Performance issues with AMD 64 3200+

TechnoAlchemy

I recently decided to give AMD a try on an upgrade system. My previous system was a p4 system, 3.0 GHz with 1.5g of ram running an x850 xt agp version on an asus P4P800-E mobo. The new system uses an AMD Athlon 64 3200+, on the MSI K8N Neo4 mobo with the PCIe edition of the same ATI x850 xt card. All other components (ram, hard drive, monitor, etc.) are the same in both systems.

Now, the switch to AMD was prompted by a lot of benchmarking I've been reading that has AMD outclassing the pentium 4 chips in gaming hands-down. Benchmarking would continue to suggest this, (improvements in 3dmark03 and 3dmark05 ratings), but real-world applications are giving less than stellar performance, in some cases severe decreases.

Running Unreal Tournament 2004 at 1280 x 1024 with all options maxed, and using radlinker to tune it up to 6x forced anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering was the first test. On the p4-based system, ut2k4 still ran at an average of around 60 fps in Onslaught games. On the AMD system this has decreased to -half- that at 30 fps.

Guild Wars was the second test. (1280 x 1024 fullscreen, maxed ingame options, no radlinker customizations) While it still performs at at solid 60 in normal gameplay, in hub towns the AMD system -chugs- to a grinding halt whenever multiple players are on the screen, to a degree that the p4 system actually performed better when it was being run with a lowly nvidia geforce 5200.

Other games are taking hits as well. I've run the Dungeon Siege II demo on both systems, (-not- a heavy demand game), and in cut scenes involving lots of characters onscreen at once the amd system chokes hard, with fps dropping down to 10-15.

I'm, needless to say, frustrated and not sure what could be causing this harsh drop in performance. Any suggestions?

Jonny Manc · 08-13-2005, 10:50 | posts: 2,742 | Location: Cumbria, UK

Sounds like something is not quite right there mate!!
I went from a P4 3ghz to this---------------------------->

Have you:
updated bios and drivers?
defrag'd?
run spyware / ad removal programs?

Lastly, remove 1 stick of RAM and try and allow it to run in 1t (dual channel) as this may help!!

Anyone else??

TechnoAlchemy · *Last edited by TechnoAlchemy; 08-13-2005 at 16:24.*

Some corrections and new developments on this:

Contrary to what I believed before, my performance has dropped across the board. Upon running 3dmark03 again, my rating has dropped from an initial benchmark of 11343 to a significantly lower rating of 9774. In-game framerates continue to be terrible across the board. I've run ad-aware, spybot s&d, and done a full virus scan to no positive result.

The only change that I can think of that has occured between the initial benchmark and the new benchmark is that I have flashed the bios to the latest version from MSI. Could this have actually adversely affected performance?

EDIT: It would definately appear that this is a mobo/processor issue. In the initial benchmark, the processor was detected as what it is, at a clockspeed of 2010 mhz. Post-bios update, it's reading as -half- that, at a clockspeed of 1010mhz. Cool n' Quiet is disabled as it was before, and windows itself is still detecting the processor as operating at a clockspeed of 2010mhz.

I'm completely stumped as to what is causing this.

tiggie_00 · 08-15-2005, 05:46 | posts: 195 | Location: Ohio

Just own up to it and admit the P4 kicks butt compared to the AMD cpus. HeHe

Abe Froman · 08-15-2005, 06:03 | posts: 106 | Location: Pacific Northwest

People still buy Intel chips?

Abe

Sounds like a definite mobo issue.. What version 3200 is it? If it's only running at 2.0Ghz.. Did to tweak your ram timings and slow down bus speed on accident? Hypertransport settings etc?

FE4R · 08-15-2005, 06:03 | posts: 539 | Location: Jamaica

1.5 Gig DDR (3 512 chips)

u are running 3 x 512 MB of ram?? Thats imposible, something is wrong.

TechnoAlchemy · 08-15-2005, 16:06 | posts: 5 | Location: Indiana, USA

How is that impossible? There are 4 ram slots, 3 of them currently have a stick of 512mb ram.

Reality|Bites · 08-16-2005, 02:07 | posts: 5,038 | Location: Scotland

Try running 2 X 512MB Dual Channel, turn off C n Q in the bios.

Keep in mind your running 1Ghz slower.

TechnoAlchemy · 08-16-2005, 04:38 | posts: 5 | Location: Indiana, USA

Cool n' Quiet has been disabled ever since I built the system. All settings are stock, and I attempted running with a matched pair of 512 sticks, still no change.

I've seen other people encounter this exact same problem with this particular combo of mobo + processor, so as I just purchased the mobo + processor a few days ago I exchanged them for an ASUS A8V-E Deluxe and upgraded the 3200+ to a 3500+. Everything's running great now.

Jdoggg12 · 08-16-2005, 17:42 | posts: 119 | Location: san luis obispo

for those asking how to get to 1.5 gigs, I have it. 2x512 and 2x256

TechnoAlchemy · 08-16-2005, 18:09 | posts: 5 | Location: Indiana, USA

Ahhh...I think the issue there is someone wondering how to run 1.5 gig dual channel. You can, in fact, run it with 3 chips, it just wont' be dual channel.