GA-970A-UD3 + AMD FX-6100 - slower than expected

[EZR718]

Hi all.

I'm new to the board, as everyone can see! I hope my info in my signature is OK.

I recently had to replace my trusty old GA-N650SLI-DS4 / Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 combo after many years of good service. The MB, after close to 6 years and very little power-off time slowly died on me. I kept my drives; but got this new board and CPU combo, and also (of course) new RAM.

I haven't made any attempts at overclocking yet. I used to have lots of time to do that kind of stuff; but not anymore. The older system wasn't overclocked either; I'm just saying everything runs on stock speeds.

My experiences with the new system have been "interesting", to say the least. Looking at all the specs when I ordered it I figured things would run (significantly) faster; but that's not 100 percent so. I'm not much of a gamer anymore; but I do have an old Steam account. All of the games in that account - though they're not the latest and greatest - run a whole lot faster than on the old system, even with all graphics setting set to maximum.

What doesn't run faster, and in fact runs slower, are my regular Windows programs. One of those programs, for example, calculates statistics from many thousands of data points. On the new PC the statistics are indeed rendered considerably faster; but the time it takes to display the "select statistic" menu alone is much longer. Puzzling!

Another example comes from a different program. This one decodes sound files, recorded from on-air transmissions. That process is quite demanding of the CPU; and the new PC takes significantly longer to do that, as opposed to the old machine. Doesn't sound right, does it?

Other things that I have noticed is that it takes quite a bit longer just to redraw windows and screens. I know I don't have the latest and greatest graphics card (don't need it anymore) but again that is just strange, very strange.

Another observation is that Windows loads quite fast, faster than before, and gets to the desktop faster. After that, however, it takes a bit to get a program to run, or even get a file requester from inside one of those programs when it's running. I've run drive tests for errors; but every one of them seems to be in perfect shape.

And here's something that's really spooky: when running programs that address a whole lot of hardware such as CPU-Z or AMD overdrive (again, not overclocking, just snooping) the clock slows down like crazy! From 3 or 4 seconds after a minute to 10 or 15 minutes a day! And I can clearly see that those programs seem to "interfere" with the PC running, because just about every other program all but dies, becomes totally unresponsive. Once I shut down those program the clock behaves again.

I've got enough gray hairs as it is. Does anyone have any insights? A fix, a hint, anything will be highly appreciated...

Pardon my lengthy post - brevity is not one of my stronger points.

Erik

[autotech]

Are you running Windows 8 if you are thats normal. One thing you can do to try to help is turn off any power saving features in bios.  I personally dont like the fx chips asd the code is different than the Phenom chips and in real world working the Phenom outdo the new amd chips.

[EZR718]

Hi there,

No, I'm running Windows XP 32 bit, SP3 with all the MS updates.

Are there any power saving features in the BIOS, in particular, that I should be disabling?

Thanks,

Erik

[Vezina]

I am a user of 970-UD3 ,i use a FX 4100 and i am a user of the old good XP SP3 with them  

The features that you may need to disable in BIOS are APM ,Turbo Core ,C1E and even C6.C6 is the parking core feature that XP may not be aware of anyway.

Also try with CnQ on and off and see if anything changes.

I recommend you to also use a fresh XP install under IDE Mode , but careful to where you connect the HDD,to what SATA port.Avoid the SATA ports 4 and 5 the last 2 which can be independently switched in BIOS from AHCI to IDE.This 2 ports may run slower than the other 4.

If you want to use CnQ though make sure you have the AMD CnQ driver refresh from 2008 as the one available on the AMD site is an older version.You may find it on Softpedia.

Overall the system seems to react better under Windows 7 so i would say that switching from XP could be a good thing to do.

If this doesn t bring any outcome you can very well turn off a module in BIOS and overclock the other 2 (X2 Cores) to higher clocks.You may be able to achieve over 4Ghz by overclocking with the stock voltage and CPU cooler with performance increases.

If the board is version 1.0-1.2 use latest BIOS.

You also need optimized software for multicore advantage of the FX cores.

[EZR718]

Hello Vezina,

Thank you very much for your very detailed reply and suggestions. The last time I really studied the meaning of all of those BIOS options was many years ago; when I was still overclocking my machines. But life got too busy; and with that  my overclocking days were over, because of lack of time. So I appreciate your help very much.

Switching to Windows 7 is - at least for now - not an option. I have two expensive pieces of hardware in the PCI slots that still don't have drivers for Windows 7. That may happen in the future though; I am keeping a close eye on it. Yes, I could replace those devices with Win7 compatible devices; but they are expensive. I may try a fresh Win7 install, however, just to see if anything changes.

But first I'll try your recommendations regarding the BIOS options. I will certainly let you know what happens.

And yesterday I saw that Gigabyte has a new BIOS for this board; but it's a beta (F8a). I updated my BIOS to F7 after I received the board; but I'll wait until the F8 becomes "official".

I still have some work today tonight and I will be out of town all day tomorrow; but I will try all of your BIOS recommendations on Sunday.

Have a good weekend!

Erik

[EZR718]

Hi Vezina,

I did what you suggested earlier. I disabled APM, C1E, C6 and CoolandQuiet. None of that helped, at least not that I can see.

What I can't find is "Turbo Core". Could that have a different name in the F7 BIOS?

Something I forgot to mention is that even though my Kingston memory is rated as DDR3 1600 the motherboard insist on using it as 1333 MHz. It's not in the supported list, unfortunately. I wonder if that could be (part of) the problem.

I may try a complete reinstall of XP; but that will take many days to do (the backups!).

Do you have any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Erik

[Vezina]

RAM at 1600 Mhz may help ,but it s not something revolutionary on the FX chips.
 
If the XP was not reinstalled after the hardware change then i suggest you to do a reinstall ,it will help in some amount.
If you already did a OS reinstall after the upgrade i don t think it s necessary.

The "Turbo" stuff is in the first section of the BIOS ,the "M.I.T." one ,the one with voltages and RAM speeds .If the Turbo field doesn t show up press Ctrl+F1 in the main BIOS menu for advanced settings and re-enter.
It has been observed that by disabling this boost helps with the overall performance in some synthetic applications ,strange but ...

What are the RAM specifications for the 1600 Mhz by SPD ?!
You can set DRAM voltage to 1,6V for the RAM and lower the timings a little like 10-10-10-30-40 and see what happens if the motherboard watchdog reverts it to 1333 Mhz.
The RAM speed can be forced manually in the MIT BIOS section.