9800GX2 and Asus P5E3 Premium = slow?

[Kinc]

Anyone who have tested with PATA HDD and clocked up the PCIEx bus? Just to see if the performence loss evens out.

I have tested with evolution but since I dont have any other boards than the ones mentioned in this thread I cant see any perf difference. I tested with frist booting the VGA in the second blue slot, then soft power of and switch to first. It gives no post at first since it is relocating the VGA to a new irq, it it do not post after a min reset power and it will post. It did show a slight difference in 3dmark 03.

Anyone else who have tested both of the blue PCI-Ex 16X slots?

[SIOUX]

Anyone who have tested with PATA HDD and clocked up the PCIEx bus? Just to see if the performence loss evens out.

I have tested with evolution but since I dont have any other boards than the ones mentioned in this thread I cant see any perf difference. I tested with frist booting the VGA in the second blue slot, then soft power of and switch to first. It gives no post at first since it is relocating the VGA to a new irq, it it do not post after a min reset power and it will post. It did show a slight difference in 3dmark 03.

Anyone else who have tested both of the blue PCI-Ex 16X slots?

Just run Nature in 01, and you willbe around 900-1000fps if the bug is pressent. and around 1200fps you dont have the bug

The thing is ....its not all the same boards that does it. my own EVO i have no problem. but the one i did review on had the problem. No matter what PCI-E slot i used.

I tryed with ATA as i told you on msn, and had PCI-E at 125mhz wich gives an unatrual boost of about 80fps (nature 01) wich is not nearly enough to even out the normal scores (wich is 200fps behind)

[MateoTTR]

Err now after playing with my bios to get a proper OC, I ran 3dmark06 again and the bug is back ;-(
I have lost the +25fps I had in Canyon Flight with 3dmark06 and am back to square 1...
There must be something that triggers the bug but do not count on Asus to solve the issue.

[Me1tDown]

My board's a Maximus rather than a P5E3, but I saw a similar problem. The first time I installed the 9800GX2 in my Maximus Formula (with the Rampage's BIOS) I got pretty bad Nature FPS as well (~980). Just the other day I tested it again using an XP installation that was imaged from the 790i board's installation and then driver-cleaner'ed. This time I got 1349 FPS in Nature. I don't know what was causing that problem before. For what it's worth, my card is installed in the lower PCIe x16 slot (farther from the CPU) because that's the only way to make the DVI cable clear my radiator since nV found it necessary to put the two ports in the center of the card stacked vertically instead of side-by-side. Maybe try re-installing XP (the only updates I've applied to XP are the ones included in SP2) and install the just VGA driver, rivatuner, and 3d01 and nothing else and see what happens.

What's interesting is that I've also seen a similar problem on 790i and re-installing the OS (from the image) fixed it so I chalked it up to the 790i data corruption problem. The Nature FPS was far worse when the 790i fouled up too - it was actually worse than what I get normally with SLI forced off (and would get even lower if I forced SLI off when the problem was occurring) so I don't think it was the same root cause.

The CPU and GPU clocks were about the same on these two runs. The second one is a little bit better tweaked but not nearly enough so to account for the difference in Nature.

3d01 run first installation on X38 board: 981 FPS Nature
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=9355626 (sorry no screenshot)

3d01 run new installation on X38 board: 1349 FPS Nature
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=9382068

[SIOUX]

I tryed re-installing many times...problem is still there i´m affraid....

[MateoTTR]

Errr... I get only 416fps in nature test of 3dmark01se
I have windows vista x64 sp1 btw
Is there some kind of frame limiter or what?!

[Me1tDown]

I tryed re-installing many times...problem is still there i´m affraid....

I will be very thankful that reinstalling fixed it for me then. Wish I knew what the source of the bug was.

Errr... I get only 416fps in nature test of 3dmark01se
I have windows vista x64 sp1 btw
Is there some kind of frame limiter or what?!

Vista and 3d01 don't get along very well at all. I don't have any runs in Vista with the 9800GX2 but I get 409 in Vista with Crossfired HD3870s. I'll run it in Vista now and see what happens with the 9800GX2.

Edit: I get 666 FPS for Nature under Vista Ultimate x64 with the 9800GX2.

[MateoTTR]

I guess this has to be the normal score using Vista x64?
May I ask what is your mobo? 790i or X38-based?

[Me1tDown]

I guess this has to be the normal score using Vista x64?
May I ask what is your mobo? 790i or X38-based?

That score is on X38 (with DDR2). I have a 790i as well, but I don't have Vista installed on it. Within XP my scores are withing 3% going from one board to the other with the same CPU and GPU settings though.

[MateoTTR]

ok so it seems you are not affected by this bug...
I found some other evidence of this problem:
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...d.php?t=182344
As far as I can see, the problem would occur only on Asus brand X38 & X48 DDR3 boards... But not all of them.

[]siNNer[]

I'm also having the same problem with my P5E WS Pro and GX2 setup. I thought it was a PSU issue since i used the 6 to 8 pin adapter but today I changed the PSU to a Corsair TX750W and the problem remains.

I'm really getting worried about this, i already PMed SIOUX since he had the same board but he told me his was working fine so it seems that it only happens to some boards

[MateoTTR]

I'm also having the same problem with my P5E WS Pro and GX2 setup. I thought it was a PSU issue since i used the 6 to 8 pin adapter but today I changed the PSU to a Corsair TX750W and the problem remains.

I'm really getting worried about this, i already PMed SIOUX since he had the same board but he told me his was working fine so it seems that it only happens to some boards

I have read somewhere on a french forum that some people got the problem sorted out by using a different bios version for the P5E3 WS pro.
Basically 0302 & 0306 would work well, while 0502 would not.
Can I ask what bios you use? Can you confirm the above?

[metro.cl]

it might happend with all the V. Cards i had some issues with my 8800GT when i left settings at auto, then set primary settings on bios manually and all was good again. I think in only shows a lot on 9800GX2 couse it really needs the extra BW.

[MateoTTR]

What 'primary' settings did you change exactly such that performance of graphics card went right?!
Not sure we talk about the same issues.

[]siNNer[]

I have read somewhere on a french forum that some people got the problem sorted out by using a different bios version for the P5E3 WS pro.
Basically 0302 & 0306 would work well, while 0502 would not.
Can I ask what bios you use? Can you confirm the above?

Again it's the P5E WS PRO, X38 DDR2 version, not the P5E3! I've already tried bios 0404, 0507 & 0603 with no luck.

[dinos22]

i have a slowdown problem with my P5E3 DLX board 0703 bios used currently

[MateoTTR]

dinos can you specify what kind of slowdown you experience?
Is it the same as reported earlier in this thread (nature in 3dmark01 or canyon flight in 3dmark06).

The problem seems to happen only on ASUS X38+X48 boards... How come they did not find and solve this issue yet.

[dinos22]

nature '01

i also tested it on Gigabyte P35-DS3P and it was even worse
i used a driver cleaner and installed 173.67 again and the frames jumped up with GB board but i am still not happy

have a look at nature
it's still at least 100FPS lower than it should be

http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=741043

[Atal]

Edit: I get 666 FPS for Nature under Vista Ultimate x64 with the 9800GX2.

Diabolical(worst 1 liner ever)

[MateoTTR]

have a look at nature
it's still at least 100FPS lower than it should be
http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=741043

1333 for nature looks good, but I trust you it should be higher for the oc you have.
Maybe still not as severe as what the thread starter experienced (900 instead of 1300).

Would you have by chance a 3dmark06 bench?
In canyon flight people experiencing the bug get -40fps on average for this specific test.

[MateoTTR]

This is literally insane !
I unmounted my E8500 to replace it with my QX9650.
I also plugged out my 9800GX2 and plugged it back in the same slot again (closest to CPU).
I rebooted, launched 3dmark06 canyon flight: score went up from 79fps to 93fps !
I smell a crazy bug with the pe53 premium bios... I dumno if it has something to do with the CPU being used or the fact to re-detect the VGA card on a new slot when booting.

[MateoTTR]

Or maybe the fact to switch CPUs forces the bios to reconsider some internal settings / timings, and based on that the bug shows off or not.

[loonym]

I had that motherboard briefly and from what I could tell graphics performance wasn't as good as I thought it should be no matter what cards I used. I didn't have a GX2 to try.

[MateoTTR]

I have been investigating a little bit further:
Everytime I boot my computer, the situation can be different.
After each boot, I run systematically 3dmark06 canyon test and I can see immediately if the performance is normal or bugged.
Then if I restart, without even entering bios, the bug can show off again, or maybe not, it's just pure random.

Once I have booted up bug free with the right graphics performance, I can run the test ok mutliple times, everything is consistent until the next restart.

I am struggling to understand if it's a board / bios issue, graphics card issue or something related to my install (the latter I doubt).

[RLM]

Me1tDown, mentions the 790i Image fixing the problem on his board. I wonder if it has something to do with intel chipset drivers or similar. Or whether there's a driver that xp installs on the intel board that it doesn't on the nvidia board.

Would it be worth a fresh os install of XP, install graphics drivers and then futuremark stuff and give it a whirl? Prior to updates and further driver installs.

RLM