Athlon64 X2 and gaming

[nippyjun]

I would change the video drivers to the 77 series. If that doesn't work then consider using non-beta mobo bios.

 

[freethrowtommy]

Originally posted by: nippyjun
I would change the video drivers to the 77 series. If that doesn't work then consider using non-beta mobo bios.

I was using a non beta bios... it is happening on the Intel HT chips as well as the X2. THis isn't hardware related.

 

[freethrowtommy]

Originally posted by: xtknight
if you guys want i'll make a silent program that runs in the background to set affinity for you. you'd have to put the process names, delimited in a text file. i should be able to test it on my P4 HT machine.

If you could do it, I would use it! That would be great.

 

[monster64]

Make a batch file and set the affinity in that. I dont know how to set the affinity for a process using a batch command. Guessing it would be like
@echo off
Run /affinity 0 "pathfile to the game launcher"
It should work if you use the right batch command, that was just an example of what you could do to solve the problem.

 

[Dewey]

Originally posted by: xtknight
if you guys want i'll make a silent program that runs in the background to set affinity for you. you'd have to put the process names, delimited in a text file. i should be able to test it on my P4 HT machine.

There used to be an app that did this. I just can't remember its name right now.
I searched and found this, but haven't ever tried

RunFirst

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Dewey

Originally posted by: xtknight
if you guys want i'll make a silent program that runs in the background to set affinity for you. you'd have to put the process names, delimited in a text file. i should be able to test it on my P4 HT machine.

There used to be an app that did this. I just can't remember its name right now.
I searched and found this, but haven't ever tried

RunFirst

Ahh...thanks for the link. So I guess I'd be making something that was already made.

 

[floydenheimer]

Thanks Dewey, handy stuff there.

 

[xtknight]

Look at Ronin's post in Video.

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=31&threadid=1643820&enterthread=y

He says to add /usepmtimer to the end of your OS string in boot.ini which makes it use a different timer (not clock-based). That could possibly fix old DOS games too, but I'm uncertain.

 

[floydenheimer]

I've done that, it doesn't fix it. It's a dual core issue not the timing.

 

[GICodeWarrior]

I was having a lot of trouble with BFV. After about a day of leaving my computer on when I would go to play, everything would be really choppy, and I would end up getting disconnected from the server.

I tried the affinity thing and that fixed the apparant issue. Still this is pretty weird because it runs fine on my dual proc rig. I will definatly try the /usepmtimer boot flag when I get a chance though. Setting the affinity everytime I run a game should not be required.

Right now I am working on getting my RAID config up and am researching the 1.90 BIOS for my board that is floating around.

~Rusty

 

[floydenheimer]

/usepmtimer doesn't fix the X2 issue with games being overly fast. /usepmtimer will fix an issue with cool n quiet throttling the cpu up and down.

 

[Lithan]

software issues. They want to use the x2, but probably are trying to address it with coding that was written specifically for Hyperthreading and as such are causing glitches. A game patch should fix it. Or even a platform driver patch could work around it (but it wouldn't be as good a option as a game patch.

 

[MDme]

it may be a windows scheduler issue (which is dependent on how a program is coded) as the problem occurs in some HT CPUs???

 

[jdogg707]

Odd, I have had no problems at all with my system. I did run into issues with the Beta 80 series driver, this may be part of the problem.

 

[floydenheimer]

Do you play GTA:SA or EQ? Only certain games seem to have issues with the dual cores.

 

[imported_dr1]

i only play halo and BF2.. i have not experienced any problems like this. I'm using ForceWare 77.72

 

[floydenheimer]

I haven't tried either with my X2. BF2 was reported as ok earlier in the thread. Another game that runs fine with the X2 is MVP Baseball 2005. Just certain games freak out it seems.

 

[Furen]

Anyone tried the amd x2 drivers? Just a blind guess...

 

[jdogg707]

Originally posted by: floydenheimer
Do you play GTA:SA or EQ? Only certain games seem to have issues with the dual cores.

I have played Half Life 2, Doom 3, Doom 3 ROE, Far Cry, a ton of Battlefield 2, and Call of Duty. No problems in any of them.

 

[IamTHEsnake]

I have this same porblem , YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!!

Yes, it is also my understanding from what I've gathered that single-threaded games can mess up witrh the X2's with this "fast-forward" problem.


The troubled game I was playign was Need for Speed: Underground 2.

 

[KaRRiLLioN]

I have the same issue with GTA. I play Operation Flashpoint a lot and it exhibits none of those issues and plays flawlessly.

My specs are

AMD X2 4800+
DFI Lan Party SLI-DR
2GB OCZ ram
BFG 7800GTX OC

I'll try the affinity thing.

Odd thing is when I first build this system, I used the default BIOS which didn't recongize the dual core cpu and GTA played fine. Then I had to update the BIOS for my RAM to work properly in dual channel and then the problem started because the mobo recongized the dual CPU's. I tried several different BIOS's but so long as it recongized the X2, then the issue remained.

Gahh, I hope some patch for GTA can fix this.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: IamTHEsnake
Yes, it is also my understanding from what I've gathered that single-threaded games can mess up witrh the X2's with this "fast-forward" problem.

That would surprise me. I suspect you'll find that the games in question are actually multi-threaded, but just not well constructed to handle the synchronisation issues that follows when multithreaded apps run on multi-CPU systems. (very common mistakes)

But I don't have GTA available to test this -- but it is easy to find out as Task Manager will happily report the number of threads running.

 

[clarkey01]

HL2, BF2, GTA all work fine for me.

 

[lytalbayre]

Anybody find a solution to this problem yet?? I'm experiencing it with prince of persia sands of time... damn fastforward!!

 

[Bona Fide]

I believe you need to set the Affinity for each app that has this problem. Once you set it once, Windows Task Scheduler will remember it and you won't have the problem again. The real annoyance is minimizing out of every app and resetting the Affinity to one CPU.