Athlon 64 X2 4200+ under performing

topper743

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New Poster longtime lurker. Thanks in advance for your time and suggestions.
My Girlfrend got an HP computer awhile back 1yr+. I wanted to do a couple of cheap upgrades to help the system preform better, it is/was pretty anemic.

System specs: HP/Compaq Presario SR1720NX
Semperon 3500+, 512mg 3200 ram
Onboard video ATI 200 express
Onboard sound, 160GB HD
MS XP Home

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...tem=pv-56089-1&product=1815875&os=228&lang=en

So from an Etailer I ordered more ram(512mb, 23 bucks), new video card (XFX 7600GT, 70bucks) and AMD 64 X2 4200+( 65 bucks). The new CPU runs at 2.2Ghz and the Old one ran at 2.0Ghz. The ram and video card were good and easily done upgrades. The new CPU is problematic. On boot and in the bios the correct cpu type and speed is recognised. In the device manager the cpu is listed twice. I have run a couple of benchmarking apps and found the the new chip preformes at or about and prehaps worse than the old chip. I found an artical on Anandtech to compare with a CPU-Z score that I ran.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2452&p=3

I'm having some trouble posting the CPU-Z Image, but the bottom line is that my results are lower than Anandtech's and the benchmarking is slighly lower than the Old CPU. Any Ideas? The bios is restrictive/ not adjustable.
 

ragemonkey

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Depends on the benchmarking program. It has to be able to use both cores of a dual core chip... otherwise it may be a wash.

Honestly from what you said, the onboard video is hurting your system much more than the old processor was. The Xpress 200 is a horrible onboard gfx chip... one of the worst ATI ever made. It offloads a ton or work to the CPU often jamming it with 100% usage. In any case, using onboard video will always cause a system to bog. Onboard video is not a standalone GPU, and as such relies on the CPU to do alot of the work. Also, on an AMD platform the CPU is needed to access memory, which is being shared with the onboard video... thus even more cpu usage. I've seen AMD systems with onboard video taking in upwards of 20-30% CPU usage to do all of this under normal operation, and when gaming (what you can play on a xpress 200, which aint much) can spike it at 100%. Your best bet would be picking up a budget Video Card and you will notice a huge difference.
 

topper743

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I added a Geforce 7600gt, yes it did help. The cpu is still at a muli of 5 and a bus speed of 199.0. It gets a 3Dmark06 score of 3412 with the new componets.
 

mike99

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Multiplier should be 11! If you have Cool 'n Quier running you will get x5 when little load. Should speed up to x11 when you stress it. CPU-Z is not a benchmark. it just measures the speed of the CPU You should use 3DMark05 or 06 if you want to test your system. Have you installed AMD dual core patch? Does Task Manager show 2 graphs?

Mike.
 

topper743

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The task manager shows just one graph. The device manager shows two entrys for the cpu. How can I access Cool & quiet and the cpu optimizer? Are these apps adjustable?
 

topper743

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The cpu scored 1609 in the 3Dmark test. This BIOS unfortunately won't allow any adjustments or overclock, no ram or bus freqs. This was a cheap upgrade should last her for awhile. I just want to see the CPU preform at least at an avg.

Mike
 

coret

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If there's only 1 graph for CPU load in task manager's performance tab you need to install the AMD dual core driver:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/setup.zip

To enable cool'n'quiet you need to go to power options in control panel, and set the profile to minimum power management. This, despite the wording, turns ON cool'n'quiet so that when the CPU is not under any real load, it will set itself slower and use less power. To turn OFF CnQ just set the power profile to something sounding like it's high performance.
 

topper743

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There was a post here from "Birate" a while ago that I would like to respond to. Was the post incorrect and you removed it? I'm not sure how many people are famuliar with Compaq but they don't give you OS disks. There is a directory that will do PC recovery. Also you can burn a OS copy from this directory. I am burning the copy right now. The device manager shows the "ACPI Multiprocessor PC". Do you think the upon recovery the HAL that you were refreing to will be installed? Will that update the task manager also?
 

topper743

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The change in power profile brought the CPU-Z freq readings up to where they should be. However the task manager only shows one graph for the cpu. Do you think a reinstall would allow windows to fully recognise and support the new dual core cpu?
 

coret

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husky mctarflash

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I just went up to the same processor, from an FX55. The key is that you are only seeing one graph in system performance: that indicates that the system is not using the dual core aspect of the CPU. Even after installing the AMD Dual Core Optimizer, and fiddling around with every setting known to man, the only way I could get the system to run properly was to re-install Windows. I must stress, that it took about 5 days of screwing around with all the settings, bios, etc., to come to the conclusion that Windows didn't register the dual core--hopefully you will avoid that much grief.

Once that was done, my system ran like a charm. And yes, the dual core does make a difference--you will be happy you made the upgrade.

I can actually even play Crysis now...:0

My only other comment is that it is worth chucking that 512 RAM (or eBaying), and running 2 GB. In the big picture, it is worth "wasting" that original 512 if it comes to that.
 

topper743

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I want to thank all for your opinions and assistance. I thought I would add a final post to inform all of the final resolution. I changed the power in the control panel. That brought the freq up to about 2.2ghz. As i said the BIOS has no adjustments to overclock. I installed the driver from AMD. I rebooted and in the device manager reinstalled the driver under "my computer". Rebooted and now under the task manager there are two graphs for the CPU. Everything is running well with no problems. Thanks to all for your advice. One note I am not really as impressed with the CPU as I thought I would be. If it were able to clock up 3-400hz it would be much better, on the other hand the Semperon 3500+ wasn't all that bad for her needs.