Disappointing performance

"
Is this performance typical for an Athlon XP 3000+? Is the VA-20 just a
crappy motherboard?

I got this board as well running a XP2800 barton PC400 1Gig and found it to
be slow for some reason, sisoftware sandra shows it to be about the same as
a XP2000 with sdram !

"Goober" wrote in message
...
I've just put together an Athlon XP 3000+ system for a family member. I
was disappointed at the CPU and memory performance compared to my own
Pentium 4 2.6-GHz (400-Mhz FSB) system. I thought that the Athlon XP 3000+
would be at least a little faster.

I ran several benchmarks, but here are my PCMark04 scores just for the
sake of comparison:

P4 2.4 GHz (100-MHz system bus):
------------------------
CPU: 3408
Memory: 2553 (1 GB of PC2100 DDR266)
HDD: 1640 (WD 80-GB IDE)


Athlon XP 3000+ (166-MHz system bus):
------------------------------
CPU: 2825
Memory: 1620 (1 GB PC3200 DDR400)
HDD: 4690 (WD 80-GB SATA)


Both systems have an 80-GB Western Digital hard disk drive, but the hard
disk performance of the Athlon system is impressive, presumably because of
SATA support. (The hard disk in the Pentium 4 system is connected to a
Promise Ultra133 TX2 card.)

The motherboard in the Athlon system is an ABIT VA-20, and both systems
are running Win XP SP2. I've triple-checked the BIOS settings and
everything appears to be set correctly.

Is this performance typical for an Athlon XP 3000+? Is the VA-20 just a
crappy motherboard?


G,

My experience of this board (Abit VA-20) are very similar to yours - a slow
board.

On Christmas Eve my Athlon XP3000+, 1 GB PC2700 RAM, 2 x 80 GB PATA HDDs on
Soltek mobo stopped working. By Christmas Day I had diagnosed the mobo as
failed. On Boxing Day I got the VA-20 as it was the only socket A board
that I could find locally. I rebuilt the system and it seemed very slow
running my normal software, so I ran the "Aida" benchmark and it said
extremely low memory performance.

I subsequently had the Soltek repaired and "upgraded" an old K6-2 500 Mhz
system with the VA-20, an XP 2100+ that I had spare, 512 MB PC3200 RAM and
40 GB PATA HDD - and the VA-20 still gives very low RAM benchmarks.

As you say, I believe that "the VA-20 (is) just a crappy motherboard".

--
C R Briggs

On Christmas Eve my Athlon XP3000+, 1 GB PC2700 RAM, 2 x 80 GB PATA HDDs
on
Soltek mobo stopped working. By Christmas Day I had diagnosed the mobo as
failed. On Boxing Day I got the VA-20 as it was the only socket A board
that I could find locally. I rebuilt the system and it seemed very slow
running my normal software, so I ran the "Aida" benchmark and it said
extremely low memory performance.

I subsequently had the Soltek repaired and "upgraded" an old K6-2 500 Mhz
system with the VA-20, an XP 2100+ that I had spare, 512 MB PC3200 RAM and
40 GB PATA HDD - and the VA-20 still gives very low RAM benchmarks.

As you say, I believe that "the VA-20 (is) just a crappy motherboard".

--
C R Briggs



Sandra says that this board is made by Elitegroup (ECS) no wonder if it is
true

In article , mavy
says...

Sandra says that this board is made by Elitegroup (ECS) no wonder if it is
true


Sandra is a pile of **** that spends more time guestimating whats in a
PC than actually having a match.


--
Conor

"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." O.Osbourne.

"Conor" wrote in message
t...
In article , mavy
says...

Sandra says that this board is made by Elitegroup (ECS) no wonder if it
is
true


Sandra is a pile of **** that spends more time guestimating whats in a
PC than actually having a match.


--
Conor

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Product...uID=24&LanID=8

Does look identical so it does seem sandra is correct in this case so much
for buying Abit

On Sat, 21 May 2005 14:02:51 +0100, Conor
wrote:


Sandra is a pile of **** that spends more time guestimating whats in a
PC than actually having a match.

Sandra? Who still uses that? Everest is the proggy to use now.

"Fisher" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 21 May 2005 14:02:51 +0100, Conor
wrote:


Sandra is a pile of **** that spends more time guestimating whats in a
PC than actually having a match.

Sandra? Who still uses that? Everest is the proggy to use now.

I installed Everest and it too says "Field Value Motherboard Name vECS
KM400-M Deluxe / KM400-M2 / KM400A-M2 / V7-2" So ECS make boards for Abit

Goober wrote:

I've just put together an Athlon XP 3000+ system for a family member. I
was disappointed at the CPU and memory performance compared to my own
Pentium 4 2.6-GHz (400-Mhz FSB) system. I thought that the Athlon XP 3000+
would be at least a little faster.

I ran several benchmarks, but here are my PCMark04 scores just for the
sake of comparison:

P4 2.4 GHz (100-MHz system bus):
------------------------
CPU: 3408
Memory: 2553 (1 GB of PC2100 DDR266)
HDD: 1640 (WD 80-GB IDE)


Athlon XP 3000+ (166-MHz system bus):
------------------------------
CPU: 2825
Memory: 1620 (1 GB PC3200 DDR400)
HDD: 4690 (WD 80-GB SATA)


Both systems have an 80-GB Western Digital hard disk drive, but the hard
disk performance of the Athlon system is impressive, presumably because of
SATA support. (The hard disk in the Pentium 4 system is connected to a
Promise Ultra133 TX2 card.)

The motherboard in the Athlon system is an ABIT VA-20, and both systems
are running Win XP SP2. I've triple-checked the BIOS settings and
everything appears to be set correctly.

Is this performance typical for an Athlon XP 3000+? Is the VA-20 just a
crappy motherboard?

Well, I can't make a direct observation of my Athlon XP 2800+ vs. my P4 2.6
Northwood systems because one runs Linux and the other Windows XP. However,
I have a couple of things to say about this: First, one benchmark does not
tell the whole story. Honestly, I'm suspicious of benchmarks because
certain ones have been shown to be biased toward certain processors.
Second, each processor shines in different areas. AMD processors have shown
to be more effective than Intel processors for 3D gaming performance, but
P4's have shown to be faster during video encoding. Third, motherboard
chipsets make a difference. On Tom's Hardware CPU charts, Athlon 64
processors are fastest on Via KT800 chipsets. nForce 3 chipsets seem to
come in a little slower. This particular CPU chart does not have the newest
chipsets, but from what I gather, the nForce 4 chipset is supposedly faster
than the newest offering from Via. So, chipsets make a huge difference in
performance. Fourth, the motherboard you have with the Athlon XP has
onboard graphics, which I assume shares system memory, unlike a board with
an AGP card which has its own memory. This is bound to cause a bottleneck
in the memory, effectively slowing your system. Lastly, I'm not sure that
just installing Windows XP on the machine will have it optimized for the K7
architecture. In the past, I've always felt that Microsoft had an Intel
bias. That seems to be the opposite with the new 64 bit architectures.
However, unlike Linux where you can install or compile a kernel for your
processor and have a system optimized to perform best on it, I have no idea
what goes on when the Windows installer sets up the kernel during
installation and it could have a generic 386 kernel compiled for it. I'm
sure that OEM's have to tools to tweak them to get the best performance,
but a consumer does not, and just running the installation does not
guarantee you a system optimized the best it can be.

My 2800+ seems to be every bit as fast as my 2.6 P4, which has been
overclocked to 3.0. However, that's only perception. I also have a more
comparable setup, both using AGP graphics, and the same amount of memory.

You can compare processors on Tom's Hardware CPU charts, if you like, and
determine it what you're coming up with and what they did jive, and if you
need to look into something to get performance a little better.


--



Registered Linux user #378193

mavy wrote:

I installed Everest and it too says "Field Value Motherboard Name vECS
KM400-M Deluxe / KM400-M2 / KM400A-M2 / V7-2" So ECS make boards for Abit

Possibly low volume boards, but I think Abit makes their own Fatal1ty
boards, and other high-end boards. It wouldn't surprise me that 2 OEM's
would use the same board by different names for low volume boards, much in
the same way Toyota made the Matrix and GM the Pontiac Vibe.


--



Registered Linux user #378193

BigJim wrote:

64 bit wow I got to get that.

Not until MS Windows XP 64 matures and gets apps and drivers in 64 bit...


--



Registered Linux user #378193