Hello,

i have some severe trouble with my athlon xp 2400+. After switching from a 1.6 Ghz Duron, graphics performances didn't improve at all. Games seem a bit smoother when there is some haze and fume on the screen... but there are no changes to fps rate.

I'm almost desperate and thinking about returning the cpu to my vendor.

my system:
video card: MSI GeForce 4 MX4000-T64 (64 megs)
mainboard: ASRock K7S41GX (133 mhz) (has onboard video chip, but since I have a nvidia card plugged into my agp port I hope that doesn't matter)
ram: 384 ddr 266

I use Slackware-current with a 2.6.8.1 kernel.
version of Nvidia drivers: 6116


thanks in advance,

dr prokt

Graphics performance will largely depend on your video card, not your CPU. You could buy the fastest, bleeding edge CPU in the world, but if you've only got an average video card in your system, you basically will continue to have average video performance. I'd say that if you want a better FPS score, you should consider looking into upgrading your video card. -- J.W.

is that 133 mhz the speed of your Northbridge chipset. If it is then that is slow compared to todays standard.


But J.W is right game performance has more of a correlation to your video adapter than it does to your processor. Especially with the way games are coded today, to take advantage of the latest video card features.

is the performance bad in all games you attempt to play?

Hello,

thanks for your replies.

The performance of games isn't that bad. I usually get rates at 100 fps but that's what I got with my Duron too.
Some games like "racer" run quite better (smoother) with the athlon xp, the frame rate didn't change though (eg it says 20 fps, but runs smoothly).

But when I run glxgears I get rates at 500 to 600 fps and that's what I got with my Duron.
A friend of mine who has a similar system (just more ram (about one gig)), gets 1300 fps in glxgears. I don't understand this. He uses Debian sarge.



> is that 133 mhz the speed of your Northbridge chipset. If it is then that is slow compared to todays standard.
my mainboard's manual says:

North Bridge: SIS 741 GX, FSB@333Mhz but I think this is the maximum value and BIOS says that it currently runs at 133 Mhz.

btw, in order to get a high rate running glxgears, do you think it is more important to have a lot of RAM or a better CPU ?

If you are using any variant of DDR memory than that is too slow. unless your bios is reporting the value without multiplying by 2.

my bios says

total memory: 384 mb
bank 1: 128 mb/133 mhz (ddr266)
bank 2: 256 mb / 133 mhz (ddr266)

Im not sure if your chipset supports ddr 333 it should if it can run at 333. But im not sure if faster memory will make a big difference in your case.

but I don't know if I just can set it to 333 Mhz when my RAM wants 133..

What do you mean by 133MHz ? (PCI bus?) That boards FSB should be running at 333MHz
That is the speed an Athlon xp 2400's FSB should be running at.
Also your video card is getting quite old. I have a <50 USD ATI Radeo 9250 with 128 and in
glxgears I get at least 900 fps.

But the motherboard I also have my doubts about. I built a Windows computer for a neighbour using this m/b
and initially I tried to make a double boot machine with Ubuntu in the other partition. Ubuntu
never found the sound hardware on it. It did better than Windows - it did not find the network
hardware, sound hardware or display hardware until I installed the drivers by hand. I suppose I
could have done some configuration to get it to work but I didn't have time.

Also, I read about your memory. If your memory is 133MHz, you definitely need to upgrade it as well.
I got a 512 Mb/400MHz module yesterday for 42€. If you are in the US, you can probably get it cheaper.
Your processors ability to read the memory at the speed it was designed for is crucial for your
whole system's performance. I am running 400MHz memory in a 333 MHz system no problem.

Hi Ekkume,

I have already upgraded memory and video card and I'm quite satisfied with my computer's performance.
I did some benchmarking (gentoo stage 1) on my 2400+ and I get quite the same results as other people running a similar configuration.


Regards,

Doktor Prokt

Great! Good to see you have your system working well now.

Ekkume