Strange problem inflicted by EasyTune

[backster]

I've just recently begun to overclock with EasyTune, something of which I was skeptical of for a while. I have a strange problem which I found directly linked to EasyTune..

I wanted to keep my clocks and voltages low for browsing the web and such, and only pump them up for gaming - to prolong the hardware life. So I would boot with a 2.8 overclock at stock voltages and keep the memory divider and timings at the same settings as I would use in my 3.0 overclock. Then I could open EasyTune and raise the FSB and voltages when I wanted to game. During the while I was doing this, a peculiar problem happened during game cutscenes - and only cutscenes - like the memories in Prototype or the storylines beginning before each level in COD4. The audio would crack, pop, and get out of sync with the video. ONLY during cutscenes. Now I had just added a hard drive which I thought was the cause, mainly because I rebooted the computer, unplugged the drive, went back to the game (without changing the clocks in EasyTune as I would normally you see), and the audio worked normally. So I figured the drive must be poorly grounded, and changed the power plugs around, booted back up (without using EasyTune again), and the problem was gone. Fantastic, I thought, it's fixed! To shorten a longer story, the problem came back (later when I used EasyTune) and I became horribly frustrated, changing timings, switching power plugs to no effect, not realizing the cause of the problem.

Alas, changing the clocks in BIOS create no ill audio effects in cutscenes, but changing to those exact clocks in EasyTune make the audio snap and crackle. Just thought I'd share my story with those of you who may be experiencing obscure problems and are using EasyTune.

--just found a nice big thread about similar problems using EasyTune over here

--after reading that another user noticed ETcall.exe having a marginal effect on latency here, this seems like a good explanation for the problem I was experiencing.

 

[bilbat]

EasyTune is a bug-ridden ill-supported POC! Do you really want to trust something as serious as your overclock to a piece of software that looks like a WalMart $20 kiddie tricycle plastic dash, written to spec in India, and translated to English by Taiwanese?

Notice, in your BIOS, at the bottom, the <F11> "Save CMOS to BIOS" - hit this, and you should get a menu that will show a number (the count varies by BIOS) of empty 'slots', each of which will store an entire set of BIOS parameters, to be re-loaded from the corresponding <F12> "Load CMOS from BIOS"; this is a wonderful overclocker's feature. What I do with it, is to save my 'baseline' working parameters, so if I change something that 'irritates' the board, and forces a reset of all the parameters to defaults, or, even worse, get so screwed up I need to do a 'clear CMOS', I can get back to my starting point with no effort, and without having to remember 85 separate settings! Another thing it prevents is two hours' troubleshooting, having forgotten a change to a crucial parameter - like, "wait a minute - didn't I have the Trd at seven?!" It's pretty self-explanatory, and I alway urge people to start right away by taking the time to give the 'slots' names that mean something: in two hours, "Try2" and "Try3" will not be very helpful, but "450@+10MCH" and "450@+15MCH" will! Another use is for 'green' settings; overclocks, as a rule, do not 'play well' with green features, such as 'down-clocking' and 'down-volting'; with the storage slots, you can set up one profile, say "Green", with all the settings at 'stock' values, and all the 'green' features enabled; another, say "Balls2Wall" with a full overclock, and all the 'green' stuff turned off... Another neat feature of this 'slot' system is, for most BIOS, the mechanism itself will keep track of which ones have booted successfully, and how many times (up to, I believe, a max of five)!

 

[backster]

EasyTune is a bug-ridden ill-supported POC! Do you really want to trust something as serious as your overclock to a piece of software that looks like a WalMart $20 kiddie tricycle plastic dash, written to spec in India, and translated to English by Taiwanese?

:lol: funny, I was just admiring that quote over at http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/250194-30-easy-tune-problems. That's damn good reasoning.

I actually do make use of the slots in the BIOS (very useful), but I wanted to save my hard drives the expense of starting and stopping. You make an extremely compelling point however, especially here:

Here is one part of the problem: there are three products; EasyTune 5, EasyTune 5 Pro, and EasyTune 6; most MOBOs are supported by only one of these - you can't just, thinking you are upgrading, pop in a different one; some (a very select few) will 'sorta' work with maybe two versions, and that's a very qualified 'sorta', because, to begin with, EasyTune, at its' best, only 'sorta' works. It's obviously way beyond the developers (probably the Elbonians) to keep the program/BIOS interface, which is really the 'heart' of the program's functionality, up to date; to make it able to discern MOBO/BIOS types, revisions, and levels; once a BIOS has been updated with a different register location/functionality - that part of EasyTune is forever broken - and you, the user, get to guess which part! Do your OC in the BIOS, and just junk it! The problem is (and this is endemic to the whole business, not just GB) that they are so busy/focused on next quarters' profits being dependent on new board releases (and just getting them working tolerably) chasing new technologies, that they don't really care about properly supporting the customers who already have their products, and are likely, through word of mouth (web) to pass along this failing to potential new cutomers, pre-purchase!

And I was using the incorrect version, but after weighing the importance of the hardware with the shittiness of this program I'm just gonna restrict overclocking to BIOS. I may test out EasyTune 5 - the version I should have been using, however as you wrote, it seems likely that new BIOS revisions (which I do apply) may not be completely functional with the EasyTune software, and I don't think anyone will argue Gigabyte's incompetence - especially in not updating EasyTune to fully support all overlcocking motherboards - that just seems lazy.

 

[bilbat]

that just seems lazy.

Well, to me it doesn't seem lazy, it seems just plain old stoooopid! Gigabyte would (as GM is finally finding out) be far ahead, if they were to cut the number of different motherboards they make by eighty or ninety percent, and then support the *** out of the remaining ones. No amount of glitzy advertising campaigns ("Ultra Durable - 50°C cooler!" - gimme a break, if anything on my MOBO was 50°C cooler than anything else, there'd be frost forming on it!) can ever remedy word-of-mouth regarding poor support - but the money-shuffling idiots with Princeton MBAs just don't get it, and the engineers are shut up in a closet somewhere trying to make their hundred and eight different products at least work, if often marginally!

 

[bilbat]

Just, out of curiosity, took a count - just for socket 775s, they support (well, actually, don't support) 40 Intel northbridges alone, with three to eight boards based on each one! Totally INSANE!! Is it any wonder they can't keep three versions of [not-so]EasyTune updated??