VooDooD 0 Posted January 6, 2000 I know you've probably answered this a million times, but can someone help me getting Win2k 2195 working at a satisfactory speed? My system is thus : Dual P3-500's on QDI Brilliant X4 with onboard LAN + SCSI 512Mb RAM 5 x 4.5Gb UW SCSI's 10x IDE DVD (Aopen) 48x IDE CD (AOpen) Yamaha CRW6416S CDRW (SCSI) Plextor 16X SCSI Reader Archive 2Gb DAT Matrox MGA400 Max SBLive Hauppauge WinTV Radio Creative Encore DVD Card LS120 IDE Zip Assuming that none of the external items which I haven't bother to list wouldn't affect the speed maybe someone could enlighten me as to why Win2K runs like a dog? Menu fades/wipes are so slow that you can see each frame passing and the system isn't fast enough to be useful. I've read about possible problems with SMP and SBLive!, but am wondering whether having the NIC on the same IRQ as the soundcard (can't move them) is causing a problem the sound stutters when the network is being used. Do I need to do a reinstall and sort out PCI steering or am I missing something obvious? I'm wondering whether I just have too much stuff in/attached to the PC to make Win2K a viable choice of OS... Share this post Link to post
SHS 0 Posted January 6, 2000 How are slots setup Matrox MGA400 Max "AGP" SBLive "pci slot 1,2,3,4" ? Hauppauge WinTV Radio "pci slot 1,2,3,4" ? Creative Encore DVD Card "pci slot 1,2,3,4" ? PnP OS "YES or NO" Share this post Link to post
VooDooD 0 Posted January 6, 2000 It's G400 - AGP DVD - PCI3 SBLive - PCI2 Hauppauge - PCI1 PNP OS is set to on. Incidently, when installing, Win2K reports my bios as not being ACPI compliant and therefore I have it turned off. I've tried changing the PC type to Standard PC, and once PCI Steering is turned off, everthing seems to work fine. However, to use both CPU's I obviously have to have a Multiprocessor kernel.... The ACPI one hangs the machine at boot up and the MPS one is sloooooooooowwwww. Share this post Link to post
SHS 0 Posted January 7, 2000 G400 - AGP DVD - PCI3 SBLive - PCI2 Hauppauge - PCI1 Hmmm this dosen't look rigth above Is this way ? G400 - AGP DVD - PCI1 SBLive - PCI2 Hauppauge - PCI3 EMTPY - PCI4 EMTPY - ISA1 EMTPY - ISA2 I do it this way G400 - AGP EMTPY - PCI1 DVD - PCI2 SBLive - PCI3 Hauppauge - PCI4 EMTPY - ISA1 EMTPY - ISA2 that way DVD is not on top Video card Share this post Link to post
sailbrdr 0 Posted January 7, 2000 pretty sure that PCI1 and AGP can easily conflict with certain BIOS's. try re arranging slots. And your using SMP kernel with the drivers and not having problems... if so i need to reinstall 2k. Someone said WIN2k beta drivers were out... where, creative hasnt updated the sblive! section of their site since november last i checked Share this post Link to post
VooDooD 0 Posted January 7, 2000 On the QDI mainboard, PCI1 is listed as the slot next to ISA1. I do have a gap between the AGP card and the DVD. I'm going to do a total reinstall today, including 98SE, so I'll move the cards around a bit to see if that helps. Share this post Link to post
YuppieScum 0 Posted January 7, 2000 The best way to check out this kid of prob is to remove all the non-essential stuff (Sound, DVD, etc), fire the box up, check it out, then start adding one piece at a time until it goes wrong... Also, don't forget that the current G400 drivers suck donkey balls... Share this post Link to post
VooDooD 0 Posted January 8, 2000 Well I've decided to give up on trying to get the system to work with the SBLive and SMP. I've changed the computer type to Standard PC and although I've lost one of the CPU's the system is working fine. Hopefully, when Creative decide that the time is right, they'll release some drivers that work with SMP. Just have to wait and see. Share this post Link to post
YuppieScum 0 Posted January 8, 2000 Don't forget, the native drivers work fine with SMP - it's Liveware that doesn't. Share this post Link to post
VooDooD 0 Posted January 8, 2000 Not on my system. It runs rediculously slowly. Share this post Link to post
Shrink 0 Posted January 9, 2000 VooDooD - As I have said in a couple of other threads, with the NT4 liveware and drivers hacked so that they work, my system was benching at 33% of its' normal speed in Winbench '99 (14 vs. 44 cpu marks) and Wintune 98. I removed liveware, changed the hal back to acpi, and reinstalled the wdm sblive drivers and the system was speedy again, not to mention using hibernation. I have a single PIII-500 on a BX chipset mobo. ------------------ Shrink 92% of the things we worry about don't happen - but the other 8% DO! Share this post Link to post
ThC 129 0 Posted January 9, 2000 Hmm everyone complains about speed decreases with live!ware. I havent had any change in the speed of my box. besides a little bit at startup. Im running 2195 and Live!ware 3 CD drivers Share this post Link to post
Shrink 0 Posted January 9, 2000 ... maybe it's the November drivers? That's what I was using. Share this post Link to post
ThC 129 0 Posted January 9, 2000 Well when I 1st installed the drivers, it took me about 3 or 4 maybe more times to get it working. Well after I got build 2195 and since I could do it the 1st try without messing it up I reformatted my system and reinstalled everything using the instructions from my head and now they are fine and dont cause my computer to get a blue screen of death whenever I reboot. PC Config Mobo:asus piib processor ii 400 ram:128 megs 1 single dimm hd's:10 gig maxtor (primary) & 10 gig WD OS:Windows 2K build 2195 with time crack [This message has been edited by ThC 129 (edited 09 January 2000).] [This message has been edited by ThC 129 (edited 09 January 2000).] Share this post Link to post
VooDooD 0 Posted January 9, 2000 OK then. Maybe it's something else on my system. I was using a totally clean install of 2195 with only the G400Max drivers (which work fine on my system) and the native SBLive! WDM installed. I never even attempted to install LW as the system was running so badly. Incidently, when installing, 2195 informs me that I have a non-compliant ACPI bios and therefore I have it turned off (until QDI release the new one) so the machine is detected from a clean install as an MPS Multiprocessor system rather than an ACPI one. Could this be the problem? I wouldn't have thought so, but if SMP is meant to work with the SBLive WDM it can't be the soundcard can it???? Confused....... Share this post Link to post
sailbrdr 0 Posted January 10, 2000 Just curious have you turned off PCI steering from the hundreds of other posts ive heard that can help. Plus have you tested Quake3 SMP without the Live, cause i think it might be the G400. My system: Dual PII 300 on SuperMicro P6DLS 256MB RAM UW SCSI w/ Seagate Barracuda 9.1Gb and Yamaha 6x4x16 CDRW IDE- two hard drives plus DVD Viper 770 Ultra with 3.66 drivers SB Live! Value Kingston 100TX SMP works fine using chameleon's drivers or the WDM drivers. its the 3.66 drivers im curious about, i might chage to the 3.55 from ASUS (betaos.com) they ran stably even in RC2 Share this post Link to post
VooDooD 0 Posted January 10, 2000 I've tried it with and without PCI steering. It makes no difference. I've tried SMP with the SBLive! disabled and it didn't seem to make any difference either. As far as it goes, I'm starting to think that there could be a number of reasons for my problems. The main one, I think, is that my QDI BX4 isn't properly ACPI compliant. I spent hours changing mobo resources over the weekend with varying results and the best solution so far has been to not allow the PnP OS to take over hardware control. I'm sure the other things would be causing probs as well so I'm going to stay with the system running as a UniProcessor one until I have a new bios and hopefully proper drivers. I think there's just too much hardware sharing the same resources on my machine and the OS can't properly cope.... Who knows though? Share this post Link to post