I upgrade my p4 cpu from 2.6ghz to 3.2. Everything is slow!

[kentzman]

Hi, sorry my first post will have to be a problem post.

I recently aquired a pentium 4 northwood 3.2ghz.
So a p4 3.2ghz
512k cache
800fsb

I replaced my old cpu with it. My old cpu is a:
P4 Northwood 2.6ghz
512k cache
800fsb.

So same type just different speeds.

My motherboard is a MSI 865PE Neo2-v
Here it is.

So, i switched them, applied the heatsink and what not. Everything started up fine. I right clicked My Computer in Vista and looked at the properties and it showed it was at 3.2 ghz. I then looked in the device manager and it listed the cpu as 2.6 (twice of course since HT is on).

I thought that was odd. I decided to run some benchmarks and everything ran slower. I tried to do the Vista rating thing and it seemed to stall. At the very least I waited 4x longer than with the 2.6 and decided to cancel it.

So: Same type of CPU, faster speed, A lot slower performance and it is listed as 2.6ghz in device manager while 3.2 under the pc's properties.

Also, i ran two programs to detect and list my system's specs and both said it was at 3.2. But that doesn't explain the slow speed.


I went and looked at the bios. CPU ratio is locked and the bus speed is at 200 (the min for 800mhz fsb. Max is 500). There is a normal mode and performance mode in there too and i switched to performance and noticed no difference either.

So I am at a lost. The CPU does run hotter but it peaks at 62c and hovers in the high 50s. My 2.6 was in the low 50s for the most part. I used some articsilver 5 to put on a new heatsink/fan i bought and think the temp will go down a bit when it settles but as it is now, this shouldn't cause any problems.

I have a new case with a very large side fan blowing in air and I bought another fan for the back to suck out the hot air. It came with this power supply

From Newegg.

On that power supply i have 2 gigs of ddr 3200 ram. 2 Sata hard drives and a Sapphire 3850 HD 8x AGP. The graphics card seems to be functioning like it should be, just minus the performance from lowered performance from the new cpu. The graphics card does require a lot of power BUT everything ran fine (see faster) with the 2.6

I don't have any dvd or cd drives right now. The one I had was bad.

I had to reinstall windows not too long ago and I used the time to update my bios to which I assume is not only it's latest but last update.

Some basic things I did were:

Changed the bios setting from normal to performance. Which did nothing (this is a different option under the same menu as CPU ratio etc, not the "Load performance settings" in the main menu.

Verified hyperthreading was enabled in the bios. Then restarted and turned it off. Checked to see if maybe the device manager listed a diff speed. Still 2.6. So I restarted again and turned HT on again and check again. 2.6 twice again .


Any thoughts?

I know I should be investing in new hardware and am close but the price was right so why not.

Thank you in advance. I hope someone can solve this, I tried to put all the information I could. If it is not enough please ask for what you need and check back!

 

[NewLCD123]

Can you put that 2.6GHz p4 back in? Maybe something broke? I once had a 750MHz pentium 3 that lost to my overclocked 550MHz celeron so I sold the p3 and went back to the celeron which performed better. To this day I don't know what was wrong, maybe that cpu was too new for the abit bf6 motherboard, maybe I forgot to flash the bios?

But anyway, save up and upgrade to a core duo system. Huge cpu bottleneck there.

 

[amdfangirl]

@OP, what PSU do you have? Not enough watts many kill your computer. Can you also send as a CPU-Z screenshot?

 

[4745454b]

I'm going to go with temps. I don't remember P4s idling in the 50s, and 62 is near the thermal limit. Read this article, and download the program to see if thermal throttling is happening.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/104

 

[megamanx00]

My guess is that the PSU isn't enough. Despite the fact that it is rated at 550W it probably can't actually sustain close to that load for very long. The faster P4 uses significantly more power and the Radeon 3850 is also a rather significant power gulper. Still, the fact that Vista is listing it as 2.6 GHz is rather odd. Before you go around swapping out CPUs though you should try a fresh install of Vista. If your CPU still gives you low performance then you could have a defective CPU, or just not be getting enough power.

 

[megamanx00]

Yeah could be throttling too. I remember higher clocked P4s being notorious for that. That's why they never sold them over 3.8GHz, or was it 3.6, since white box builders had to do all sorts of crazy cooling to keep throttling to a minimum. It was one of the reasons for the BTX form factor in an effort to improve airflow. Yeah that factor didn't end up too well

 

[crystal_tech]

put a tester on the psu and see if the volts match up with what the bios says its running. if you can try and stress it, and see if it is throttling. also check the MB for exploded caps. older boards that I've worked with always seemed to have caps that go bad due to a bad psu, horrible attempts at overclocking, and letting dust just sit there and absorb the heat.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Yeah could be throttling too. I remember higher clocked P4s being notorious for that. That's why they never sold them over 3.8GHz, or was it 3.6, since white box builders had to do all sorts of crazy cooling to keep throttling to a minimum. It was one of the reasons for the BTX form factor in an effort to improve airflow. Yeah that factor didn't end up too well

These are Northwood CPUs not Prescott CPUs. The Northwood ones were decent and maxed out at 3.2GHz for the normal one and 3.4GHz ofr the EE one.

From what he has his PSU is plenty. My P4 EE and X850XT ran on a 400W PSU for years. Just replaced it with a 550W Rosewill PSU.

It seems like it is throttling. But does CPU-Z show 3.2GHz? And a FSB of 800MHz?

And its a 865PE chipset which does support HT and dual channel DDR 400.

The mobo also supports the 3.2GHz Northwood:

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=prodcpusupport&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=170&cat3_no=4&prod_no=591#menu

So last thing I could think has to be throttling. Normally if the PSU wasn't enough I think the GPU would see the first of the problems.

Try CPU-Z and see if it shows 3.2GHz. Those CPUs don't have speedstep so it should always be 3.2GHz. Then try reseating the HSF. I have the 3.4GHz EE in my old machine and it idles at 32c and loads at about 50c max. If Vista is still showing 2.6GHz then try a frech install. It may have a setting somewhere that is stuck.

 

[Hellboy]

Have you replaced the thermal paste...

The chip maybe throttling.. You also may need to replace the fan and heatsink as the 2.6 may not be good enough.

Also have you upgraded the bios on the motherboard.

The powersupply could be the problem..

Good luck and let us all know.

 

[kg4icg]

Question is did you put ddr400 in or are you using ddr333 or ddr266. On P4's it matters what speed your ram is, or check your ram settings and make sure they didn't get reset in the bios. I have a p4 3.0 ghz still sitting around here but it's on a DFI LanParty Pro875B motherboard.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Question is did you put ddr400 in or are you using ddr333 or ddr266. On P4's it matters what speed your ram is.

In his first post it says he has 2GB of PC 3200 DDR which is DDR 400. I have 2GB of it too in my old machine.

On that note, make sure the memory is set to DDR 400.

 

[kg4icg]

I tried to edit but it didn't take, I saw that after i read further, I don't think the 865 chipset for socket 478 pins handled the 3 ghz and above cpu's well. My p4 3 ghz chip is operating on a 875 chipset board which I still have behind me not doing anything at all at the moment.

 

[jimmysmitty]

It does. My old mobo is a Asus P4P800 with a i865PE chipset and it supports up to the 3.4GHz P4 EE which I have running in it right now.

The i875 chipset was mainly for Prescott based P4s.

 

[kg4icg]

Talking about the 478 p4's not the 775 ones

 

[abasoufiane]

I strongly believe it has to do with the MB bios, you should update your motherboard so it would support your new cpu.

the other possibiliy is a fresh install of windows, since windows manager show your cpu at 2.6 ghz. (this is the old clock, i don't think it's a mere coincidence).

Try to update your bios first, i do not think that's your powersupply's fault.

 

[apache_lives]

1) 50-55ºc idle in the bios is normal for a northwood
2) MSI makes rubbish so expect this
3) sorry about everyone else who didnt read what you had (PC3200 ram aka 400mhz DDR) and the fact that you used AS5 etc
4) 865/875 boards - some were northwood only (had an Intel branded one even)
5) There are 3.4ghz NON EE (Northwood AND Prescott) S478 cpus

now for my questions and answers:
Did you add, or re-apply (fresh) the thermal paste?
The HSF - did you use the 2.6C stock cooler or the 3.2C (copper based) cooler? or another aftermarket one?
What brand and model is your PSU?

some solutions to try:
set everything in the bios manually, ram to 1:1 or "200" or "400" setting (depending on bios etc), and timings to what they should be (usually 3-4-4-8 or 2.5-3-3-8), ram vcore to 2.6 or "+0.1", FSB etc

reset the cmos and re-apply all the settings etc

 

[jimmysmitty]

Talking about the 478 p4's not the 775 ones

So am I. Which is why I mentioned my mobo. Its a 478 not a 775. I built that machine back in 2003 whn 478 was the top of the line from intel and the mobo I got was the best Asus had.

The i865PE chipset was top of the line until the 875. It supported every Northwood based P4 and all Prescotts (if the manufacutre updated the BIOS) on 478.

1) 50-55ºc idle in the bios is normal for a northwood
2) MSI makes rubbish so expect this
3) sorry about everyone else who didnt read what you had (PC3200 ram aka 400mhz DDR) and the fact that you used AS5 etc
4) 865/875 boards - some were northwood only (had an Intel branded one even)
5) There are 3.4ghz NON EE (Northwood AND Prescott) S478 cpus

now for my questions and answers:
Did you add, or re-apply (fresh) the thermal paste?
The HSF - did you use the 2.6C stock cooler or the 3.2C (copper based) cooler? or another aftermarket one?
What brand and model is your PSU?

some solutions to try:
set everything in the bios manually, ram to 1:1 or "200" or "400" setting (depending on bios etc), and timings to what they should be (usually 3-4-4-8 or 2.5-3-3-8), ram vcore to 2.6 or "+0.1", FSB etc

reset the cmos and re-apply all the settings etc

I see. There was only one Northwood based 3.4GHz CPU probably why I never saw it for sale as much. The rest were Prescott based (90nm process).

50-55c is not normal even in BIOS for a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 C. With my stock cooler it ran at about 38-40c idle and in BIOS and could hit almost 60c load. With a Zalman 9500 it idles 32c and 50c load.

I agree to setting the timings and everything manually. A CMOS clear might be the best route to start and then set everything up again.

 

[apache_lives]

So am I. Which is why I mentioned my mobo. Its a 478 not a 775. I built that machine back in 2003 whn 478 was the top of the line from intel and the mobo I got was the best Asus had.

The i865PE chipset was top of the line until the 875. It supported every Northwood based P4 and all Prescotts (if the manufacutre updated the BIOS) on 478.



I see. There was only one Northwood based 3.4GHz CPU probably why I never saw it for sale as much. The rest were Prescott based (90nm process).

50-55c is not normal even in BIOS for a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 C. With my stock cooler it ran at about 38-40c idle and in BIOS and could hit almost 60c load. With a Zalman 9500 it idles 32c and 50c load.

I agree to setting the timings and everything manually. A CMOS clear might be the best route to start and then set everything up again.

Depends how off the temp readings are! All the ASUS and Albatron motherboards i had read around that mark (Australian, non aircon temps mind you), on the desktop the software etc detected ~38 idle etc - there all off by something.

865 and 875 were released around the same time, one was high end, one was main stream (865) and lacked PAT (although ASUS figured out how to enable it on the 865 anyhow and so did the rest etc).

Its not up to the bios to support a cpu, its the VRM design, followed by the chipset capabilities and bios (chipset may not support a high fsb but still run, or the bios will guess some safe settings for fsb etc - iv seen a 845PE board run a 2.6C @ 2.13 aok, same as an old intel 478 board with sdr ram run a 3.2c @ 1.6 including HT!)

BTW i think you mean best MSI board, not ASUS right? ASUS would have been a much wiser option...

 

[jimmysmitty]

^Thats why I linked the mobos CPU support list. It shows support on his mobo for the 3.2GHz Northwood P4.