Ok so I've got my Opteron 144 with Epox 9NDA3J, and its just slow, runs like a dog kind of slow, and I'm really stumped on this one. Anyone have any ideas on how to maybe speed it up, or make it more useable?
Define slow. Slow loading stuff? Slow on benchmarks? Slow on 3D-games? It could be a lot of things and you'll need to isolate what the PC is struggling with.
I'd test the usual suspects: test the HDD's performance (and perform a surface test), test the memory sticks, monitor CPU temps and be sure there is no thermal throttling kicking in. Also leave nothing in the MoBo but the basics (HDD and graphics card, if there is no onboard video).
yea checked that, what i mean by slow is this, it takes 10 minutes to boot XP, doing anything is slow, and i mean slow slow slow. I've reset the Artic Freezer 64 with Antec Nanodiamond Tim, idle is 36c havn't been able to load it yet.
Hard drives in PIO mode?
nope, DMA is enabled, checked it and confirmed
full specs
Epox 9NDA3J
1gb DDR500 OCZ Gold
Opteron 144
BFG 6800GS OC
Soundblaster Audigy (tested with and without, and moved to every PCI slot)
500gb Seagate 7200.10 IDE
DVD-RW IDE
steps already taken
Tested PNY Optimia DDR400, OZC Platnium DDR400, SuperTalent DDR 400, Tested running a single stick of 512 vs 2x512, reset heatsink on both GPU and CPU with Nanodiamond Tim, reinstalled XP, tried 250gb Seagate 7200.9 SATA drive, tried with and without Nvidia IDE drivers.
Long shot, but when I am struggling to find why a machine is acting funny, I test the PSU.
Is it unreasonably slow in safe mode?
Does the task manager indicate something eating CPU cycles when the machine is struggling?
Have you tried resetting the BIOS? (Clear CMOS then enter the BIOS setup and load optmized defaults)
Is a Linux live CD/DVD unreasonably slow too?
Also how's the drive S.M.A.R.T.H.E.A.L.T.H reporting? 7200.10 is just one under the infamously dreadful 7200.11 series.
smart is fine, i finally flashed the bios on it, to the same bios it already had as a maybe, preformance is normal now.
That's... unusual. Glad everything worked out okay.
im thinking something went wrong in the previous flash the previous owner did, at least it makes sense why he only wanted 12 bucks 🤣
Did the CMOS get reset as part of the flashing procedure? If so, that might be the real reason it got fixed.
There are some settings stored in CMOS that aren't shown as user configurable options, so if something gets screwed up there, it can cause an invisible configuration problem.
yea it did, but i also reset the cmos via jumper to rule that out previously
