performance issues

[Dave]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Hi,

I have a pretty new PC (AMD 64 3500, 1Gb crucial ballastix,
2xdiamondmax 9 SATA 80Gb HDDs, Asus A8V-E motherboard, Nvidia gfx,
sound on mobo) with Win XP installed (fully patched up). I've been
getting curiously bad performance at times playing 160kb/sec MP3s in
windows media player and winamp 5. Basically, MP3s play fine in both
programs except when I open another piece of software. For example, MS
Word, Matlab etc... it's like the HDD takes over whilst the other
software is opening and the MP3s stutter along slowly with
interruptions for about 10 secs while this is happening. In fact it
isn't just confined to mp3s--- sometimes when opening programs even the
mouse cursor stutters across the screen whilst HDD activity is ongoing.
Usually these are short 'bursts' but the way I see it there is no way
that low level things like mouse should be affected. Perhaps something
to do with the SATA drivers or something.

Normally I would think nothing of this other than 'windows is not
allocating resources very well', and I would shrug and put up with it.
However, on my other PC (a 400MHz celeron with 512Mb RAM and 40Gb IDE
HDD also with winxp) running winamp 3, performance is absolutely
flawless playing MP3s. I can open other programs while they are playing
and there is no interruption whatsoever.

Weird eh? The new, flashy PC being outperformed by the old clunky one?

Any ideas what could be causing this??!

Thanks
Dave

 

[Dave]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

I've run HDtach and get very poor sata performance (4 MB/sec rather
than the 35-60 expected!!). Any ideas why this might be?
Dave

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Your "on-board" sound chip is using CPU cycles to play the MP3's, and you
are hearing and seeing the results. You need to install a sound card to
take the audio load off the CPU.

--
DaveW



"Dave" <davehowey@hotmail.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1116494131.596515.88060@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Hi,
>
> I have a pretty new PC (AMD 64 3500, 1Gb crucial ballastix,
> 2xdiamondmax 9 SATA 80Gb HDDs, Asus A8V-E motherboard, Nvidia gfx,
> sound on mobo) with Win XP installed (fully patched up). I've been
> getting curiously bad performance at times playing 160kb/sec MP3s in
> windows media player and winamp 5. Basically, MP3s play fine in both
> programs except when I open another piece of software. For example, MS
> Word, Matlab etc... it's like the HDD takes over whilst the other
> software is opening and the MP3s stutter along slowly with
> interruptions for about 10 secs while this is happening. In fact it
> isn't just confined to mp3s--- sometimes when opening programs even the
> mouse cursor stutters across the screen whilst HDD activity is ongoing.
> Usually these are short 'bursts' but the way I see it there is no way
> that low level things like mouse should be affected. Perhaps something
> to do with the SATA drivers or something.
>
> Normally I would think nothing of this other than 'windows is not
> allocating resources very well', and I would shrug and put up with it.
> However, on my other PC (a 400MHz celeron with 512Mb RAM and 40Gb IDE
> HDD also with winxp) running winamp 3, performance is absolutely
> flawless playing MP3s. I can open other programs while they are playing
> and there is no interruption whatsoever.
>
> Weird eh? The new, flashy PC being outperformed by the old clunky one?
>
> Any ideas what could be causing this??!
>
> Thanks
> Dave
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Dave wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a pretty new PC (AMD 64 3500, 1Gb crucial ballastix,
> 2xdiamondmax 9 SATA 80Gb HDDs, Asus A8V-E motherboard, Nvidia gfx,
> sound on mobo) with Win XP installed (fully patched up). I've been
> getting curiously bad performance at times playing 160kb/sec MP3s in
> windows media player and winamp 5. Basically, MP3s play fine in both
> programs except when I open another piece of software. For example, MS
> Word, Matlab etc... it's like the HDD takes over whilst the other
> software is opening and the MP3s stutter along slowly with
> interruptions for about 10 secs while this is happening. In fact it
> isn't just confined to mp3s--- sometimes when opening programs even the
> mouse cursor stutters across the screen whilst HDD activity is ongoing.
> Usually these are short 'bursts' but the way I see it there is no way
> that low level things like mouse should be affected. Perhaps something
> to do with the SATA drivers or something.
>
> Normally I would think nothing of this other than 'windows is not
> allocating resources very well', and I would shrug and put up with it.
> However, on my other PC (a 400MHz celeron with 512Mb RAM and 40Gb IDE
> HDD also with winxp) running winamp 3, performance is absolutely
> flawless playing MP3s. I can open other programs while they are playing
> and there is no interruption whatsoever.
>
> Weird eh? The new, flashy PC being outperformed by the old clunky one?
>
> Any ideas what could be causing this??!
>
> Thanks
> Dave
>

Since I read your other post... No 4MB/SEC sata performance is terrible,
absolutely terrible. My other thought that was that it was a
PCI-latency issue, but it sounds like you have a defective drive or
defective drive controller if its slowing down to that rate.

Run the drive diagnostics and see what is going on, maybe it's just as
simple as RMAing a hard drive.

 

[Dave]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

It's definitely not the sound chip on the motherboard. It's the
harddrive. Something is going wrong... I've run HDtach on both my
drives (80Mb SATA Diamondmax 9)... one is fine (35-60Mb/sec) and this
one runs at 4Mb/sec with 100% CPU utilization. That's why the sound is
stuttering....

Dave

 

[Spajky]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On 19 May 2005 04:17:26 -0700, "Dave" <davehowey@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

>I've run HDtach and get very poor sata performance (4 MB/sec rather
>than the 35-60 expected!!). Any ideas why this might be?
>Dave

enable DMA on those HDs!
--
Regards , SPAJKY ®
mail addr. @ my site @ http://www.spajky.vze.com
3rd Ann.: - "Tualatin OC-ed / BX-Slot1 / inaudible setup!"

 

[Spajky]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Thu, 19 May 2005 16:03:18 -0700, "DaveW" <none@zero.org> wrote:

>Your "on-board" sound chip is using CPU cycles to play the MP3's, and you
>are hearing and seeing the results. You need to install a sound card to
>take the audio load off the CPU.

IMHO no one cheap sound card has an Mp3 decoding chip; is allways done
by main Cpu ! short stuttering is always present on certain heavier
tasks CPU is doing if the machine is not a 2cpu one /dual core/; HT on
P4 may help a bit; with normal work should not be stuttering sound ..
(loading/unloafing modem driver at dial up connection on soft modems
for example is doing this for a second or less ..)
--
Regards , SPAJKY ®
mail addr. @ my site @ http://www.spajky.vze.com
3rd Ann.: - "Tualatin OC-ed / BX-Slot1 / inaudible setup!"

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On 20 May 2005 00:00:02 -0700, "Dave"
<davehowey@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:

>It's definitely not the sound chip on the motherboard. It's the
>harddrive. Something is going wrong... I've run HDtach on both my
>drives (80Mb SATA Diamondmax 9)... one is fine (35-60Mb/sec) and this
>one runs at 4Mb/sec with 100% CPU utilization. That's why the sound is
>stuttering....
>
>Dave


Have you tried taking off the connector, examining both it
and the socket for it, and cleaning off the contacts?

Also you might try swapping the connectors to see if same
(or other) drive then works ok.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

In article <1116494131.596515.88060@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, Dave
says...

> Any ideas what could be causing this??!
>
Welcome to the wonderful world of the 133MBit/sec limit of the PCI bus.
The 133MBit is shared by the IDE controller, the SATA controller, the
onboard sound/lan and anything plugged into a PCI slot. If you've got
more than one thing accessing data over the PCI bus then it gets a
share of that 133MBit.




--
Conor

"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." O.Osbourne.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

In article <1116572402.187950.167060@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
Dave says...
> It's definitely not the sound chip on the motherboard. It's the
> harddrive. Something is going wrong... I've run HDtach on both my
> drives (80Mb SATA Diamondmax 9)... one is fine (35-60Mb/sec) and this
> one runs at 4Mb/sec with 100% CPU utilization. That's why the sound is
> stuttering....
>
The sound is stuttering because the PCI bus is flooded.


--
Conor

"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." O.Osbourne.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"Conor" <conor.turton@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1cf81720f1d3016b989bbb@news.individual.net...
> In article <1116494131.596515.88060@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, Dave
> says...
>
>> Any ideas what could be causing this??!
>>
> Welcome to the wonderful world of the 133MBit/sec limit of the PCI bus.
> The 133MBit is shared by the IDE controller, the SATA controller, the
> onboard sound/lan and anything plugged into a PCI slot. If you've got
> more than one thing accessing data over the PCI bus then it gets a
> share of that 133MBit.
>
>
>
>


Surely that's 133MBytes/sec?

--
Derek

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On Fri, 20 May 2005 16:48:24 +0100, Conor
<conor.turton@gmail.com> wrote:

>In article <1116494131.596515.88060@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, Dave
>says...
>
>> Any ideas what could be causing this??!
>>
>Welcome to the wonderful world of the 133MBit/sec limit of the PCI bus.
>The 133MBit is shared by the IDE controller, the SATA controller, the
>onboard sound/lan and anything plugged into a PCI slot. If you've got
>more than one thing accessing data over the PCI bus then it gets a
>share of that 133MBit.

It is not necessary for all southbridge integral features to
be on the PCI bus, and the board has PCI express.
It may well be some _other_ devices on the PCI bus though,
perhaps GbE and firewire as I suspect that board has
discrete chips for those features.

The onboard audio probably has quite high sensitivity to bus
latency though, if the following latency tweak tool doesn't
provide relief then an alternative might be an add-on sound
card (even then perhaps the following latency adjustment
tool might help) or otherwise disabling the firewire and/or
Gigabit network adapter if those devices are not needed (and
if they are indeed on PCI rather than PCI Express).

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=951

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Derek Baker wrote:

> "Conor" <conor.turton@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:MPG.1cf81720f1d3016b989bbb@news.individual.net...
>
>>In article <1116494131.596515.88060@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, Dave
>>says...
>>
>>
>>>Any ideas what could be causing this??!
>>>
>>
>>Welcome to the wonderful world of the 133MBit/sec limit of the PCI bus.
>>The 133MBit is shared by the IDE controller, the SATA controller, the
>>onboard sound/lan and anything plugged into a PCI slot. If you've got
>>more than one thing accessing data over the PCI bus then it gets a
>>share of that 133MBit.
>>
>>
>
> Surely that's 133MBytes/sec?
>

Yes, it's 133 MBytes/sec. And to hear these people talk you'd think no one
ever played an MP3 on a PC.

 

[Dave]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

>Yes, it's 133 MBytes/sec. And to hear these people talk you'd think no
one
>ever played an MP3 on a PC.

Right, I've figured it out.... thanks to HDtach (recommended, by the
way.. and the forums are good!). Windows XP had dropped from UDMA2 to
PIO. In other words, 100% CPU utilization and 4MB/s transfer speed from
harddrive to memory, instead of 35-60Mb/sec and 2% CPU! Try as I might,
I could not get it back to ultra DMA, so I've swapped the harddrives
round in my machine and the 'backup' drive (which don't use much) is
now the slow one.

Weird..
Dave