Problems with XP

[gkozun]

Via C3 600 mhz processor
248 mb RAM
integrated 3D VGA- VIA 8631 (8mb)

I have recently purchased a new 40 Gb hard drive & Installed windows XP pro on it. Since re-installing FS2002, I have experienced extremely poor/choppy Sim performance. Everything ran fine when the sim was run with windows 98 SE. These problems are only occuring with Win XP. I reformatted my old 4Gb hard drive, did a clean install of Win. 98SE & FS 2002 & performance is fine. Anybody know what the problem is? Will more RAM fix it? Need a cheap fix!

[wsieffert]

http://www.flightsim.com/dcforum/DCForumID10/43709.html#0

W. Sieffert

[gkozun]

I have already downloaded & Installed all the updated drivers, still no luck. My problem is not the same as the Dell 8300. I am not getting the Error report mesage, just extremely poor/choppy performance

[The_Association]

WinXP is a very demanding OS and I wouldn't recommend running it with anything less than 512 MB of RAM.

Couple that with the fact that you have a rather low-end VIA Cyrix C3 processor and you are pretty much asking for trouble.

My advice is to keep things the way they are, or just save your cash for a new PC if you really want to run XP.

Upgrading the RAM to 512 MB might help, but that processor will bottleneck you to no end.

[bigal1977uk]

Well i totally agree with you Tim.

Pretty much what i would have told him also.


Spot on as Usual....... (just returning the compliment) ;-)


EDIT, Nice one Tim.....3Ghz from the cpu :-) Have you moved on to Water cooling or is that air cooled still?

[The_Association]

That's still air cooling. ;-) I got to 2.8 without any need to bump the voltages. 3.0 came from only a slight bump for stability, so I don't have any problems with heat at all.

I imagine that anything beyond 3.2 will require H20 though. You're facing the upper limit of the Northwood architecture beyond that, so from there on out it's the luck of the draw.

[bigal1977uk]

Would love to see how far you actually take that cpu ;-) (if you plan to take it any higher that is)

Im not 100% sure on this being an AMD kind of fellow but do the P4's have a Stepping ID somewhere on the chip?
If so, do you remember what it was at all Tim?

[The_Association]

Not sure about the stepping ID, but I'm sure it's there somewhere. There were a bunch of tiny, hard to read numbers on the die when I first looked at the processor after I released it from the death grip of Intel's air-tight packaging. What I was most concerned with however, was where the CPU was made - Costa Rica or Malaysia and what batch it came from. The Malaysian P4's tend to o/c somewhat better than the Costa Rican P4's, at least according to HardOCP.com. The batch number is also important since every batch of silicon is a bit different from the others.

I don't plan on taking the CPU any higher until I get a new hard drive. Overclocking that high with my current old, junky hard drives would pretty much be asking for data corruption. I'm also debating the pros and cons of going H20 at this point in time. ;-)

[bigal1977uk]

Thanks for that info on the P4 tim.

It must be that the Malaysians have a more strict quality control than the Costa's. I wonder if your chip just missed out on being a certified 2.8 by a hair's bredth ;-) :D

Well, i'll most likley (hopefully) be getting a very similar system to yours about April time next year so you'll proberbly have to put up with me asking you for a few tips on tweaking that setup when i get mine too :7

Hope you don't mind ;-)

Cheers Tim.

[The_Association]

Of course I don't mind! That's what I'm here for, right? :-)