Many of you might know what I have done recently regarding my CPU. I've got a Pentium 4 3.0 HT and a 512MB PC3200 RAM stick, replacing my old Pentium 4 2.4GHz and the old 512MB PC2700 RAM stick. I thought I would gain a lot of speed with this upgrade (hence I could OC the CPU higher than I could with the old Northwood), but that is not what is happening.

First of all, right after the swapping, my Vista started being victim of random BSODs. One of the diagnostic wizards said I should update my motherboard BIOS (my mobo is an ASUS P4S800, with the 1009 revision BIOS rom at that time). So I went to the ASUS site and updated it. The BSODs are gone now. Everything was damn fine, the desktop enviroment was slightly faster. Then I went to my XP partition to beta-test NullDC when I noticed the friggin speed drop on the game I was testing (comparing to the speed I used to get with the old Northwood 2.4GHz). The speed cut was about 45%, none the less. I contacted drk||razi and we talked about it, it's not NullDC fault. Convinced it was something related to my new CPU, I downloaded the Intel Processor Frequency ID Utility and also the HT check utility. The Frequency ID utility wasn't able to recognize my CPU, and the HT Check utility gave me two errors (see attachments below). They are not recognizing this Prescott Processor! Windows' Device Manager recognize the "two" CPUs correctly (since I've enabled HT on my BIOS setup), and CPU-Z also recognizes my CPU (screenshot and LOG attached, and yeah, I even OC'ed the processor).

Checking those utilities' help, I was strongly advised to try another mobo BIOS. And that's what I did last night. Tried switching back to my mobo bios' default (revision 1008) and regained 10% of speed. But that's not enough, it is slower than my old Pentium 4 2.4GHz!

Could someone explain me what is happening? Why the performance decrease? Isn't my mobo handling things right? Any kind of help is EXTREMELY welcomed.

Static electricity? While swapping the memory??

Did you reinstall XP after getting the new processor? How does it run w/out the OC? What temperature is the new processor running at idle/load?

I would have expected at best a 25% speed increase primarily due to the higher clock rate. If you look at reviews the Northwood isn't that far off compared to the Prescott (better in some things, worse in others).

Disable HT, half your CPU power is going towards something that does nothing in terms of increasing performance, turn it off see if it improves. I also suggest you put another stick of ram (same brand same make ,etc) on your mobo for dual channel ram, you will see speed improvements off that as well.

He's said he's running Vista, which I would not touch unless you paid me.

Get XP instead. At least you'd have some chance of getting it working.

What are the CAS latency on the RAM?
That's the only thing I can think off that could affect your performance other than bad drivers or a a processor that's defective.

Nope

Almost the same thing as it was at stock speed. :/

Hellish. Idle around 55º C and load (well, the only things I use here simultaneously are FF, Sound Forge, PS CS3 and MSN) at 68~70º C . Mind you my case is opened and there's a ventilator at it's side.

First thing I did was to disable the HT but no major improvements. :/ TBH, NO IMPROVEMENTS. And I don't plan to buy another RAM stick because of this, hence I have no money to spend.

2.5 . And cannot be drivers, I didn't touch them. Everything was running fine with my old Northwood.




Question: Should I retrieve my Northwood?

You should do a fresh install of Windows.

btw i got the northwood back and will have to reformat the xp partition i guess. fucking nv4_disp loop error. having to play my games on vista :o