coolBuddy said:
Hi all,
Recently i upgraded my pc with a Asus P5KPL-CM mobo, 4 GB of ram and a
XFX nVidia GEforce 9500 gt 1 GB gfx card. My processor and hard disk
are from the older pc. The processor is a intel pentium d 820(2.8 ghz
800 mhz FSB). The hard disk is an old 80 gb PATA or IDE or whatever it
is, but it is not a SATA one. I hv a friend who has exactly the same
products but his processor is Core 2 Duo 2.53 ghz and he has a SATA
250 GB hdd. I installed Windows Vista Ultimate. Now if i try to play a
1080p HD video from my DVD combo drive or the hdd it lags a lot where
it doesnt for my friend. Also when i installed NFS ProStreet on my PC
it lagged a hell of a lot even at everything low where as my friend
plays them with everything maxxed out with a res larger than mine. In
my PC even the ingame videos ten to lag, like the one at the begining
of ProStreet. What is the problem here?? I suspect its the slow PATA
interface that is making my gaming suffer. Also probably someone can
advice me about the proper BIOS settings to get the best of my PATA
drive. I dont think the processor is the cluprit here. I even tried
changing the PATA cables but no improvement.
Thanks.
Reply soon.
Is your BIOS version at least 0305 ? Don't panic. Don't touch the BIOS
until you've had a good look around. (If you've never touched the
BIOS, the sticker adhering to the BIOS chip on the motherboard,
will tell you what release was present when you got the motherboard
brand new out of the box.)
http://support.asus.com.tw/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5KPL-CM
At the very least, check Task Manager, and see if there are two charts
for the two processor cores. (It is possible to set Task Manager, to
combine the info from the two cores. View:CPU History:One Graph Per CPU
should allow both cores to be displayed. At least, that is the
choice on my copy of WinXP.) Also, if you examine process affinity
for tasks, you should see two tick boxes for CPU0 and CPU1, and
that would be proof both cores are recognized and working.
http://www.sevenforums.com/attachme...ervices-running-under-svchost-exe-taskmgr.jpg
With respect to RAM on your system, if you expect Vista to perform,
you should stock up on RAM. Depending on your budget, you could
go thrifty, with 2x1GB DDR2 (what I use), or go rich, with 2x2GB.
In the 2x2GB case, 1GB of address space is lost right away, due to
the video card. Vista will likely report slightly less than 3GB
available. So you'd buy 4GB memory, and get to use about 2.75GB
reported free. You're doubling the price, for an extra 0.75GB of
memory. Perhaps with a bit of tuning, and turning off some of the
Vista features, you can make better usage of your resources.
(I don't have Vista, so don't know the tricks.)
With regard to your CPU horsepower, you cannot compare the
clock rate of your D 820, to the clock rate of the Core2 Duo.
The architecture of the processors is different. To compare
them, multiply the Core2 clock by 1.8 or so. So your friend has
2.53*1.8 = 4.5GHz while you have 2.8GHz. Your friend should see
better performance than your system, due to the newer processor
architecture. The only time you can compare clock rates
directly, is if the processors are from the same architecture.
For other cases, you need to multiply by a conversion factor,
to make comparison possible.
To give you an example, I used to have a 3.1GHz P4. It ran a
benchmark in 45 to 50 seconds. I now have a 2.6GHz Core2. It
runs the same benchmark in 24 seconds. Even though my new
processor has a lower numeric value for clock rate, it is
blowing away the old processor. The benchmark finishes in
less time. They're different architectures.
When you installed the video card, you needed to do three things.
One, was install the chipset drivers from the motherboard CD.
In the manual, there is a picture of the motherboard CD
"Drivers" screen, and it mentions
Intel Chipset INF Update Program
Now, chances are, that is not the problem, but you should
have some version of chipset drivers installed. They help
label things correctly in Device Manager (and are mainly
helpful, if chipset drivers aren't in the Windows CD already).
The second thing, is the video driver from Nvidia, for the 9500 GT.
The third is DirectX, but you likely have relatively
recent versions of DirectX already. Many games like
to (try to) install a minimum version of DirectX, so
again, that probably isn't an issue. In some games, the
performance of their DirectX 9 mode, is different than
when they're running DirectX 10, which is a setting you
might play with.
A slow PATA interface, might be an issue if a game makes
a lot of references to the disk in real time. If a game
level loads entirely into RAM, at the beginning of a level,
you might never see the disk light flash while you're playing.
A slow PATA interface might be an issue with a flight simulator
program, as some of those are continuously loading landscape
data as the airplane moves over the landscape. There is more
data in a flight simulator, than can be held in system memory.
A game level may have less data than that (limited play space
and map).
In terms of BIOS flashing, there is little incentive to do that,
unless only one of your CPU cores is being reported, and you're
seeing evidence that the full processor is not recognized. A
BIOS flash is unlikely to help other aspects of your problem.
I only mentioned the release number, in case the BIOS version
is older than the value recommended on that Asus support
page. If you must flash the BIOS, pick a safe way to do it.
I personally, don't trust a "Windows based" method. And
with Asus, always check the download page for the BIOS
files, because sometimes there are warnings that certain
BIOS flashing methods are broken. There have been cases,
where one of the three BIOS flashing methods, guarantees
a "bricked" motherboard. Which is a nuisance to fix.
HTH,
Paul
