Science and Technology news... :: View topic - The annoying way that BOINC "throttles"..

Patrick Vervoorn · Guest

In article <47383440@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:
[quote]Patrick Vervoorn wrote:

Was this before or after the overclocking? :)

Before. I always like to get a new mobo stable, which normally means
defaults, before updating to the latest BIOS and downloading Windows
updates. OCing comes after established stability.
[/quote]
These new-fangled hardware seem to be very picky. I spent a week figuring
out why my new system seemed to trash the HD at random, totally destroying
the Windows install, and the partition table/MBR.

Finally turned out the Seagte HD I had in the system didn>t support Native
Command Queueing, while the NVidia SATA drivers did. Swapping out the
Seagate for a WDC RAID edition drive solved this, finally.

[quote]By that time the final game should be about out. ;)

By which time I still probably won>t be able to justify the expenditure of
buying it.
[/quote]
That>s always a though decision to make, but it looks very very nice.

[quote]Ahhh, the reward systems in individuals varies so much doesn>t it? Also, so
is the base knowledge, from which the "work" starts. As my base knowledge of
writing code is _zero_ the hill is steep indeed.
[/quote]
Undertandable. But a tool to switch of your computer on a timed basis
should be available for download somewhere, I suppose. ;)

[quote]'Microsoft' and 'security' in one sentence!? Daring!

LOL! Yes, you have a point. Of course I mean security in the sense in which
one finds security in familiar things. Certainly not in the sense of
computer security. <g
[/quote]
Well, a Live CD means you don>t have to install anything to your
harddrive. I was even able to download/install more software, so getting
BOINC to run on a LiveCD shouldn>t be too much work I suppose.

[quote]Very weird. By de-prioritising you mean your ping times increase? So
what ping do you get to the first link after passing through your
ADSL modem? This sounds like ADSL from the stone age!

Ping times increase, throughput drops.. I can>t tell you the ping times as I
on;y stayed on that plan for one billing cycle. However, the ping time that
goes up is the one across (or, more correctly, under) the ocean, out of New
Zealand. It>s almost as if there>s several priority levels for international
traffic that vary depending on your ISP and what plan you have with them. Of
course, ultimately all data goes through the hands of the monopolistic New
Zealand Telecom. The giant of a company that used to be a state-owned
enterprise, that also owns 50% of the "Southern Cross" cable that carries
the bulk of data out of and into NZ.
[/quote]
Hmmm, yeah, that>s probable a reason why NZ is different; due to the
remote location, bandwidth to other locations is pretty expensive, and a
sought-after commodity.

[quote]If you want an ADSL line with that speed, you>d have to spend quite
some effort overhere. The 2M down is still with the same 1GB / day
limit? If I did my math wrong, you can spend your day>s worth of
downloading in about 68 minutes using 2M down.

Something like that. However, I>d then get the data I can download for the
other 23 hours at 64/64kbps "free". Woohoo!!

Actually, my ISP, the best in the country, does have a window of free
download time for two hours every night between 6 and 8pm. During this time
whatever you transfer isn>t counted against your daily total. That>s where
the benefit of the 2M over the 256kbps comes in. If I time my downloads
right I can get quite a chunk of data during that period, even though the
whole system does slow down a bit then as everyone is thinking the same
thing.
[/quote]
Heh, well, this also something the 'cron'-alike tool mentioned above can
do for you too. ;)

[quote]When I noticed the lower performance with the 6600GT (totally
unexpected, since the 6600GT blew the Ti4200 on all fronts out of the
water) I researched it a bit, and what I can vaguely remember is that
the 6600GT was an improvement on almost all fronts (more units, each
with more performance), except for one area, where the Ti4200
actually had more units (with of course a lower performance). My
'conclusion' then was that the units which were left out when going
from the Ti4200->6600GT were actually the ones being used a lot for
the Shenk Death Animation.

Interesting that you should mention that. My best cards for Diablo II have
also been the ti4x00 range. I have thre of them, two 4200s and a "Golden
Sample" 4400 that will run faster than a 4600 and is stock-clocked at above
4400 speeds. I was quite disappointed when I fired D2 up for the first time
after getting this system going with it>s 7800GT only to find that it seems
slower than my old Barton/ti4400 combo. :-(
[/quote]
You _are_ running a Glide Wrapper? I recently had to switch back to the
Direct3D API for Diablo II, when the NVidia 169.01 and 169.04 broke the
OpenGL stuff in such a way that the Glide Wrapper stopped working. I found
the Direct3D version of the game to feel much, much 'clunkier' than the
game in Glide. Difficult to describe, but everything seemed to
run/animate/move much 'coarser'... So if you haven>t already....?

[quote]Indeed. However, I don>t see this group being used for much else in the last
few weeks other than threads that I>ve started. :-)
[/quote]
It>s indeed frighteningly quiet in here. Hopefully that>s because
everything SetiBOINC related is running smoothly and without any
problems for everyone. ;)

[quote]Cheers Patrick,
[/quote]
Regards, Patrick.

Gary Heston · Guest

In article <43489$47386c18$82a1d3bf$9367@news2.tudelft.nl>,
Patrick Vervoorn <patrick.vervoorn@NOSPAM.perihelion.demon.nl> wrote:
[ ... ]
[quote]Undertandable. But a tool to switch of your computer on a timed basis
should be available for download somewhere, I suppose. ;)
[ ... ][/quote]

If you>re running XP, no need to download anything more than a Service
Pack:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814761

And this points to using the command shutdown.exe with the at command:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317371

Shutdown.exe should be on all Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems,
from what I see on Microsofts' website.

Gary

--
Gary Heston gheston@hiwaay.net http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/

Yoko Onos' former driver tried to extort $2M from her, threating to
"release embarassing recordings...". What, he has a copy of her album?

~misfit~ · Guest

Gary Heston wrote:
[quote]In article <43489$47386c18$82a1d3bf$9367@news2.tudelft.nl>,
Patrick Vervoorn <patrick.vervoorn@NOSPAM.perihelion.demon.nl> wrote:
[ ... ]
Undertandable. But a tool to switch of your computer on a timed basis
should be available for download somewhere, I suppose. ;)
[ ... ]

If you>re running XP, no need to download anything more than a Service
Pack:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814761

And this points to using the command shutdown.exe with the at command:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317371

Shutdown.exe should be on all Windows XP and Windows Server 2003
systems, from what I see on Microsofts' website.
[/quote]
Thanks for that Gary, good to know.
--
TTFN,

Shaun.

~misfit~ · Guest

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:
[quote]In article <47383440@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:
Patrick Vervoorn wrote:

Was this before or after the overclocking? :)

Before. I always like to get a new mobo stable, which normally means
defaults, before updating to the latest BIOS and downloading Windows
updates. OCing comes after established stability.

These new-fangled hardware seem to be very picky. I spent a week
figuring out why my new system seemed to trash the HD at random,
totally destroying the Windows install, and the partition table/MBR.
[/quote]
Eeek!

[quote]Finally turned out the Seagte HD I had in the system didn>t support
Native Command Queueing, while the NVidia SATA drivers did. Swapping
out the Seagate for a WDC RAID edition drive solved this, finally.
[/quote]
Surely you could have just disabled NCQ until such time as you had a SATA II
HDD? Buying a new HDD seems a little extreme as far as solving the problem
goes. There should be an option for backward-compatability with older, SATA
I drives.

[quote]By that time the final game should be about out. ;)

By which time I still probably won>t be able to justify the
expenditure of buying it.

That>s always a though decision to make, but it looks very very nice.
[/quote]
Something my mother told me, don>t be seduced by looks alone. <g>

I>d have to see what the gameplay was like as well.

[quote]Ahhh, the reward systems in individuals varies so much doesn>t it?
Also, so is the base knowledge, from which the "work" starts. As my
base knowledge of writing code is _zero_ the hill is steep indeed.

Undertandable. But a tool to switch of your computer on a timed basis
should be available for download somewhere, I suppose. ;)
[/quote]
Gary kindly pointed us to one.

<snip>

[quote]Ping times increase, throughput drops.. I can>t tell you the ping
times as I on;y stayed on that plan for one billing cycle. However,
the ping time that goes up is the one across (or, more correctly,
under) the ocean, out of New Zealand. It>s almost as if there>s
several priority levels for international traffic that vary
depending on your ISP and what plan you have with them. Of course,
ultimately all data goes through the hands of the monopolistic New
Zealand Telecom. The giant of a company that used to be a
state-owned enterprise, that also owns 50% of the "Southern Cross"
cable that carries the bulk of data out of and into NZ.

Hmmm, yeah, that>s probable a reason why NZ is different; due to the
remote location, bandwidth to other locations is pretty expensive,
and a sought-after commodity.
[/quote]
Yes. I tend to look at other plans, in other countries, and salivate. It>s
easy to forget the remoteness of this beautiful country. However, there are
those who say that the Southern Cross cable has been paid for already and
that it>s all pure profit now, that the owners/operators are holding the
country to ransom.

[quote]If you want an ADSL line with that speed, you>d have to spend quite
some effort overhere. The 2M down is still with the same 1GB / day
limit? If I did my math wrong, you can spend your day>s worth of
downloading in about 68 minutes using 2M down.

Something like that. However, I>d then get the data I can download
for the other 23 hours at 64/64kbps "free". Woohoo!!

Actually, my ISP, the best in the country, does have a window of free
download time for two hours every night between 6 and 8pm. During
this time whatever you transfer isn>t counted against your daily
total. That>s where the benefit of the 2M over the 256kbps comes in.
If I time my downloads right I can get quite a chunk of data during
that period, even though the whole system does slow down a bit then
as everyone is thinking the same thing.

Heh, well, this also something the 'cron'-alike tool mentioned above
can do for you too. ;)
[/quote]
Good point.

[quote]When I noticed the lower performance with the 6600GT (totally
unexpected, since the 6600GT blew the Ti4200 on all fronts out of
the water) I researched it a bit, and what I can vaguely remember
is that the 6600GT was an improvement on almost all fronts (more
units, each with more performance), except for one area, where the
Ti4200 actually had more units (with of course a lower
performance). My 'conclusion' then was that the units which were
left out when going from the Ti4200->6600GT were actually the ones
being used a lot for the Shenk Death Animation.

Interesting that you should mention that. My best cards for Diablo
II have also been the ti4x00 range. I have thre of them, two 4200s
and a "Golden Sample" 4400 that will run faster than a 4600 and is
stock-clocked at above 4400 speeds. I was quite disappointed when I
fired D2 up for the first time after getting this system going with
it>s 7800GT only to find that it seems slower than my old
Barton/ti4400 combo. :-(

You _are_ running a Glide Wrapper? I recently had to switch back to
the Direct3D API for Diablo II, when the NVidia 169.01 and 169.04
broke the OpenGL stuff in such a way that the Glide Wrapper stopped
working. I found the Direct3D version of the game to feel much, much
'clunkier' than the game in Glide. Difficult to describe, but
everything seemed to run/animate/move much 'coarser'... So if you
haven>t already....?
[/quote]
Twice I>ve been prompted to try Sven>s Glide Wrapper, usually due to your
mentioning it. However, I>ve never had it work for me for some reason.
Perhaps if I try again....

[quote]Indeed. However, I don>t see this group being used for much else in
the last few weeks other than threads that I>ve started. :-)

It>s indeed frighteningly quiet in here. Hopefully that>s because
everything SetiBOINC related is running smoothly and without any
problems for everyone. ;)
[/quote]
Hopefully.

Regards,
--
Shaun.

Odysseus · Guest

In article <4738c772$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
"~misfit~" <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:

[quote]Patrick Vervoorn wrote:
[/quote]
<snip>
[quote]
It>s indeed frighteningly quiet in here. Hopefully that>s because
everything SetiBOINC related is running smoothly and without any
problems for everyone. ;)

Hopefully.
[/quote]
Have you browsed the Web forums recently? There>s an enormous amount of
traffic there, even though it only represents a small fraction of the
user base. Most of the technical problems can be attributed to the
mostly aging, donated or recycled, and bodged-together servers in the
back end, and the lack of staff to simultaneously nurse these systems
along and advance the project>s software-development and
results-analysis efforts. There>s a saying, something to do with
alligators and a drainage project ... ;)

--
Odysseus

~misfit~ · Guest

Odysseus wrote:
[quote]In article <4738c772$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
"~misfit~" <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:

snip

It>s indeed frighteningly quiet in here. Hopefully that>s because
everything SetiBOINC related is running smoothly and without any
problems for everyone. ;)

Hopefully.

Have you browsed the Web forums recently?
[/quote]
No, I>ve always had a irrational dislike for web forums of any kind,
prefering usenet by far. Don>t know why, guess it>s something to do with web
chat rooms and association... <shrug> I>ll get therapy. <g>

[quote]There>s an enormous amount
of traffic there, even though it only represents a small fraction of
the user base. Most of the technical problems can be attributed to the
mostly aging, donated or recycled, and bodged-together servers in the
back end, and the lack of staff to simultaneously nurse these systems
along and advance the project>s software-development and
results-analysis efforts. There>s a saying, something to do with
alligators and a drainage project ... ;)
[/quote]
Indeed.
--
TTFN,

Shaun.

Patrick Vervoorn · Guest

In article <4738c772$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:
[quote]Patrick Vervoorn wrote:

Finally turned out the Seagte HD I had in the system didn>t support
Native Command Queueing, while the NVidia SATA drivers did. Swapping
out the Seagate for a WDC RAID edition drive solved this, finally.

Surely you could have just disabled NCQ until such time as you had a SATA II
HDD? Buying a new HDD seems a little extreme as far as solving the problem
goes. There should be an option for backward-compatability with older, SATA
I drives.
[/quote]
It was a totally new system, so the shop I bought it from exchanged the
Seagate 300GB for a WDC 300GB RAID edition drive with no questions asked.

It simply took a while before I figured out it was NCQ that was messing
things up; I first noticed the system had no problems when I used the
standard Microsoft IDE drivers. Then made a Ghost image of that state.
Then started experimenting around with installing NVidia drivers, etc,
until I found out I could get the system stable with the NVidia SATA
drivers installed, but by manually disabling NCQ.

However, since I fully expected NCQ to work, and the shop agreed with me,
they suggested I>d try a WDC drive. That one worked flawlessly, so I later
returned the Seagate drive to them.

[Crysis]

[quote]Something my mother told me, don>t be seduced by looks alone. <g

I>d have to see what the gameplay was like as well.
[/quote]
Gameplay is wonderful. Although it>s still on rails (as most single player
games are), the 'arenas' are so expanded, that you have a lot of choice on
how to approach a certain problem/nasty situation.

[quote]You _are_ running a Glide Wrapper? I recently had to switch back to
the Direct3D API for Diablo II, when the NVidia 169.01 and 169.04
broke the OpenGL stuff in such a way that the Glide Wrapper stopped
working. I found the Direct3D version of the game to feel much, much
'clunkier' than the game in Glide. Difficult to describe, but
everything seemed to run/animate/move much 'coarser'... So if you
haven>t already....?

Twice I>ve been prompted to try Sven>s Glide Wrapper, usually due to your
mentioning it. However, I>ve never had it work for me for some reason.
Perhaps if I try again....
[/quote]
Perhaps try an older version if the newest one isn>t working for you. I>m
running the 1.3 version on one system (P4-1700/Ti4200), while I>m using
the latest 1.4 on the Q6600/8800GTX system.

Also keep an eye on the NVidia drivers you>re using. The latest WHQL ones
work fine, the 169.0x betas had major problems.

Regards,

Patrick.

Patrick Vervoorn · Guest

In article <odysseus1479-at-AEFEE0.20401212112007@news.telus.net>,
Odysseus <odysseus1479-at@yahoo-dot.ca> wrote:
[quote]In article <4738c772$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
"~misfit~" <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:

snip

It>s indeed frighteningly quiet in here. Hopefully that>s because
everything SetiBOINC related is running smoothly and without any
problems for everyone. ;)

Hopefully.

Have you browsed the Web forums recently? There>s an enormous amount of
traffic there, even though it only represents a small fraction of the
user base. Most of the technical problems can be attributed to the
mostly aging, donated or recycled, and bodged-together servers in the
back end, and the lack of staff to simultaneously nurse these systems
along and advance the project>s software-development and
results-analysis efforts. There>s a saying, something to do with
alligators and a drainage project ... ;)
[/quote]
Yeah, I usually check the Seti status page, and the forum behind it. Seti
has been running pretty stable for the last few months (for me that means:
at most outages of a few days). However, before that, they had some
outages which lasted from 3-4 days up to a week. Those outages are also
what prompted me to configure BOINC to get work for 5.0 days, and cache
another 4.0 days of work on top of that. This is working quite nicely
since the 5.10.x BOINC client.

Regards,

Patrick.

~misfit~ · Guest

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:
[quote]In article <4738c772$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:
Patrick Vervoorn wrote:

Finally turned out the Seagte HD I had in the system didn>t support
Native Command Queueing, while the NVidia SATA drivers did. Swapping
out the Seagate for a WDC RAID edition drive solved this, finally.

Surely you could have just disabled NCQ until such time as you had a
SATA II HDD? Buying a new HDD seems a little extreme as far as
solving the problem goes. There should be an option for
backward-compatability with older, SATA I drives.

It was a totally new system, so the shop I bought it from exchanged
the Seagate 300GB for a WDC 300GB RAID edition drive with no
questions asked.
[/quote]
That>s goof then

[quote]It simply took a while before I figured out it was NCQ that was
messing things up; I first noticed the system had no problems when I
used the standard Microsoft IDE drivers. Then made a Ghost image of
that state. Then started experimenting around with installing NVidia
drivers, etc, until I found out I could get the system stable with
the NVidia SATA drivers installed, but by manually disabling NCQ.

However, since I fully expected NCQ to work, and the shop agreed with
me, they suggested I>d try a WDC drive. That one worked flawlessly,
so I later returned the Seagate drive to them.
[/quote]
I have Seagate SATA II drives and don>t seem to be able to enable NCQ. In my
BIOS, the only thing I can find remotely resembling it is Advanced Host
Controller Interface (AHCI). The manual says, if selected, it "allows the
onboard storage driver to enable advanced serial ATA features by allowing
thew drive to internally optimise the order of commands".

However, when I set it to 'enabled' it doesn>t recognise any drives. I must
play some more.

[quote][Crysis]

Something my mother told me, don>t be seduced by looks alone. <g

I>d have to see what the gameplay was like as well.

Gameplay is wonderful. Although it>s still on rails (as most single
player games are), the 'arenas' are so expanded, that you have a lot
of choice on how to approach a certain problem/nasty situation.
[/quote]
Ok, I>ll try the demo soon.

[quote]You _are_ running a Glide Wrapper? I recently had to switch back to
the Direct3D API for Diablo II, when the NVidia 169.01 and 169.04
broke the OpenGL stuff in such a way that the Glide Wrapper stopped
working. I found the Direct3D version of the game to feel much, much
'clunkier' than the game in Glide. Difficult to describe, but
everything seemed to run/animate/move much 'coarser'... So if you
haven>t already....?

Twice I>ve been prompted to try Sven>s Glide Wrapper, usually due to
your mentioning it. However, I>ve never had it work for me for some
reason. Perhaps if I try again....

Perhaps try an older version if the newest one isn>t working for you.
I>m running the 1.3 version on one system (P4-1700/Ti4200), while I>m
using the latest 1.4 on the Q6600/8800GTX system.
[/quote]
I haven>t tried it on this machine (I>ve only had it about a week).
Something else on the "to do" list, along with install all my programs. :-)

[quote]Also keep an eye on the NVidia drivers you>re using. The latest WHQL
ones work fine, the 169.0x betas had major problems.
[/quote]
Ok, thanks for the heads up.

Oh, BTW, I>m running SETI again. CPU is running at 3.3GHz and SETI at 100%.
Core temps sit around 43°C constantly. I>m comfortable with that. When BOINC
started it benchmarked the CPU. 3180 floating point MIPs (Whetstone) per CPU
and 7128 integer MIPs (Dhrystone) per CPU. That>s quite a bit higher than it
was before I overclocked it.
--
Cheers,
Shaun.

Patrick Vervoorn · Guest

In article <473aca40$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:
[quote]Patrick Vervoorn wrote:

It was a totally new system, so the shop I bought it from exchanged
the Seagate 300GB for a WDC 300GB RAID edition drive with no
questions asked.

That>s goof then
[/quote]
I assume you meant 'good'. :) Yes, that was quite nice of them, but since
I>ve bought most of my computer-related hardware from them (including a
full C2D system for my brother), I fully expected them to be 'nice'. ;)

Anyway, it>s owned by a guy who himself also likes to mess around with
computer hardware, so he knows what can happen.

[quote]It simply took a while before I figured out it was NCQ that was
messing things up; I first noticed the system had no problems when I
used the standard Microsoft IDE drivers. Then made a Ghost image of
that state. Then started experimenting around with installing NVidia
drivers, etc, until I found out I could get the system stable with
the NVidia SATA drivers installed, but by manually disabling NCQ.

However, since I fully expected NCQ to work, and the shop agreed with
me, they suggested I>d try a WDC drive. That one worked flawlessly,
so I later returned the Seagate drive to them.

I have Seagate SATA II drives and don>t seem to be able to enable NCQ.
[/quote]
Be aware the original Seagate drive that I had installed claimed to be a
SATA-II drive; it was running at 3.0Gbps, and with NCQ manually disabled
(the NVidia SATA driver properties pages has a check-box for it) they were
working quite nicely.

[quote]In my
BIOS, the only thing I can find remotely resembling it is Advanced Host
Controller Interface (AHCI). The manual says, if selected, it "allows the
onboard storage driver to enable advanced serial ATA features by allowing
thew drive to internally optimise the order of commands".

However, when I set it to 'enabled' it doesn>t recognise any drives. I must
play some more.
[/quote]
I don>t think it>s a BIOS function, it>s a driver function. However, this
system is the first one with a SATA-interface, so I have no experience
with, for instance, Intel>s driver set.

The board has two extra SATA interface chips, both from Silicon Image. One
chip has it>s own Settings program, but this one is meant for external
SATA stuff, so I can>t experiment with it. From what I can see (all
options are there, but ghosted out) that might have an NCQ related
setting.

The other Silicon Image chip drives two on-board SATA connectors, but I
haven>t been able to find any XP drivers for it, so it shows up as a
'generic' IDE controller, with the default Microsoft drivers, which do not
support NCQ. As part of my 'problem-finding' I did connect the Seagate
drive to a port on that chip, and it booted up and worked with no
problems.

[quote]Gameplay is wonderful. Although it>s still on rails (as most single
player games are), the 'arenas' are so expanded, that you have a lot
of choice on how to approach a certain problem/nasty situation.

Ok, I>ll try the demo soon.
[/quote]
You won>t regret it. ;)

[quote]Perhaps try an older version if the newest one isn>t working for you.
I>m running the 1.3 version on one system (P4-1700/Ti4200), while I>m
using the latest 1.4 on the Q6600/8800GTX system.

I haven>t tried it on this machine (I>ve only had it about a week).
Something else on the "to do" list, along with install all my programs. :-)
[/quote]
Hopefully it works...

[quote]Oh, BTW, I>m running SETI again. CPU is running at 3.3GHz and SETI at 100%.
Core temps sit around 43°C constantly. I>m comfortable with that. When BOINC
started it benchmarked the CPU. 3180 floating point MIPs (Whetstone) per CPU
and 7128 integer MIPs (Dhrystone) per CPU. That>s quite a bit higher than it
was before I overclocked it.
[/quote]
Very nice. I>m not near the Q6600 machine, but I think (from memory) that
one is around the 2400/6500 mark.

Regards, Patrick.

~misfit~ · Guest

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:
[quote]In article <473aca40$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:
Patrick Vervoorn wrote:

It was a totally new system, so the shop I bought it from exchanged
the Seagate 300GB for a WDC 300GB RAID edition drive with no
questions asked.

That>s goof then

I assume you meant 'good'. :)
[/quote]
No, I meant to say that! <g>

[quote]Yes, that was quite nice of them, but
since I>ve bought most of my computer-related hardware from them
(including a full C2D system for my brother), I fully expected them
to be 'nice'. ;)
[/quote]
I actually have a couple PC hardware stores where I get goof deals. One guy
always works out his "best price" after I tell him what I want, always
saving a few bucks. He also just gives me small things I want like if I ask
for a couple SATA cables, or a USB2 backplate. Another shop msaid I was
buying so much stuff they>ve given me dealer prices, only ~3% off but still
better than nothing. I buy so much gear as I>m always upgrading friends
equipment for them.

[quote]I have Seagate SATA II drives and don>t seem to be able to enable
NCQ.

Be aware the original Seagate drive that I had installed claimed to
be a SATA-II drive; it was running at 3.0Gbps, and with NCQ manually
disabled (the NVidia SATA driver properties pages has a check-box for
it) they were working quite nicely.
[/quote]
Oh.

[quote]In my
BIOS, the only thing I can find remotely resembling it is Advanced
Host Controller Interface (AHCI). The manual says, if selected, it
"allows the onboard storage driver to enable advanced serial ATA
features by allowing thew drive to internally optimise the order of
commands".

However, when I set it to 'enabled' it doesn>t recognise any drives.
I must play some more.

I don>t think it>s a BIOS function, it>s a driver function. However,
this system is the first one with a SATA-interface, so I have no
experience with, for instance, Intel>s driver set.

The board has two extra SATA interface chips, both from Silicon
Image. One chip has it>s own Settings program, but this one is meant
for external SATA stuff, so I can>t experiment with it. From what I
can see (all options are there, but ghosted out) that might have an
NCQ related setting.

The other Silicon Image chip drives two on-board SATA connectors, but
I haven>t been able to find any XP drivers for it, so it shows up as a
'generic' IDE controller, with the default Microsoft drivers, which
do not support NCQ. As part of my 'problem-finding' I did connect the
Seagate drive to a port on that chip, and it booted up and worked
with no problems.
[/quote]
Hmmm. This board has Intel>s ICH9R southbridge which has 6 SATA II
connectors and supports RAID. There is also a JMicron SATA II chip that has
two eSATA connectors on the backplane and also supports RAID. However, I
can>t find anything in the drivers where I can switch on NCQ. Nothing
through Device Manager and nothing under the Start menu. Perhaps more
research is required.

[quote]Gameplay is wonderful. Although it>s still on rails (as most single
player games are), the 'arenas' are so expanded, that you have a lot
of choice on how to approach a certain problem/nasty situation.

Ok, I>ll try the demo soon.

You won>t regret it. ;)

Perhaps try an older version if the newest one isn>t working for
you. I>m running the 1.3 version on one system (P4-1700/Ti4200),
while I>m using the latest 1.4 on the Q6600/8800GTX system.

I haven>t tried it on this machine (I>ve only had it about a week).
Something else on the "to do" list, along with install all my
programs. :-)

Hopefully it works...
[/quote]
It does!! I>m using 14a and it works just fine. The FPS with a skellimancer
and full army hovers around 58 - 60 during Shenk>s Death animation. I>m
impressed. Also, it>s a lot easier to see the difference between the colour
of rare and unique items. Thanks for giving me a nudge to do this. :-)

[quote]Oh, BTW, I>m running SETI again. CPU is running at 3.3GHz and SETI
at 100%. Core temps sit around 43°C constantly. I>m comfortable with
that. When BOINC started it benchmarked the CPU. 3180 floating point
MIPs (Whetstone) per CPU and 7128 integer MIPs (Dhrystone) per CPU.
That>s quite a bit higher than it was before I overclocked it.

Very nice. I>m not near the Q6600 machine, but I think (from memory)
that one is around the 2400/6500 mark.
[/quote]
Ok, I was hoping for figures to give me some idea. It>s just a shame I>ve
only got two cores. <g>
--
Cheers,
Shaun.

Patrick Vervoorn · Guest

In article <473ae4c3@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:
[quote]Patrick Vervoorn wrote:
In article <473aca40$1@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:

That>s goof then

I assume you meant 'good'. :)

No, I meant to say that! <g
[/quote]
*heh* ;)

[quote]I actually have a couple PC hardware stores where I get goof deals. One guy
always works out his "best price" after I tell him what I want, always
saving a few bucks. He also just gives me small things I want like if I ask
for a couple SATA cables, or a USB2 backplate. Another shop msaid I was
buying so much stuff they>ve given me dealer prices, only ~3% off but still
better than nothing. I buy so much gear as I>m always upgrading friends
equipment for them.
[/quote]
Ah, clever move indeed! That way they get to know you. ;)

[quote]Hmmm. This board has Intel>s ICH9R southbridge which has 6 SATA II
connectors and supports RAID. There is also a JMicron SATA II chip that has
two eSATA connectors on the backplane and also supports RAID. However, I
can>t find anything in the drivers where I can switch on NCQ. Nothing
through Device Manager and nothing under the Start menu. Perhaps more
research is required.
[/quote]
According to Intel, the ICH9R supports NCQ:

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/matrixstorage_sb.htm

You have these 'Matrix Storage' drivers installed?

[Glide Wrapper]

[quote]It does!! I>m using 14a and it works just fine. The FPS with a skellimancer
and full army hovers around 58 - 60 during Shenk>s Death animation. I>m
impressed. Also, it>s a lot easier to see the difference between the colour
of rare and unique items. Thanks for giving me a nudge to do this. :-)
[/quote]
Yep, not only does it run smoother, the graphics also look nicer, cleaner,
and the difference between rares (yellow) and uniques (gold) becomes a lot
clearer than with the DirectX/3D modes.

[quote]Very nice. I>m not near the Q6600 machine, but I think (from memory)
that one is around the 2400/6500 mark.

Ok, I was hoping for figures to give me some idea. It>s just a shame I>ve
only got two cores. <g
[/quote]
I>ll try to remember to dig up the 'real' scores. ;)

Regards, Patrick.

Patrick Vervoorn · Guest

In article <473ae4c3@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:

[quote]Oh, BTW, I>m running SETI again. CPU is running at 3.3GHz and SETI
at 100%. Core temps sit around 43°C constantly. I>m comfortable with
that. When BOINC started it benchmarked the CPU. 3180 floating point
MIPs (Whetstone) per CPU and 7128 integer MIPs (Dhrystone) per CPU.
That>s quite a bit higher than it was before I overclocked it.

Very nice. I>m not near the Q6600 machine, but I think (from memory)
that one is around the 2400/6500 mark.

Ok, I was hoping for figures to give me some idea. It>s just a shame I>ve
only got two cores. <g
[/quote]
Just got home, re-ran the benchmarks two times, and I get:

2326 & 2328 floating point MIPS and 5332 & 5420 integer MIPS. So I was a
bit optimistic, but keep in mind Diablo II was running in the background
(DCLone parking ;)), so I>m not sure how much influence that has...

Regards,

Patrick.

~misfit~ · Guest

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:
[quote]In article <473ae4c3@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:

Oh, BTW, I>m running SETI again. CPU is running at 3.3GHz and SETI
at 100%. Core temps sit around 43°C constantly. I>m comfortable
with that. When BOINC started it benchmarked the CPU. 3180
floating point MIPs (Whetstone) per CPU and 7128 integer MIPs
(Dhrystone) per CPU. That>s quite a bit higher than it was before
I overclocked it.

Very nice. I>m not near the Q6600 machine, but I think (from memory)
that one is around the 2400/6500 mark.

Ok, I was hoping for figures to give me some idea. It>s just a shame
I>ve only got two cores. <g

Just got home, re-ran the benchmarks two times, and I get:

2326 & 2328 floating point MIPS and 5332 & 5420 integer MIPS.
[/quote]
That>s more what I expected with it running at 2.4GHz.

[quote]So I
was a bit optimistic, but keep in mind Diablo II was running in the
background (DCLone parking ;)), so I>m not sure how much influence
that has...
[/quote]
LOL. I was clone-sitting too! Still am in fact.

So averaging yours and multiplying by cores gives:

9308 21504

And mine:

6360 14256

So mine>s roughly equal to three of your cores. <g>
--
TTFN,

Shaun.

~misfit~ · Guest

Patrick Vervoorn wrote:
[quote]In article <473ae4c3@news2.actrix.gen.nz>,
~misfit~ <misfitnz@yahoot.com.au> wrote:
[/quote]

[snip]

[quote]Hmmm. This board has Intel>s ICH9R southbridge which has 6 SATA II
connectors and supports RAID. There is also a JMicron SATA II chip
that has two eSATA connectors on the backplane and also supports
RAID. However, I can>t find anything in the drivers where I can
switch on NCQ. Nothing through Device Manager and nothing under the
Start menu. Perhaps more research is required.

According to Intel, the ICH9R supports NCQ:

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/matrixstorage_sb.htm

You have these 'Matrix Storage' drivers installed?
[/quote]
No, nor can I find any that will install. I>ve downloaded two different
versions so far, both of which tell me my system doesn>t meet the
requirements. One, I double-checked, was definitly for the ICH9R
southbridge. I>ll have to spend more time looking. I see that for NCQ I have
to select AHCI in the BIOS but whenever I do so, when it comes time to boot
from HDD I get a flash of a blue screen, then back to the start of boot up.
I hope I can find drivers that will install, and fix this, as part of the
reason I spent an extra $100 (NZ) on this board and another $120 on the RAM
was to have NCQ. I>ve had the SATA II drives for a while now, bought with
this upgrade in mind.

I have a horrible feeling that I needed to install the RAID drivers via
flopy disk during Windows install now. That will annoy the crap out of me if
that>s the case. I didn>t install them as I have no intention of running
RAID. I really don>t want to re-install XP, I>m 95% of the way to having it
how I like it. <fingers crossed>

I>ll have to put this issue aside for now, I>ve been busy and it looks like,
tomorrow, I>m doing a new build for my friend. A Q6600/8800GTX build, we>re
getting the mobo tomorrow. Actually, I should resolve it before I install
his, he>s talking of getting a P35/ICH9R chipset as well because mine>s
going so well.

I>ll get back to you on this one.

[quote][Glide Wrapper]

It does!! I>m using 14a and it works just fine. The FPS with a
skellimancer and full army hovers around 58 - 60 during Shenk>s
Death animation. I>m impressed. Also, it>s a lot easier to see the
difference between the colour of rare and unique items. Thanks for
giving me a nudge to do this. :-)

Yep, not only does it run smoother, the graphics also look nicer,
cleaner, and the difference between rares (yellow) and uniques (gold)
becomes a lot clearer than with the DirectX/3D modes.
[/quote]
Indeed. Other than the fact that it often starts dark and needs me to go
into video settings and wriggle the gamma slider I>m really happy with it.

[quote]Very nice. I>m not near the Q6600 machine, but I think (from memory)
that one is around the 2400/6500 mark.

Ok, I was hoping for figures to give me some idea. It>s just a shame
I>ve only got two cores. <g

I>ll try to remember to dig up the 'real' scores. ;)
[/quote]
Ooops! I replied in the wrong order. <g>

Cheers,
--
Shaun.


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