might stop.

In any case, Hyperthreading is not all it is cracked up to
be. In some cases, it is a clear win, but in other cases it
can trash the performance of the memory subsystem, and actually
run slower than without it.

WOW!!! Before altering any voltages or settings, just running the
standard [auto] jumperless detection settings and simply setting CPU
hyperthreading [disabled] option, the results are now, well,
somewhat different!!
How thorough or accurate passmark is I know not but for purposes of
comparison it's useful. It's difficult to present the results in
here but the scores for example of the CPU suite of tests are as
follows in my attempt at a table (hope it comes out ok).

cpu test hyperthreading [enabled] hyperthreading[disabled]

integer math 170/246 varies 257 solid
floating p math 230 291
mmx 181 278
sse 131 164
compression 1319 1868
encryption 6.8 10.9
image rotation 113 195.9
string sorting 665 810

CPU passmark 322 467
integer math

I havent managed to get anything other than very close to the numbers
above with hyperthreading [disabled], it is solid. [disabled]
hyperthreading has also affected the memory test benchmark speeds,
presumably due to the increased CPU performance.

all this before altering any voltages or any other settings, blimey!

Does the memtest86 memory bandwidth indicator change as a function
of the BIOS Hyperthreading setting ? It shouldn't. In any case, one
thing that strikes me, is how negative an effect hyperthreading is
having on your results.

Yeah me too - it's got me flumoxed this thing. The bandwidth indicators in
memtest are exactly the same with hyperthreading enabled and disabled. The
CPU temperature increases by 10C to 48-50C when hyperthreading is disabled
then drops back to 38-40C when I enable it.

If I select Turbo Mode in the BIOS settings the system still bombs out
despite the memory tweaks.


2) Increase Vdimm to the Corsair. DDR400 memory needs 2.6V to
start with, and you may find bumping the memory voltage up
a couple notches stops the errors. If the memory passes memtest86
in an overnight test without errors, use Prime95 torture test
in mixed mode, and see if it runs error free as well. I've had
memory pass memtest86 and fail Prime95.

3) Look up your Corsair memory he

http://corsairmicro.com/corsair/xms.html

Click the link and download the datasheet. For example, 3200XL
is rated for 2.75V and you could try that. The datasheet for
3200XL claims the SPD is loaded with 2-2-2-5, so it shouldn't
start at 2.5-2-2 on its own. If this is some other memory,
you may need to post in this forum, and get some help with
your product - or search for someone having the same system
as you've got:

The product is CMX512-3200XLPT listed on their site under
CMX512-3200XL and it clearly states 2.75V. Changing the voltage to
2.75V has stopped the blackouts.

For interest here are the passmark memory results before (but with
hyperthreading disabled) and after voltage change. The - configure
DRAM timing by speed option is [enabled] in bios

test [auto] 2.75V[auto] 2.75V / 2.0-2-2-5

allocate small block 1162.8 1163 1164.8
read cached 1390 1389.7 1389.9
read uncached 1326.6 1328.3 1328.8
write 809.4 809.7 809.4

As the auto and manual setting seem to be doing the same thing, I
think you can conclude that the SPD on the 3200XL is 2-2-2. You can
play
with the 5 number manually, as by calculation, the 5 number is
supposed to be the sum of two of the other parameters plus 2 (four
beats of
DDR data taking 2 cycles). On an AMD system, raising that number to
10 is best, while on the P4, a lower value is better, but play with it
a bit, and see what happens.

In terms of memory bandwidth, your CTIAW and memtest86 bandwidth
indicators are in the same ballpark as mine, so I don't think you
are far off from optimal. Certainly, overclocking the memory will
be the single biggest determinant of memory bandwidth, and the
nice thing about the 3200XL, is you can play with it a bit. I think
it can be pushed up to DDR500, at the expense of relaxing the timing
numbers a bit. My Ballistix doesn't like that quite as much.

These two documents describe some of the things you can do to
optimize memory bandwidth. But with the Asus hack to enable PAT,
the rules might be more like an 875 than an 865. The chips, after
all, are the same die, but with different signals pinned out.

ftp://download.intel.com/design/chip...s/25273001.pdf (875P)
ftp://download.intel.com/design/chip...s/25303601.pdf (865PE)

altering the dram burst timing between 4 and 8 clocks appeared to
make no difference in these tests. having memory acceleration
enabled gave the following 1165.4,1389.3, 1340.2, 810 so only read
uncached improved slightly but consistently.

When the cache is enabled for a certain area of memory, the memory
controller likes to fetch cache-line-sized chunks. That might be why
normally, the 4 versus 8 setting doesn't make a difference. Perhaps
the memory used by PCI cards for I/O is uncached ? I've left mine
set at 4. (I think the cache line size is 64 bytes, and with dual
channel memory, 16 bytes are transferred per beat, so the 4 setting
would be right for it. If you were in single channel mode, perhaps
8 would be the right setting, times 8 bytes per beat.)


**** INTEL/AMD/VIA memory config info, c't/Andreas Stiller V2.7
June 03
****
Kernel Driver: WinNT DIRECTNT.SYS V01.09
Pentium 4,(0F34-00)ca 3274 MHz (sleep) 2999 MHz (load)
Bus Speed: max=200MHz, ratio=15 = 200 MHz
Hostdevice: (2570) Springdale i865 MCH, Vendor: (8086) Intel,
Rev:0002h
----------------------------------------------------------------
Intel Springdale i865 MCH Rev:02: Bus:0, Device-Nr:0, Function:0
System Frequency : FSB533/133 MHz
Memory Frequency : DDR266/133 MHz (1:1)
IOQ Depth : 12 deep
Top of usable Memory : 1024.0 MByte
Extended SMRAM (Tseg) : disabled
Overflowdevice : disabled and unlocked, ID= 2576h,
Rev: 2 Memory Delays Base Address : FECF0000 not prefetchable
CPU Parking : disabled
Memory : row0: 512 MByte/16 KB Pages
: row1: 512 MByte/16 KB Pages
DRAM-Channels : Dual Channel Linear, DDR
ECC & Refresh : Non-ECC, Refresh=7.8 µs
PAT-mode : (1) fully enabled
Active to Precharge Delay : 5 clocks .. 70 µs
Tcl - Trcd -Trp : 2-2-2 T (DRAM Clocks)

Memory Read Bandwidth : ca. 5780.5 MBytes/s, Cacheline size=
64 go on with CR



http://www.houseofhelp.com/forums/fo...hp?forumid=128

4) CTIAW and memtest86 disagree on your PAT setting. I don't know
what to make of that.

5) There is a possible reason for CTIAW mis-reporting the bus
speed. An 865PE Northbridge is not supposed to have PAT, but
Asus and others use a trick to enable it. The processor has
two signals called BSEL, and they indicate the bus speed rating
of the processor (400, 533, 800 etc). The BSEL signals are
normally routed from the processor to the Northbridge and to
the clockgen. What Asus did, is they disconnected that link.
Asus sends a fake value of BSEL to the Northbridge - I think
if the FSB is set to 533, PAT is enabled, so by sending the
533 bit pattern to the Northbridge, but setting the clockgen
to 800, PAT is enabled, and the memory can run at DDR400, just
like on an 875P Northbridge. I think what CTIAW could be doing,
is reading the Northbridge register, instead of checking the
clockgen. This trick is great for fooling the hardware, but
software authors have to be aware of the trick too, to get
the info right.

6) I dug up some benchmarks you can try. Maybe these will be
reproducible from run to run.

http://www.super-computing.org/
ftp://pi.super-computing.org/windows/super_pi.zip

Super_pi computes PI, and you select the number of digits from
the menu. You double click the .exe, to run a Windows dialog.
Select the number of digits to calculate and then run it.
I just ran 1 million digits, and it takes 48 seconds
on my 2.8C with 2x512MB 2-2-2-6 memory. I did two test runs and
they had exactly the same test time. A file is created in the
install directory with the results of the calculation.
The test time and the amount of memory used increase
with the digits setting. Some people use the 32M setting
as a stability test for new motherboards.

44 seconds with hyper threading [disabled]
53 seconds with hyper threading [enabled]

as you say this test is consistent

I just don't understand why your results are being hammered
so bad by Hyperthreading. The OS cannot be taking up that much
memory bandwidth in the background. And, since your processor
has a 1MB cache, it shouldn't be measurably thrashing the cache
either. I wonder if Windows is actually using the whole
cache ? I remember reading a while back, about a situation where
Windows needed to be manually adjusted to use the whole cache
(back in the P3 era). Something still isn't right here.


Here is a second test:

This is some kind of finite element analysis. It was
posted by the author a while back. It uses a good chunk
of memory, and judging by the CPU heating, is not memory
bound, but does a fair amount of computing. To use it,
unzip the file, fire up a MSDOS window, cd to the unzipped
directory, then type "now" into the MSDOS window, to execute
now.bat . After it reaches "step 992", it will finish, and
print the number of "MUPs", which are millions of operations
per second. My computer takes 202 or 203 seconds to run the
benchmark, and achieves a rating of 12.27 MUPs (the number
is printed in scientific notation, so shift the decimal
point as appropriate).

with hyperthreading [enabled]

242 - 244seconds 10.16 - 10.24 MUPs +/- 0.04% (i assume)

with hyperthreading [disabled]

203seconds 12.21 MUPs +/- 0.06% consistently.

The Hyperthreading penalty seems to be the same here, as
Super_PI. It seems strange that they would be the same, as
these programs won't have the same memory access pattern.


http://users.viawest.net/~hwstock/bench/3d0/3d0.zip

Instructions and some background info are he
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70142

Those two tests are reproducible for me. Give them a
try, with and without Hyperthreading turned on in the
BIOS.

Note: The 3d0 program is a bit unhygenic, and leaves
a bunch of files in its directory. You may want to
dump all but the original files, when the directory
fills up.

Be interested to hear what you make of that lot. Obviously
hyperthreading is doing the bulk of the damage but the memory scores
seem a little low also. I'll run the memtest and mess with some
other BIOS settings later but I have to go make some money now.

many thanks,
J

snip

All I can say, is Hyperthreading is doing way more damage than
it should be. Try memtest86 again, with Hyperthreading enabled
and then with it disabled. There should be no change in the
bandwidth readout. If there is, there is some other serious
problem there.

In my registry, I see an entry called SecondLevelDataCache, but
it is set to zero. Implying it is detected automatically, as if
L2 were disabled, you would see the performance plummet.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\CONTRO L\SESSION
MANAGER\MEMORY MANAGEMENT

According to this, changing it shouldn't help:
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/116/

You might try downloading Sandra Lite 2005 and run the
"Cache and Memory" benchmark. The 2002 version I've got
has that benchmark, and the "bumps" in the curve tell
you where the cache breakpoints are. A Prescott, with
its 1MB cache, should have a breakpoint at the 1MB mark
if the cache is working.


http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/index.ht...&langx=e n&a=

I think if I try to install it, it will remove the older software,
so I cannot do this right now. I hope the Lite version still has
that benchmark...

HTH,
Paul

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 11:50:45 -0000, "Johnny"
wrote:

I also noticed the CPU temperature jumps to 48-50C when hyperthreading
is disabled. Once I enable hyperthreading and watch asusprobe
I see it drop back to 38-40C though

I have the same effect with Motherboard Monitor, but not in BIOS.
Motherboard Monitor and other programs is not compatible with
hyperthreading.

Ken wrote:
On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 11:50:45 -0000, "Johnny"
wrote:

I also noticed the CPU temperature jumps to 48-50C when
hyperthreading is disabled. Once I enable hyperthreading and watch
asusprobe
I see it drop back to 38-40C though

I have the same effect with Motherboard Monitor, but not in BIOS.
Motherboard Monitor and other programs is not compatible with
hyperthreading.

Hmmm - my experiences with this setup are that it's hyperthreading itself
where all the incompatibilities lie.

Bill Smith wrote:
On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 11:50:45 -0000, "Johnny"
wrote:

Bill Smith wrote:
On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 18:52:47 -0000, "Johnny"
wrote:


This is a repost as the other didn't appear so if it pops up twice,
sorry.

I posted a while ago the dismal performance I'm getting with this
board and a Prescott 3.0ghz cpu with 2 x 512K crucial 2-2-2-5
ddr400 memory. I've noticed the passmark cpu tests give significant
differences but not entirely sure if that's not unusual - is it
possible the cpu or motherboard is faulty even though the system
works albeit relatively slowly. This thing has me totally flummoxed
and perplexed. I've swapped out a power supply from another machine
with no change (don't know why but thought it might be a power
issue). I haven't got access to another 800FSB cpu to compare and
not sure I'll get any sense out of the tech support as it is
actually working which is frustrating in the extreme. If I select
turbo mode the board dies - it literally blacks out completely
requiring a hard power off to get bios back with the post message
that overclocking failed??? I'm really getting ****ed off with this
now - is it likely the cpu or mainboard are faulty or just a combo
of the two, who knows?

what video are you running and drivers as well ? You would be
surprised how one piece of hardware can ruin your day, even if it's
good...Swap vendors, say ati for nvidia or vice versa...try an agp
card that is 4x not 8x...

or try this: get your mits on a tried and true quality pci video
card (ie: ati 7xxx with 32mb ddr). Remove the agp card and install
the pci card and see how your system performs.

It sounds like you have some pretty good hardware, just finding the
right combination will make all the difference...

or else your board is foobar...

My thoughts about the board, cpu and memory are similar at this
point. The gfx card is a 256MB ATI radeon 9600XT at 8x on AGP.

I'll give it a swap out for a PCI card. I also noticed the CPU
temperature jumps to 48-50C when hyperthreading is disabled. Once I
enable hyperthreading and watch asusprobe I see it drop back to
38-40C though obviously this means the performance is crap as well.
I'm at the stage now of contacting the vendor and telling them I
want replacements or money back.

The memtest86 results are showing several errors in the RAM as well,
I left it running all night and see the same addresses cropping up
on each pass (although on different tests bizarrely). It's a long,
long time since i've had problems like this.


hmm...corsair...

I've given it up as a bad job - there's only so many times I'm prepared to
hit my head against the wall. The parts have been issued an RMA today and
get sent back tomorrow. What are your experiences with Corsair RAM Bill?