All AMD X2 owners should read this. Game performance issues.

[lordbane]

Don't be so quick to presume. I am not overclocking my system yet, I am seeing all these problems on my system. The links I included in the original post have users who are not overclocking yet experiencing the same issues.

 

I didn't have problems until I tried overclocking. I've seen others with the exact same complaint.

[aos]

I've experienced the problems in Farcry as well, but have not had the chance to test that game yet with the affinity option. The problem is you need to play the game for 2 hours straight with no slow down/stuttering or other odd behaviour to consider it stable. Playing it for 15 mins might not reveal the problem. Personally, games start acting up after 30 mins to 45 mins of play with no affinity set to on their process. As you can imagine, it takes a while to test games during the weekdays.

 

Actually it manifests immediately upon starting the game. As I was re-playing the game, I was usually playing long stretches at the time, but I never had the problem just suddenly show up - it's there from the start, or it isn't happening. Although I didn't have problems for many days and they suddenly started to happen quite often, so they could be related to some particular software or hardware installation. I do run multiple programs even while the game is running - that's why I got X2 after all - so one of them may not be playing along nicely.

[Phfor]

4200+, Rev BH-E4, 244x12, No issues what so ever.

 

C&Q is off, windows was really unstable until I installed the AMD driver, now no problems, at all. Running smooth @ 2928.

[Vidmar]

I'm seeing the stuttering problems in BF2 and TigerWoods 2004.

 

I don't have the AMD driver installed, but I did manually add the "/usepmtimer" in the boot.ini file. Adding that string helped TigerWoods 2004 but not BF2. Only the processor affinity helps BF2.

 

Also after I did add the "/usepmtimer" string in the boot.ini file is when MBM no longer reported the CPU speed correctly. I tried taking that string out and now MBM reports the CPU speed ok again. But now TigerWoods 2004 gets the stuttering.

 

There is definitely something wrong with these X2s and some games.

 

PS: Vegas 6 works like magic on the X2.

Vid

[diehrd]

Funny I have zero issus with battlefield 2 on my X2 4400...All i have an issue with is the sound on Desert combat but I think Driver 80.40 fixed that ? ?

[ArrowMk84]

I haven't had any stuttering, slow down or speed up issues in games with my new system. I installed the AMD driver right after I installed Windows, and I've turned C'n'Q off. However, I've only been able to play for half an hour so before my second GTX overheats (case airflow problem).

 

The only issue I seem to have is that Windows doesn't feel as responsive as it should be (probably just some Windows UI settings need tweaking), Also, when running two instances of Prime95, with the affinity set CPU 0 for one and CPU 1 for the other, only CPU 0 is pegged out, and CPU 1 sits mostly idle, but Windows is slow to respond to user input.

[irfy]

It would be nice to get some more people with E4 rev processors to post their gaming experiences

 

I have an E6 and have not had any problems.

 

 

Im running mine so far so good ! I also did have a HUGE gaming issue slow n fast frame rates incredibly annoying!! BUT now that is fixed !!

 

If any X2 users are having the same issues pm me and i will try to help! im sure ive answered the question on this forum.

 

Kind regards

 

Irfy

 

NOW im a happy bunny :shake:

[Voodoo128]

revision BH-E4 here. Running at stock speeds w/ amd driver. BF2, Warcraft 3, World of Wacraft, Fable, Earth 2160, FEAR Demo, HL2, Far Cry all works fine.

 

Now, when overclocked to 240x11. Fable, Starship Troopers Demo, GTA San Andreas experiences game slowdown and speed up.

 

 

Hmmmm, you have Fable 3 weeks prior to it being released? :cool:

[Musabi]

I have the e4 revision, havnt installed AMD drivers (or at lesat I dont think so??) and everything Ive played has worked great for me so far: half life 2, sims2, star wars battlefront, everything except the bet on soldier demo, but thats another story

 

EDIT: How do I disable C&Q? and what are these amd drivers? I read the thread over, ill do it again anyways though...

[-CsA-TAZ]

After suffering with my system for 3 weeks and going through every swap out imaginable, I finally concluded that the processor is the culprit in my Gaming performance issues. After installing an AMD 3500+ all my problems went away. So I was about to RMA my processor back to the vendor today (OEM CPU) when I decided to call AMD before I do.

 

A link to my previous post asking for help.

 

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22397

 

According to them, they have had more and more reports on the X2 suffering gaming performance on games. The problem can be characterized as either the game slowing down to a halt or speeding up as if it's a speed hack. I personally have experienced mostly the slowing down on multiple games, BF2, Psychonauts, Republic Commando, Dungeon Siege II, with the speed up only noticed in GTA: San Andreas.

 

Then I find this information linked below on the web where people are more and more complaining about X2 performance with games.

 

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/default.aspx?bid=242

http://forums.amd.com/index.php?showtopic=53288&st=0

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cf...hreadid=1677248

 

It seems the problem is related to a combination of Cool'n'Quiet or games that have to have their affinity set to use one processor. The actual AMD solution that I got from the tech is the affinity solution. I have C'n'Q disabled on my system and still suffered this problem. Some people claim installing the AMD X2 driver solved their issue, others say it did nothing for them.

 

I am going to test with a fresh install of windows when I get back home to see if it makes a difference before I RMA the CPU back. But I would like to you bring it to the attention of all the X2 owners out there in case you are experiencing similar issues.

 

Please post your if you have similar issues or if you have found a workarounds not mentioned here.

 

 

Edit: I should add the AMD tech said they've only seen this problem with DirectX 8 games which is clearly not the case.

 

AMD (San Diego) Athlon 64bit 4000+ 939pin 1mb L2cache would have been the better choice for now, otherwise nice system you have there, im sure in time that games will come out and use the dual core CPU and then you will be laughing!

 

what sort of 3D MARKS have you had? and have you done the 3D MARK with 1 then 2 cards to compare? pls lmk thx

[spworley]

when running two instances of Prime95, with the affinity set CPU 0 for one and CPU 1 for the other, only CPU 0 is pegged out, and CPU 1 sits mostly idle, but Windows is slow to respond to user input.

 

Not a problem. You just don't have enough RAM. You need 4GB (FOUR GIGABYTES) of RAM to run two P95 instances when both are run in blend mode. This is because blend mode tests a lot of RAM, and will allocate over 1GB. So what happens is you don't have enough RAM, you start swapping RAM to disk, your CPU use drops (since it's waiting for disk swaps) and your Windows becomes sluggish because you're swapping.

 

You can run two P95s in SMALL FFT mode without using much RAM at all.

I have 2GB and an X2 4800+, I run one P95 in small FFT and one in blend, that pegs them both at 100% CPU and windows still responds. If I try them both in Blend mode, I get exactly the low CPU use and windows sluggishness you describe.

[JediCreator]

Angry, the latest cpu-z(1.30) will show it. 1.20 didn't show on mine either.