Sloooooow Conroe build

[GreenMachine]

I'm pulling my hair out over this stupid build! Bought an E6300, and Asrock 775DUAL-VSTA board with WD 160JS SATA hard drive. Combined this with 512MB DDR-400 and 9800Pro 128. This machine is very slow, I set the jumper to lock the HD at 150 SATA I, clean install of XP SP2, all updated drivers for video and MOBO. Machine takes 10-15 swipes of the XP bar at startup, and once loaded, will NOT multitask at all, even opening two different windows at the same time makes the machine bog down with a long pause and then burst of HD activity. Swapped out Hard drive and did another clean install, same deal, swapped out memory, same deal. Not overclocking at all, though I did and it was no change!!

I've looked all over the web for anyone having the same problem, but cannot find anything. Everyone only has good things to say. I'm thinking this whole Conroe deal is HYPE, its not nearly as fast as my 3 year old
Athlon XP 2500. All my components check out on other systems, only thing I can't test is the MOBO. The chip is Retail, with retail fan. Checked mounting surface for good contact, cooler is installed correctly. I've been building machines for 10 years, this build has been very dissapointing. Should I RMA the board, its wierd that it can work, but still be deffective? No popped capacitors anywhere, all looks good. Can't afford to upgrade to a new board because I'd have to buy new memory and vid card as well. Trying to stretch this awhile. Any ideas? Got a few more days to get an RMA from NewEgg, but what to send back?? Is anyone else running similiar setup on this board and thinking its fast? The PIII laptop i'm typing this on is faster windows wise than my conroe system!! Sorry for the long post, but I need all the help I can get!
Thanks !!

 

[1Tanker]

I'm pulling my hair out over this stupid build! Bought an E6300, and Asrock 775DUAL-VSTA board with WD 160JS SATA hard drive. Combined this with 512MB DDR-400 and 9800Pro 128. This machine is very slow, I set the jumper to lock the HD at 150 SATA I, clean install of XP SP2, all updated drivers for video and MOBO. Machine takes 10-15 swipes of the XP bar at startup, and once loaded, will NOT multitask at all, even opening two different windows at the same time makes the machine bog down with a long pause and then burst of HD activity. Swapped out Hard drive and did another clean install, same deal, swapped out memory, same deal. Not overclocking at all, though I did and it was no change!!

I've looked all over the web for anyone having the same problem, but cannot find anything. Everyone only has good things to say. I'm thinking this whole Conroe deal is HYPE, its not nearly as fast as my 3 year old
Athlon XP 2500. All my components check out on other systems, only thing I can't test is the MOBO. The chip is Retail, with retail fan. Checked mounting surface for good contact, cooler is installed correctly. I've been building machines for 10 years, this build has been very dissapointing. Should I RMA the board, its wierd that it can work, but still be deffective? No popped capacitors anywhere, all looks good. Can't afford to upgrade to a new board because I'd have to buy new memory and vid card as well. Trying to stretch this awhile. Any ideas? Got a few more days to get an RMA from NewEgg, but what to send back?? Is anyone else running similiar setup on this board and thinking its fast? The PIII laptop i'm typing this on is faster windows wise than my conroe system!! Sorry for the long post, but I need all the help I can get!
Thanks !!

The first thing i usually suggest checking, is that DMA is enabled in Device Manager.

 

[Clob]

'm thinking this whole Conroe deal is HYPE, its not nearly as fast as my 3 year old
Athlon XP 2500.

If you honestly think its "HYPE" then stick with what you have. Windows performance wont change much... Do some application tests...

 

[ltcommander_data]

I think I should point out that your system is a very non-standard configuration for Conroe. For instance, that motherboard uses a VIA chipset which don't run as well as an Intel chipset. 512MB of RAM isn't a lot nowadays especially if you are multitasking. 1GB is recommended. Also DDR2 400, even in dual channel mode, can not fill up a 1067MHz FSB. I also don't trust those dual AGP, PCIe chipsets, and it's quite possible that the 9800Pro, which is still a pretty decent card, isn't reaching it's full potential either. Generally, I get the feeling that the bottlenecks may be at places other than the CPU.

Now I'm not trying to judge, since it looks like you were trying to upgrade on a budget and no one can fault that. Since you mentioned the Athlon XP, when you say your system is slow, does it run slower than the Athlon XP? Or does it just not outperform it as much as you thought it would. If it is slower than the Athlon XP then there definitely is a problem. If it's still faster, then the speed may be just what it is.

 

[endyen]

It does sound like a sata problem. To confirm, try using a pata hdd.
Then again, if you are using a single sata drive, make sure raid is disabled in bios.

 

[aequalsb]

Perhaps you have a problem with software. If you press control alt delete does your computer show 100% activity on both cores?

 

[dannyaa]

It's not hype... the problem isn't with the CPU, it is definetly elsewhere... hardware or software like the others mentioned...

 

[jaQa]

Hi,

the board is OK, it's almost on par with Intel chipsets, the only real drawback of this board is that the 16x PCI Express slot only runs @ 4x speed which results into a performance loss of about 10% in games (only with higher end graphic cards which can utilize the additional bandwidth of 16x PCIe), but since you use a AGP video card that's a nonissue in your current situation.

The installation order of a system with VIA chipset is important.
Install order:
WinXP + SP2 (slipstreamed SATA driver with "nLite"?!)
!!! You should install the "Via 4in1 driver" first after Windows install. !!!
Then video driver and everything else.

It's definitly not a hardware issue.
Depending on the applications you use 512MB RAM is not enough.
When their's not enough physical RAM installed windows will swap portions of memory into the swap file on the harddisk, this will slow down the system much since even current harddrives are turtle slow in comparison to RAM.

Christian

 

[chrone]

hi, i'm using c2d e6300 and asrock 775dual-vsta too. 2gb ddr400, x1600pro agp, 120gb sata.

it runs quiet fast in some applications and the rest is the same with my old p4 2.4ghz.

if i set the ide controller on BIOS into a non-raid one, it slowed down my system a bit (i still feel my old system was faster than the newer one in exploring windows). but if you set the ide controller on BIOS to a raid, then when install windows you press the f6 to install via raid/scsi driver, it boost my hdd performance up to 12% then the non-raid option in BIOS). but first you have to create the floppy diskette driver by booting from the manual cd and create a driver onto the floppy diskette.

the only problem i have is with the vga card which is not compatible with my 17" crt monitor. so i have to switch to lcd monitor and now runs so far so good. i tried to use radeon 9200se agp but the motherboard produced 10 beeps sound when booting.

i think this motherboard is a good budget pc for some hardware which are compatible with the board, perhaps it's not really compatible with your current hardware. sorry to hear that.

btw, have you updated your BIOS? it really helps much in performance, specially when dealing with conroe (the core 2 duo) processor.

good luck!

for comparison purpose:
pcmark05 cpu score - 4792
pcmark05 hdd score - 5265

 

[chrone]

well actually i've tried to use 1gb of 512mb ddr2 533 ocz value, it only gain 0.6% from ddr400 on several benchmark such as pcmark05 system suite.

 

[jtoops]

"...even opening two different windows at the same time makes the machine bog down with a long pause and then burst of HD activity"

512mb is not much when running WindowsXP. What you see is that the system is using swap. I would at least recommend 1gb.

 

[elpresidente2075]

Sounds to me like a driver issue. Have you checked windows device manager? Having a part, any part, with a bad driver can cause some issues like what you are experiencing. Like someone else said, install the via drivers first, then the AGP driver, then everything else. ATI drivers definitely after the AGP drivers (I know, it says it on the software, but it can't be iterated enough).

Also, you may want to go through the bios and disable anything you don't use, like onboard sound if you have a sound card, etc.

 

[chrone]

don't forget to check what bios version you are using. most asrock 775dual-version in retail still using the first BIOS version which is P1.00. The BIOS version which supports Conroe processor is P1.50, the current up to date BIOS version is P1.80.

http://www.asrock.com/support/download.asp?Model=775Dual-VSTA#bios

becareful when updating BIOS. read the read me or manual first on the above link before trying to update. updating BIOS unproperly mau cause damage to your motherboard. it is wise to have UPS in order to avoid sudden electricity down.

 

[commanderspockep]

This poor guy is probably so confused now :?: :?:

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

You've got an awesome processor in a sub-par system.

 

[chrone]

yeah..

it's not really stable though perhaps the incompatibility with the hardware and an out of date bios from retail store.

i was surprised too to the slower response with this motherboard when i open my computer icon compared to my past system. but then i reconfigure the way the sata mode and it boosts 12% and everything is back to normal again.

perhaps GreenMachine should go to BIOS and load the optimal default setting and change the IDE Configuration and set it to non-Raid option and see what will going on. The DMA access is enabled by default.

 

[jap0nes]

Your lack of memory is why your system is slow.
Also what do you expect running a e6300 on DDR-400?

i run windows xp on an amd 500mhz with 156MB of ram, why 512 of DDR-400 would not be enough?

 

[Grimmy]

Its not that it isn't enough, its more of not having enough physical memory to run everything without using swap file. Especially when windows is automatically adjusting its swap file size.

I think typically XP will take up 300MB of Ram. Opening a web browser like FireFox will push it close to 380MB. So your system would be doing allot more file swapping from HD to Memory which will reduce performance.

 

[jap0nes]

Its not that it isn't enough, its more of not having enough physical memory to run everything without using swap file. Especially when windows is automatically adjusting its swap file size.

I think typically XP will take up 300MB of Ram. Opening a web browser like FireFox will push it close to 380MB. So your system would be doing allot more file swapping from HD to Memory which will reduce performance.

sure, i understand that. What i meant is that 512MB would not take the computer to a crawl like the OP said.
personally, i think it's a driver issue for this case

 

[thefatguy1978]

VIA = Bad, junk, crap

I cannot imagine the low quality of the driver support you are getting from a VIA chipset trying to put DDR-400, AGP, and Core 2 together.

I think CHEAP has a new definition and it is this Motherboard.

 

[GreenMachine]

BIOS is v1.8, drivers installed in reccomended order. My Athlon was much snapper in windows, and it also only had 512MB of RAM. I tried clean install on my Maxtor 160GB 8mb cache drive, and same performance issue. My device manager shows EVERYTHING installed and working correctly, I've disabled everything in the BIOS that I don't use, even tried overclocking the machine to 2.1Ghz with no difference. Ran BootVis, it claims my boot time is 28 seconds from the windows screen, which I'm ok with, its just lousy once windows loads. The BIOS is set to non-raid mode. I can set it to RAID now that windows is installed, but it makes no difference. I downloaded the RAID disk from Asrock, but XP could not find any drivers on the disk during XP install. My Asrock disk, though bootable, is unable to create floppy disks, it reports device not ready and "unable to copy from '" ". I tried different floppy, even USB floppy, same thing.
I really cant afford to buy new DDRII memory at this time or new video card, but I don't think these are the sources of performance issues as I have now tried replacing both with others and its made no difference. Maybe if I can reload windows (sigh, again, number 6 is the charm maybe?) and recognize SATA drivers from floppy I will see this 12% gain? What does your device manager show as IDE devices if you load SATA RAID drivers during windows installation?
Thanks for all the good suggestions!

 

[elpresidente2075]

Perhaps now is the time to ask yourself wether windows is actually what you want for your main OS. I know, of course windows is necessary for some things, but for the vast majority of daily tasks, there are much more powerful *and free* OS out there. From the looks of your system, it doesn't look like you do much gaming, just a little here and there. That is the exact boat I'm in. My primary OS has shifted in the past months to openSuse 10.1, with a dual boot configuration with windows. I use Suse on a daily basis, then when I want to play a game, I just load windows. Or, if there is a lot less intensive task that must be done in windows (DRM, anyone?) I just load up a virtual machine to do the task.

Now, I know this doesn't solve your problem, but many of said problems can be sidestepped by not using windows.

A side note: Have you tried running some benchmarks for this system? Could be a plethora of differences causing this percieved performance hit. Maybe the loss of "snappiness" could just be caused by the differences in the INTEL/AMD architectures. Now, I'm not implying that the Athlon XP is a better proc than Conroe, but I have noticed slight differences in how they do things. I'm also not saying that this is the entirety of the problem, but it may be the root of it which is then amplified by using non-standard parts for the proc. If you feel that there must be something wrong with the hardware, I'd RMA the board first, then the proc if the situation doesn't improve.

@thefatguy: Please describe why you think VIA is crap. I have had nothing but good experiences with their chipsets. Sure, they have their quirks, but in general I have seen them to be solid, reliable, and inexpensive boards. Of course, that's just my experience. Could be that I just got the best one of the batch, but I doubt it.

 

[Grimmy]

Not sure if this will help, though I thought most X2 AMD processors would need this patch:

MS Hotfix

Computers that are running Windows XP Service Pack 2 and that are equipped with multiple processors that support processor power management features may experience decreased performance

Also try using CPU-Z and post up so we could see if anything looks wrong from what it reports.

 

[Whizzard9992]

Perhaps now is the time to ask yourself wether windows is actually what you want for your main OS. I know, of course windows is necessary for some things, but for the vast majority of daily tasks, there are much more powerful *and free* OS out there. From the looks of your system, it doesn't look like you do much gaming, just a little here and there. That is the exact boat I'm in. My primary OS has shifted in the past months to openSuse 10.1, with a dual boot configuration with windows. I use Suse on a daily basis, then when I want to play a game, I just load windows. Or, if there is a lot less intensive task that must be done in windows (DRM, anyone?) I just load up a virtual machine to do the task.

Now, I know this doesn't solve your problem, but many of said problems can be sidestepped by not using windows.

A side note: Have you tried running some benchmarks for this system? Could be a plethora of differences causing this percieved performance hit. Maybe the loss of "snappiness" could just be caused by the differences in the INTEL/AMD architectures. Now, I'm not implying that the Athlon XP is a better proc than Conroe, but I have noticed slight differences in how they do things. I'm also not saying that this is the entirety of the problem, but it may be the root of it which is then amplified by using non-standard parts for the proc. If you feel that there must be something wrong with the hardware, I'd RMA the board first, then the proc if the situation doesn't improve.

@thefatguy: Please describe why you think VIA is crap. I have had nothing but good experiences with their chipsets. Sure, they have their quirks, but in general I have seen them to be solid, reliable, and inexpensive boards. Of course, that's just my experience. Could be that I just got the best one of the batch, but I doubt it.

ROFL. Worst post of the day.

"I have hardware problems"

"Change your OS"

Genius. :roll:

It could be a lot of things, but there's a LOT of good advice here so far. Your first problem, I would think, is that you're running DDR-400 when you need to be running DDR-533. That alone could be the problem. Then again, if it's running, maybe the RAM is just taking the heat.

The first thing you need to do is update all of your drivers. Don't bother with RAID just yet. Secondly, check the message boards on the support forums for your motherboard: you may not be alone. Drivers tend to make windows boot REALLY slow, but if you're experiencing problems within windows, then there's a good possibility its a bottleneck. Load a program, close it, then load it again. If it loads slow the first time but fast the second, it's probably HD or I/O (Drivers, etc). If it loads slow all the time, there's something misconfigured or you have a bad component (MB, CPU).

Also check your vid card to make sure it's compatable with the AGP slot. I know the hybrid boards have some funky AGP settings. Also, remove everything unnecessary, especially from the PCI bus.

Good luck.

 

[13thmonkey]

Your lack of memory is why your system is slow.
Also what do you expect running a e6300 on DDR-400?

I'm running one with 2Gb of DDR400 in dual channel, seems fine to me.

The tests done by anandtech show very little difference with differing RAM speeds. Not enough to notice.

I'm using it as a stepping stone to PCI-E, DDR2 and SATA.