ULTRA Low Performance!! :-O

dxwolf · #1 (**permalink**) 05-04-08, 02:04 AM

Hello, I have a motherboard AsRock P4VM890 wich has a VIA chipset P4M890 (northbridge) and I use it with my Graphic card from nvidia wich is a pci-express xfx 8600GT (fatal1ty edition) and I get very very low FPS in games like UT2004, the graphic card is fine and should run the game with more then 80Fps and I run sometimes at 25 or even lower... I run a test with 3dmark01 and i scored around 7000 points.. ABSURD! :-O, I also tested 3dmark03 and i got aroun 11000 points, also absurd... is there something to do with VIA CHIPSET??? I already installed the VIA drivers (5.16A) and nothing.... my computer specs are:

board: Asrock p4vm890
CPU : Intel P4 nortwood hyperthreading tech 2.6Ghz GSB800mhz
RAM : 1gb ddr
GPU: xfx 8600Gt fatal1ty
PSU: 400w

is nvidia gpu and the via p4m890 chipset incompatible????

any ideas?

Mr. Chris · #2 (**permalink**) 05-04-08, 05:20 PM

nVidia cards and VIA chipset boards get along very well. Your CPU is holding you back, IMO. Also, if that board has both AGP and PCI=E slots, the PCI-E is not 16x. It runs at AGP 8x speed. Chris.

dxwolf · #3 (**permalink**) 05-04-08, 09:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Chris

nVidia cards and VIA chipset boards get along very well. Your CPU is holding you back, IMO. Also, if that board has both AGP and PCI=E slots, the PCI-E is not 16x. It runs at AGP 8x speed. Chris.

about the board, this board supports pci-express @ 16x, I check that even before I buy it last summer. About the cpu, maybe cpu is holding my performance back, ok, but a for the game unreal tournament 2004 that the specs recommend a 1.2ghz cpu i have more then 2x that speed, and it's absurd having 16-20 frames, i used to run the game with a ati 9550 and a amd 1.2 thunderbird at least with 30fps.. and how can a p4 2.6 with this pci-ex gpu score in 3dmark01 7k's points .... If Nvidia and VIA go well in compatibility and the CPU i have is more then enough for this game, I really really dont know what's going on.... IS it the difference of technology of my GPU that makes the CPU act Badly!? IS there any tweak that I could do to at least increase a bit the preformance? I have Via drivers installed, ive upgraded the bios board.. Im kinda with no more options :-s

kilroy67 · #4 (**permalink**) 06-04-08, 02:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dxwolf

Hello, I have a motherboard AsRock P4VM890 wich has a VIA chipset P4M890 (northbridge) and I use it with my Graphic card from nvidia wich is a pci-express xfx 8600GT (fatal1ty edition) and I get very very low FPS in games like UT2004, the graphic card is fine and should run the game with more then 80Fps and I run sometimes at 25 or even lower... I run a test with 3dmark01 and i scored around 7000 points.. ABSURD! :-O, I also tested 3dmark03 and i got aroun 11000 points, also absurd... is there something to do with VIA CHIPSET??? I already installed the VIA drivers (5.16A) and nothing.... my computer specs are:

board: Asrock p4vm890
CPU : Intel P4 nortwood hyperthreading tech 2.6Ghz GSB800mhz
RAM : 1gb ddr
GPU: xfx 8600Gt fatal1ty
PSU: 400w

is nvidia gpu and the via p4m890 chipset incompatible????

any ideas?

What I'm not understanding here why you get 7000 points with 3D Mark 01, but score 11,000 with 03??

It doesn't make sense why you would score higher with 03 which is a tougher benchmark then 01.
2nd off 1GB of ram is just a very low amount of ram for anything these days, I would save some money and at least have 2GB.
I would run 01 and 03 again to be sure you didn't screw up your numbers here, because what your saying doesn't make any sense.
If you can download and use 3D Mark 06 and post a link to your score. None of us really use 01-03 anymore.

Mr. Chris · #5 (**permalink**) 06-04-08, 08:58 AM

You also realize that is a low budget board, not really designed for high performance. The fact it is supposedly PCI-E 16x compatable doesn't mean it's running at that speed. Try running Si Soft Sandra and see what speed the PCI-E is actually running.

What drivers are you using for the video card? The latest from nVidia aren't necessarily the best for that card. And try using the VIA Hyperions that Asrock recommends, I already see some bugs in the 5.16's. Chris.

dxwolf · #6 (**permalink**) 06-04-08, 01:49 PM

I ran the 3dmark06 with the settings by default i didnt touch anything and my 3dmark06 score was 2562... the cpu score was 502...
Screenshot

Some more details... Note:CPU frames were ULTRA MEGA LOW

Code:

3DMark Score	2562 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score	1076 
HDR/SM3.0 Score	1435 
CPU Score	502 
Game Score	 N/A
GT1 - Return To Proxycon	8,657 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest	9,280 FPS
CPU1 - Red Valley	0,156 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley	0,259 FPS
HDR1 - Canyon Flight	15,740 FPS
HDR2 - Deep Freeze	12,960 FPS

a sad view from my point o view :-(

PS- I never worked with sandra software, but I checked the video adpater icon and says in widh 16x/16x at a speed of 2.5gbps. so i guess it is working at 16x.. is it because of such speed that the cpu is acting badly? (if its the cpu fault of bad preformance of course ...)

The nvidia drivers are the oficial 169.21 drivers.

tcsenter · #7 (**permalink**) 08-04-08, 07:06 AM

P4M890 supports full PCI-E x16 as does the board. What is the make and model of your PSU? 400W is meaningless without knowing the amps supported on each output rail. We can try to look up the specs if you can provide the make and model.

What BIOS version are you running? If you don't already have the latest BIOS (1.90), try the bootable BIOS updater CD image I created:

http://s89934018.onlinehome.us/BIOS/P4VM890.iso

Standard ISO image file that should work with any CD burning app. After the CD is burned, view the README.TXT file on the CD for further information. Make sure you have checked for any BIOS update protection feature and disabled it, or enabled updating, whichever the case may be.

It looks like your CPU score is a bit low but not completely whack for P4 2.60GHz Northwood. Also test your RAM using Memtest86:

http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.4a.iso.zip

Unzip the ISO and create a bootable CD, same as above. There could be subtle (recoverable) memory errors that aren't enough to crash the system but enough to cause performance issue. You should complete at least two passes without errors.

Also check your Application and System Event Viewer logs under Administration Tools, particularly for errors with "disk" as the source. There could be some disk errors causing performance issue, due to blocks/clusters/sectors going bad on your hard drive.

Check your disk controllers in Device Manager > Primary Channel > Properties > Advanced Settings Tab, and see whether your hard disk is running in Ultra DMA or PIO mode. It should be Ultra DMA. Same for Secondary Channel.

Are you up-to-date on OS patches and Service Packs? DirectX?

dxwolf · #8 (**permalink**) 08-04-08, 06:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tcsenter

P4M890 supports full PCI-E x16 as does the board. What is the make and model of your PSU? 400W is meaningless without knowing the amps supported on each output rail. We can try to look up the specs if you can provide the make and model.

What BIOS version are you running? If you don't already have the latest BIOS (1.90), try the bootable BIOS updater CD image I created:

http://s89934018.onlinehome.us/BIOS/P4VM890.iso

Standard ISO image file that should work with any CD burning app. After the CD is burned, view the README.TXT file on the CD for further information. Make sure you have checked for any BIOS update protection feature and disabled it, or enabled updating, whichever the case may be.

It looks like your CPU score is a bit low but not completely whack for P4 2.60GHz Northwood. Also test your RAM using Memtest86:

http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.4a.iso.zip

Unzip the ISO and create a bootable CD, same as above. There could be subtle (recoverable) memory errors that aren't enough to crash the system but enough to cause performance issue. You should complete at least two passes without errors.

Also check your Application and System Event Viewer logs under Administration Tools, particularly for errors with "disk" as the source. There could be some disk errors causing performance issue, due to blocks/clusters/sectors going bad on your hard drive.

Check your disk controllers in Device Manager > Primary Channel > Properties > Advanced Settings Tab, and see whether your hard disk is running in Ultra DMA or PIO mode. It should be Ultra DMA. Same for Secondary Channel.

Are you up-to-date on OS patches and Service Packs? DirectX?

About my 400w PSU I readed the info that it has, wich is the following:
AC INPUT
-> 115v 60hz - 10A
-> 230v 50hz (wich is the normal in portugal that i use) 5A

DC INPUT

+5v -> 40A Red Wire

+3.3v -> 20A Orange wire
Both at 200W max.

+12v -> 15A Yellow wire

-12V -> 0.8A Blue Wire

-5V -> 0.5A white wire

+5Vsb -> 3A purple wire

MAX POWER 400W
This PSU has the 12v (ATX 12v)

Concerning the BIOS version I have the latest one installed, 1.90.

About the memory test, i need to get a CD-R, wich i don't have at the moment, to test it, and as soon as I test the memory I'll feeback.

I also check the log events and didn't found any Disk errors :-(.

About the ULTRA DMA mode, in primary channel it is in ULTRA DMA MODE 5. In second channel it's says not applicable.

About Patches and updates, im running on winXP service pack 2. DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) I will try to install the update of november 2007 in the link u gave me and check for results.

As a note, I also disabled in BIOS the CPU thermal throttling to see if i could get better performance but still no good results :-(.

So i will see the memory test and update DX to check if I have Improvements...

If you have any other suggstions i would be more then glad to listen and try them out. Thank you very much for the support.

PS - is there any software available for testing PSU, like how many Watts all the hardware that im using needs or is using... something like that?

Cheers!

tcsenter · #9 (**permalink**) 08-04-08, 10:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dxwolf

About my 400w PSU I readed the info that it
+12v -> 15A Yellow wire
MAX POWER 400W

Well, I would still request that you identify the make and model of this PSU, for the simple reason that different PSU marketers have different notions of how to rate the output or loading of their units. One brand's 15A might be peak loading only for short periods, another brand's 15A might be continuous loading that can be sustained indefinitely. There is no enforced standard for rating PSU.

Otherwise, without knowing the brand/manufacturer, I would have to assume the worst and recommend a new PSU from a reputable company with at least 18A on +12V, preferrably 20A ~ 22A.

Quote:

PS - is there any software available for testing PSU, like how many Watts all the hardware that im using needs or is using... something like that?

Unfortunately, no. You would need additional power analyzer/measurement hardware for this. There is no software that can do it.

dxwolf · #10 (**permalink**) 09-04-08, 02:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tcsenter

Well, I would still request that you identify the make and model of this PSU, for the simple reason that different PSU marketers have different notions of how to rate the output or loading of their units. One brand's 15A might be peak loading only for short periods, another brand's 15A might be continuous loading that can be sustained indefinitely. There is no enforced standard for rating PSU.

Otherwise, without knowing the brand/manufacturer, I would have to assume the worst and recommend a new PSU from a reputable company with at least 18A on +12V, preferrably 20A ~ 22A.

Unfortunately, no. You would need additional power analyzer/measurement hardware for this. There is no software that can do it.

My PSU is from zaapa (i supose) as this logo

i think there site is Zaapa but i cant find any info about PSU :-S... by the way, in the retail box of my nvidia graphic card 8600GT fatal1ty says the recommeded PSU is 350w..