M2N-E and Kingston DDR2 RAM 667 - benchmark low?! Please help!

[David D]

I have just recently purchased the Asus M2N-E with A2M 3800+.
Now, much to my dismay, my 2 gigs DDR2 Kingston RAM 667 is not being
utilized to it s fullest extent. I ran some NLE software on two
computers, an intel 3.0 D and this system and it renders almost 1.5X
slower on the AMD system. All my other benchmark tests are high, it is
just the memory that is low and makes me want to throw the thing out
the window. What can I do?
I just finished flashing the Bios to the newest version, didn't help
and in some respects, my memory benchmarks are lower. Any fixes for
this?

 

[Paul]

I have just recently purchased the Asus M2N-E with A2M 3800+.
Now, much to my dismay, my 2 gigs DDR2 Kingston RAM 667 is not being
utilized to it s fullest extent. I ran some NLE software on two
computers, an intel 3.0 D and this system and it renders almost 1.5X
slower on the AMD system. All my other benchmark tests are high, it is
just the memory that is low and makes me want to throw the thing out
the window. What can I do?
I just finished flashing the Bios to the newest version, didn't help
and in some respects, my memory benchmarks are lower. Any fixes for
this?

And when you run CPUZ, what does it say about your memory settings ?

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

For example, this guy is running an overclocked system.

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/5589/25xxxoq4.jpg

But he is in single channel mode.

http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/3449/memoha2.png

(Pictures are from this thread)

http://foros.maximopc.org/showthread.php?page=5&t=16843

So I'd start by checking with CPUZ.

Paul

 

[David D]

I have tested the waters on overclocking the RAM (system burns too hot
and my memory is only rated for 1.8V). I tried overclocking the
system and burns too hot again. I ran Fresh Diagnose and each time my
system benchmarks are lower AFTER the overclock.

Already done it. Here it is :

http://www.bionicbuddha.com/cpu1.jpg

 

[Paul]

I have tested the waters on overclocking the RAM (system burns too hot
and my memory is only rated for 1.8V). I tried overclocking the
system and burns too hot again. I ran Fresh Diagnose and each time my
system benchmarks are lower AFTER the overclock.

Already done it. Here it is :

http://www.bionicbuddha.com/cpu1.jpg

In this article, they mention that command rate can be set
to "1T" instead of "2T", but that they don't see any
improvement. That used to make some difference when applied
to the older DDR memory.

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2819&p=4

All of the voltage options shown in your user manual,
should be safe to use with the memory. The options
only go from 1.80V to 1.95V. The spec is 1.8V +/- 0.1V,
so that allows 1.9V even on the spec sheet. I was reading
a warning the other day, about some RAM that was crapping
at 2.4V over the long term, so you have quite a ways to
go before getting to questionable voltage level. If it
was my board (and I am a conservative overclocker), I'd
crank this one to the 1.95V setting, and see what improvements
you can make.

For "system burns too hot", you can try to use a better fan
on the back of the computer (I have a 120mm fan on mine).
There are better coolers than the stock one, for AM2 socket.

I don't expect you are going to be able to make up all the
difference by overclocking. But if you are frustrated, it
is one option.

Remember that the greatest leverage in any system, is the
design of the software. Not too many years ago, the SSE options
in the software were not handled well. Even though some
instructions on the AMD processor could be used to
advantage, there was software that was not designed
to handle the situation correctly. I would check for
patches or upgrades for whatever software you are
using, because that can make a big difference.

Paul

 

[David D]

Thank Paul for taking the time to answer my queries on this.
Do you think upgrading from XP to Vista would help the memory problem?

I guess what it comes down to is that I am used to RAM working one way
- if it say 667, it works at 667. But according to the CPU-Z, it is
working at 334.9. That I can't understand. I doesn;t make sense to
me. If it is the motherboard, that is fine, I made a bad choice and I
will have to live with it. Not to diffuse the blame, but I was
pressured into this board at the store on a return of another board.
I had to make a decision right there without being able to research it
properly.
I will try the overclocking to 1.95V and see what happens. What is a
respectable temp that a CPU should run at? I was getting about 45
degrees and I figure that was a little too much. I have a small AC
fan that I have blowing on it to make sure it doesn't burn out, but I
don't want to always be monitoring it.
I don't really know about all the overclocking stuff, I am just going
by trial and error at this point. I would hope that VISTA could do
something,?

 

[David D]

Lastly, I did upgrade all the software and the bios (with the bios, my
benchmarks were lower with the upgrade, so I went back to what I had
originally)

 

[Paul]

Thank Paul for taking the time to answer my queries on this.
Do you think upgrading from XP to Vista would help the memory problem?

I guess what it comes down to is that I am used to RAM working one way
- if it say 667, it works at 667. But according to the CPU-Z, it is
working at 334.9. That I can't understand. I doesn;t make sense to
me. If it is the motherboard, that is fine, I made a bad choice and I
will have to live with it. Not to diffuse the blame, but I was
pressured into this board at the store on a return of another board.
I had to make a decision right there without being able to research it
properly.
I will try the overclocking to 1.95V and see what happens. What is a
respectable temp that a CPU should run at? I was getting about 45
degrees and I figure that was a little too much. I have a small AC
fan that I have blowing on it to make sure it doesn't burn out, but I
don't want to always be monitoring it.
I don't really know about all the overclocking stuff, I am just going
by trial and error at this point. I would hope that VISTA could do
something,?

Your memory clock is 334.9MHz. Data is transferred twice per clock
cycle. Which is the DDR2-667 part of things. The 667 is the megatransfers
per second, and a DIMM has 8 bytes, resulting in a bandwidth of 5336MB/sec.
Thus your memory is PC2-5300 or so. So the report of a 333MHz clock
would be normal for a DDR2-667 transfer rate.

45C is not too much. 37.0C is human body temperature, so the CPU is only
a bit warmer than that. I would get concerned at maybe 60-65C or so, at
which point I might try to improve the cooling solution. You should test
it though, with a load on the CPU. So do your temperature measurement
when the CPU is at 100% load and then worry about it. The idle temp doesn't
tell you too much.

There are three temperatures of interest, room_temperature,
internal_case_air_temperature, and cpu_temperature, and measured
at 100% load. Taking deltas between those temps, tells you which thing
needs to be improved. The CPU cooler cannot work, for example, if the
air in the computer case is really hot. Heat can only be transferred,
if the air in the case is a lot cooler.

As an example, room temp 25C, computer case temp 32C, processor 60C.
32C-25C = 7C means the case is well cooled. 60C-32C=28C means the
CPU is poorly cooled. The money would be better spent on improving
the CPU cooler, rather than adding another fan to the computer case.

Paul

 

[David D]

Paul, you are a very smart person. Thanks for the insight. I did
indeed up the Voltage on the RAM to 1.95 and it runs around 24 degrees
right now. It is strange because when I upped it to 1.90, it ran a
lot hotter - almost at 45 degrees.

I guess it is going to be trial and error from here on in on the
overclocking. I am using a program called Fresh Diagnose for my
benchmarks and comparing a year old intel 3.0 ghz Dual Core DDR 1.75
gig asus P5P800 SE with the new M2N-E A2M AMD 3800+ X2 board and chip
Take a look at this bench mark for me and tell me what it means,
because it is worrying to me.

http://www.bionicbuddha.com/benchmark1.jpg
http://www.bionicbuddha.com/benchmark2.jpg

The AMD memory benchmark is way low considering my INTEL board and
chipset is over 1 year old now. Any ideas on that?
How about Vista, will it help?

 

[David D]

Wrong file name, sorry.

http://www.bionicbuddha.com/benchmark2.jpg
http://www.bionicbuddha.com/benchmark1.JPG

 

[Paul]

Paul, you are a very smart person. Thanks for the insight. I did
indeed up the Voltage on the RAM to 1.95 and it runs around 24 degrees
right now. It is strange because when I upped it to 1.90, it ran a
lot hotter - almost at 45 degrees.

I guess it is going to be trial and error from here on in on the
overclocking. I am using a program called Fresh Diagnose for my
benchmarks and comparing a year old intel 3.0 ghz Dual Core DDR 1.75
gig asus P5P800 SE with the new M2N-E A2M AMD 3800+ X2 board and chip
Take a look at this bench mark for me and tell me what it means,
because it is worrying to me.

http://www.bionicbuddha.com/benchmark1.jpg
http://www.bionicbuddha.com/benchmark2.jpg

The AMD memory benchmark is way low considering my INTEL board and
chipset is over 1 year old now. Any ideas on that?
How about Vista, will it help?

A good OS should not interfere with the execution of a benchmark. The
purpose of the OS, is to schedule the execution of multiple tasks,
giving them time slices according to some metric. When a benchmark is
running, you don't want any background activity, so that nearly
all the time is being spent executing the benchmark. If you look in
Task Manager, for example, you might see 30 things listed, but they
should all be sitting at zero or nearly so, while the benchmark is
running. Now, if Vista is a "busy beaver", there may be things going
on in the background, and that would detract from what you, the
user, wants to do. So I'd want to use an OS that knows how to "be quiet"
while I'm working

With regard to "Fresh Diagnose", I cannot find any technical description
of what it is measuring.

While I could write bucket-loads of text about benchmarking, in the
end I don't really have anything to offer that will set your mind
at ease. It is hard to get benchmarks that compare like to like,
some benchmarks are popular but easy to set up wrong, others don't
treat each platform equally.

The primary determinant of performance, is core speed. A 20% faster
core can give you near to 20% more performance (the memory bus or the
FSB limits, prevents it from being the full 20%). Memory, on the other
hand, is a secondary effect. A 20% faster memory bandwidth might give
you 6% more performance. So the gains are a bit slower to accumulate.

The best benchmarks are things that measure overall performance, with
no disk I/O during the timed interval. SuperPI (a calculation of PI
to one million digits) is one overall benchmark, and it is free.
Download is at the top of this page. It uses a chunk of RAM, so both
the memory performance, and the core, make a difference.

http://www.xtremesystems.com/pi/

The record here, is 9 seconds for 1 million digits, at the top of
the page. On an X6800 overclocked to 5.5GHz or so.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=59753

I just tested on my 3.2GHz Northwood, and I get 48.297 sec for 1 million
digits. Checksum 9316B385

Paul

 

[David D]

I guess for me the biggest benchmark was running an NLE and seeing how
on my older system it rendered a clip at 5:00minutes, while the newer
AMD ran it at 8:00minutes. Almost twice as long.

Here are my PI results.

Ran PI on my Intel 3.0 D - 49 seconds, just a touch more then you.
On my AMD 3800+ X2 - 3 mintues, 39 seconds.

That is more proof enough for me ; either something really wrong with
my motherboard, processor, memory or I just have bought a computer
that I thought was fast, but in reality is slow...

 

[Paul]

I guess for me the biggest benchmark was running an NLE and seeing how
on my older system it rendered a clip at 5:00minutes, while the newer
AMD ran it at 8:00minutes. Almost twice as long.

Here are my PI results.

Ran PI on my Intel 3.0 D - 49 seconds, just a touch more then you.
On my AMD 3800+ X2 - 3 mintues, 39 seconds.

That is more proof enough for me ; either something really wrong with
my motherboard, processor, memory or I just have bought a computer
that I thought was fast, but in reality is slow...

I agree that is a terrible result. It sounds like the core clock on your
processor is not 2000MHz. While memory can slow a processor down, I
cannot see memory alone doing this.

Have you tried disabling Cool N' Quiet in the BIOS ?

With Cool N' Quiet disabled, what does the CPUZ panel show
for operating frequency ?

When SuperPI is running, what does Task Manager show ? Is
SuperPI the only thing using cycles ?

Other things that could affect performance, would be
something like disabled caches on the processor. That
will really slow the processor down. Or if some piece of
hardware is generating a lot of interrupts, that would increase
the time spent in the kernel, instead of running tasks. (The
"Performance" option in "Administrative Tools" has a performance
counter for interrupts/sec.)

If I look in this article, they compare a 3800+ X2 to a Pentium 830,
only they are testing with 8 million digits of PI. The 3800+ X2
gets 459 seconds, while the Pentium 830 is 449 seconds. SuperPI
only uses one core, which is fine for head to head comparisons.
It looks like the results should be in the same ballpark, and
not the large ratio your results are showing.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/print/athlon64-x2-3800.html

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu/athlon64-x2-3800/superpi.png

When building an X2 system, there is the "Dual Core Optimizer"
to install, but that helps with smoothness and stutter in games.
You may want to do some research on this, and the MS patch, before
installing it.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_809_965^871^13118,00.html

Some info on Dual Core Optimizer and MS hot fix are here. I recommend
reading this thread starting at the end, and work back, as the
situation has changed a bit as time has passed.

"How to install the AMD X2 drivers, hotfix, the correct way"
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=81429&page=24

Paul

 

[David D]

Well confirmation that I am not crazy is at least making me feel
better. I knew something was up when my benchmarks were low. I will
look into this tonight and get back to you. Again, thanks for your
insight and your patience. I will keep you posted.

I agree that is a terrible result. It sounds like the core clock on your
processor is not 2000MHz. While memory can slow a processor down, I
cannot see memory alone doing this.

Have you tried disabling Cool N' Quiet in the BIOS ?

With Cool N' Quiet disabled, what does the CPUZ panel show
for operating frequency ?

Cool N Quiet is disabled already and always has been OFF. Here is the
operating Frequency in CpuZ-
http://www.bionicbuddha.com/op_frequency.jpg
I wasn't sure which numbers you were looking for, so I did them all -
this is running NO overclocking in the BIOS.

When SuperPI is running, what does Task Manager show ? Is
SuperPI the only thing using cycles ?

Ok, well I am not that well versed in the Task Manager, but this is
what I found :
Idle Process - about 95-99 , continued to change but the range was
slight -- Memory usage 28K
Super PI - ranged from 01-05 and the highest was
29 -- Memory usage was 11948K

Again, it will take some time to look into what you said, so that is
the next step. If you can see anything from the info I have just
given, please let me know that as well. More info probably later
tonight.

 

[David D]

Well, I have downloaded the files and I am going to try them ou -
fingers crossed they do something. After reading a few pages of the
post, it seems the Hot Fix (which I think I got) is supposed to help
as well as the optimizer. I will try tonight and see what happens.
Hopefully, I can uninstall if there are any problems.
On a sad note, my computer Froze for the first time tonight. I was
busy doing something else and when I came back it was frozen. I am
guessing the CPU was too hot maybe? Anyways, cold booted fine. I am
going to keep a fan on the CPU from now on.
On my performance chart through admin tool, it spikes to 100
intermittently, so I am not sure what that means...

 

[David D]

Ok, well I am not that well versed in the Task Manager, but this is
what I found :
Idle Process - about 95-99 , continued to change but the range was
slight -- Memory usage 28K
Super PI - ranged from 01-05 and the highest was
29 -- Memory usage was 11948K

Again, it will take some time to look into what you said, so that is
the next step. If you can see anything from the info I have just
given, please let me know that as well. More info probably later
tonight.

Well, I have downloaded the files and I am going to try them ou -
fingers crossed they do something. After reading a few pages of the
post, it seems the Hot Fix (which I think I got) is supposed to help
as well as the optimizer. I will try tonight and see what happens.
Hopefully, I can uninstall if there are any problems.
On a sad note, my computer Froze for the first time tonight. I was
busy doing something else and when I came back it was frozen. I am
guessing the CPU was too hot maybe? Anyways, cold booted fine. I am
going to keep a fan on the CPU from now on.
On my performance chart through admin tool, it spikes to 100
intermittently, so I am not sure what that means...

Ok, I ran the Optimizer and the Hotfix and things are a little worse.
Now, the SuperPI took 4 minutes and 17 seconds to complete and my
benchmarks are down slightly...going to uninstall the optimizer but I
don't think I can uninstall the hotfix. Ideas?

 

[Paul]

Well, I have downloaded the files and I am going to try them ou -
fingers crossed they do something. After reading a few pages of the
post, it seems the Hot Fix (which I think I got) is supposed to help
as well as the optimizer. I will try tonight and see what happens.
Hopefully, I can uninstall if there are any problems.
On a sad note, my computer Froze for the first time tonight. I was
busy doing something else and when I came back it was frozen. I am
guessing the CPU was too hot maybe? Anyways, cold booted fine. I am
going to keep a fan on the CPU from now on.
On my performance chart through admin tool, it spikes to 100
intermittently, so I am not sure what that means...

In Task Manager, do the spikes correlate with any particular process ?

One thing you can play with as well, is set the "affinity" when using
SuperPI. There are launcher applications that can control affinity,
and also perhaps a Task Manager option (depending on your OS). Affinity
fixes the task to one of your two cores. I'm just curious if both
cores return the same SuperPI result. You could start SuperPI, and
before running the benchmark, set the affinity, which should cause the
task to be moved to the appropriate core. It should stay there, for
the entire benchmark run.

You could always have a bad processor. But usually the testing on those
is pretty good, at least compared to a lot of other hardware in the
industry.

Paul

 

[David D]

The computer is idle during the spikes. I try not to do anything
(besides the processes running in the background like virus checker).
I ran AMD clock, which tells me that both cores are running at
2000-2025.
I don't really understand the PRIME95 stuff - do I run it in the
background? It tells me it will take an hour to test?!? What are the
steps, Paul, if you don't mind? I am running XP. I think the
affinity program is associated with that, right?

 

[David D]

The computer is idle during the spikes. I try not to do anything
(besides the processes running in the background like virus checker).
I ran AMD clock, which tells me that both cores are running at
2000-2025.
I don't really understand the PRIME95 stuff - do I run it in the
background? It tells me it will take an hour to test?!? What are the
steps, Paul, if you don't mind? I am running XP. I think the
affinity program is associated with that, right? The computer is idle
during the spikes. I try not to do anything

Well, some updated news and I don't know how it happened, but Super Pi
is now running at 36second at 1M. Strange indeed. My benchmarks for
memory are still low and Vegas Video still takes much too much time
when rendering (Vegas uses DDR memory for its rendering), so I might
be part of the way there when it comes to figuring this thing out.
Now, how can I tell if my memory is being used properly?

 

[Paul]

The computer is idle during the spikes. I try not to do anything
(besides the processes running in the background like virus checker).
I ran AMD clock, which tells me that both cores are running at
2000-2025.
I don't really understand the PRIME95 stuff - do I run it in the
background? It tells me it will take an hour to test?!? What are the
steps, Paul, if you don't mind? I am running XP. I think the
affinity program is associated with that, right?

There is a picture here, of setting affinity in what I presume is
WinXP. I have Win2K SP4 here, and my Task Manager is not the same
as this. What you would want to do, is start SuperPI, then open
Task Manager, set affinity to CPU0 or to CPU1, but not both.
Then compare whether both cores execute the benchmark in the same time.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=142439

There are separate programs as well, for setting the affinity
without the Task Manager. There is a download here, for example,
that claims to allow you to manage affinity (sticking the program
so it only runs on one core, and doesn't migrate back and forth
between cores, multiple times per second).

http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/05/28/getting_more_bang_out_of_your_dual_processing_buck/index.html

Prime95, for me at least, is for testing integrity. I use the
Torture Test, and as long as it doesn't report errors, then
I know my RAM and CPU are working correctly. If Prime95 stops
with an error, say a rounding error, that could mean it
encountered a memory error. Or it could mean the processor
itself made an error. An error in Prime95 means something is
not optimally adjusted in your system, or it could mean the
memory is bad. It could even be flagging a bad processor. It
all depends on what instruction types that Prime95 uses, as to
how complete a test coverage you get. If it didn't use any SSE
instructions for example, then you wouldn't know if there were
any problems with SSE, and you might only see those with a
transcoding or compression application.

I notice Prime95 does have an affinity setting now, so you
could test one core at a time if you wanted.

While Prime95 does have a benchmarking facility, I don't know
if there are enough benchmarks around, to allow comparing to
other 3800+ X2 owners. At the moment, we are dealing with
a performance problem, and integrity testing is an entirely
different issue. It is possible to "compute correctly", but
at a reduced speed. And what we're searching for right now,
is what could be the source of a speed problem. If you managed
to get a benchmark to run at full speed, either the speed
changes with the core you are running on, or the recent driver
update you did, has changed things.

Paul

 

[David D]

Had to take some time away from it, but now I am back at it. With
Prim95, I always get an Error #7 - Server has run out of Exponents to
Assign. Is that an internet thing or a CPU problem?