Author Topic: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS  (Read 1459 times)

Offline captiosus

  • Member
  • Posts: 434
    • The Wings Elite
Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« on: February 15, 2010, 01:37:47 AM »
So, after an absence which life took priority, i be back!

OK, about 3 weeks ago i got a Athlon 64 board and processor, and a week afterwards i got a lucky break on 4chan and got 3GB of DDR 266 for free. Coupled with this is a nifty EVGA 7900GS 256MB PCI-E card, 3x 40GB IDE drives (the sata ports on the motherboard are shot, as well as the onboard video  >:( ) and a IDE DVD drive. The OS is windows 7 Ultimate.
The problem that i have in this system is that the core is slow as fuck. Even when i overclock it as much as i can (200mhz faster is about as far as i can push it, craptastic OEM motherboard), my Pentium M annihilates it. It bottlenecks my graphics card so bad it never sees 40% use (and its massively overclocked, stock is 450/625, im at 610/900), and some websites (like 4chan) are slow as hell in scrolling when the core is at full speed, and my laptops core at minimum speed doesnt strain at all (2.2Ghz vs 700mhz).

So what do i do to squeeze every last drop of performance out of this crap computer besides grabbing a dual core (its on my list of shit to buy, as well as a brand new motherboard and some real DDR 333/400) or overclocking it?

Offline kureshii

  • Former Staff
  • Member
  • Posts: 4485
  • May typeset edited light novels if asked nicely.
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2010, 01:59:56 AM »
Use CLI.

How much do you know about your processor/system?
« Last Edit: February 15, 2010, 02:16:37 AM by kureshii »

Offline psyren

  • Member
  • Posts: 11718
  • Ангелы и демоны кружили надо мной...
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2010, 03:31:09 AM »
Very little, apparently.

Hold Nothing: If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. If you meet your ancestor, kill your ancestor. Free of everything, bound by nothing, live your life as it is.
Click here if you can't play h264 encodes

Offline NaRu

  • Member
  • Posts: 15225
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #3 on: February 15, 2010, 03:41:33 AM »
first of all why would you use a mobo that has bad sata and bad onboard video. Plus you can only overclock your processor by 200Mghz? Are you having heat issue or stability issues? You should be able to push it further then 200Mghz. I had a Intel Pentium D processor (2.8Ghz) and I was able to overclock it to 3.6Ghz without any problems. It ran hot yes but ran fine.

You are not overclocking it correctly. Plus that mother board is a POS. If the on board video is bad who knows what is wrong with the rest of the board. Maybe the North Bridge is crapping out.

Offline sdedalus83

  • Member
  • Posts: 2867
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2010, 03:56:19 AM »
Your board is falling apart.  It's surprising the damn thing works, let alone that you can overclock it at all.

And honestly, an A64 should outperform a PM clock for clock in most situations.  There's probably something else wrong causing the performance issues.  Did you reinstall windows when you changed boards and processors?

Offline captiosus

  • Member
  • Posts: 434
    • The Wings Elite
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2010, 09:07:26 PM »
first of all why would you use a mobo that has bad sata and bad onboard video. Plus you can only overclock your processor by 200Mghz? Are you having heat issue or stability issues? You should be able to push it further then 200Mghz. I had a Intel Pentium D processor (2.8Ghz) and I was able to overclock it to 3.6Ghz without any problems. It ran hot yes but ran fine.

You are not overclocking it correctly. Plus that mother board is a POS. If the on board video is bad who knows what is wrong with the rest of the board. Maybe the North Bridge is crapping out.
The reason i am using it is because the only other board i have that has PCI-E is a P4 board, and that PCI-E slot is crippled to 4x, and its crippled because there is a AGP slot on the board as well.
The reason i cant break 200mhz overclock is because every bus on the system gets their timings from a single clock generator, and since this is an OEM board, i cant do anything about that. Im not having heat issues, as a matter of fact if i could overclock i could push 3ghz on stock cooling and not overheat the core. The ONLY way i can overclock is to use a program called clockgen and use that to increase the system bus speed.

Your board is falling apart.  It's surprising the damn thing works, let alone that you can overclock it at all.

And honestly, an A64 should outperform a PM clock for clock in most situations.  There's probably something else wrong causing the performance issues.  Did you reinstall windows when you changed boards and processors?
Its all i have at the moment. I built this rig from scratch, and as such this is a fresh install of windows 7.

Use CLI.

How much do you know about your processor/system?
More than enough, and no i will not be using CLI. If i wanted to do that i would have installed gentoo or something similar.

Offline Kuroshima

  • Member
  • Posts: 150
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #6 on: February 15, 2010, 09:33:20 PM »
I have amd64 3500+ socket 939, on a a8ael oem board. Still performs fine. It's slow but not that slow. Any downloads from the manufacturer available?

Thread hijack: I just got a amd64 4400+ x2 with a new motherboard (I think a8n le) and 4GB ram ddr400 :) finally an upgrade.



Offline captiosus

  • Member
  • Posts: 434
    • The Wings Elite
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #7 on: February 15, 2010, 10:40:26 PM »
I have amd64 3500+ socket 939, on a a8ael oem board. Still performs fine. It's slow but not that slow. Any downloads from the manufacturer available?

Thread hijack: I just got a amd64 4400+ x2 with a new motherboard (I think a8n le) and 4GB ram ddr400 :) finally an upgrade.



no, i already looked. And is your previous motherboard micro ATX?

Offline Kuroshima

  • Member
  • Posts: 150
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #8 on: February 15, 2010, 11:21:59 PM »
Yups, sata port and integrated video work too (radeon xpress 200). I use my 9400 gt in the pciex16 lane though.

Offline captiosus

  • Member
  • Posts: 434
    • The Wings Elite
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #9 on: February 16, 2010, 01:17:34 PM »
Yups, sata port and integrated video work too (radeon xpress 200). I use my 9400 gt in the pciex16 lane though.
so you are still using it? :/

Offline isukianime

  • Member
  • Posts: 484
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #10 on: February 16, 2010, 01:24:48 PM »
The Athlon 64 is old....of course it's slow. I've never found overclocking Socket 939 to be that effective. I just use my old Athlon 64 to run linux.

Offline Kuroshima

  • Member
  • Posts: 150
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #11 on: February 16, 2010, 02:05:23 PM »
Yeah I'm still using it... Haven't installed the new mobo yet because I don't have am atx case.
I'm currently running Linux on it. Seems about the same to xp in terms of responsiveness with compiz and such enabled. Vdpau is also nice. I'm reallocating it to my living room after though it is still going strong. Sowiez :(

Offline captiosus

  • Member
  • Posts: 434
    • The Wings Elite
Re: Got a Athlon 64 rig, and the core SUCKS
« Reply #12 on: February 17, 2010, 08:26:08 PM »
Yeah I'm still using it... Haven't installed the new mobo yet because I don't have am atx case.
I'm currently running Linux on it. Seems about the same to xp in terms of responsiveness with compiz and such enabled. Vdpau is also nice. I'm reallocating it to my living room after though it is still going strong. Sowiez :(
;_;