Win2K 2195, SMP and SBLive!

[VooDooD 0]

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...

[SHS 0]

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"

[VooDooD 0]

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.

[SHS 0]

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

[sailbrdr 0]

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

[VooDooD 0]

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.

[YuppieScum 0]

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...

[VooDooD 0]

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.

[YuppieScum 0]

Don't forget, the native drivers work fine with SMP - it's Liveware that doesn't.

[VooDooD 0]

Not on my system.

 

It runs rediculously slowly.

[Shrink 0]

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!

[ThC 129 0]

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

[Shrink 0]

... maybe it's the November drivers? That's what I was using.

[ThC 129 0]

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).]

[VooDooD 0]

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.......

[sailbrdr 0]

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

[VooDooD 0]

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?