Eee PC 1215n Performance

The ethernet controller is failing because of the pcie speed, there's not really any way around it once you hit that wall.

 

Hi guys, never owned a netbook.

Is the 1215n capable of running lite dev apps, like a small DB (oracle), some .net stuff etc? Nothing for serious development just self training etc.

 

That makes sense, i was wondering what i did wrong...
I currently have only 2gb because my other sticks of ram are not compatible. So i really don't know if i should be adding another 2gb.
The USB 3.0 ports for now they are working. It only happened a few times so i was a little confused about that.
I emailed asus the other day all they said was to update the bios which was already the latest. And i asked them if i wanted to put in an SSD, how do i go about doing it as there is the warranty sticker. As usual they were not useful at all. But i have to say, i am getting to like this little lambo a lot.

 

Hi there, yes the 1215n would be more than capable to handle that. I myself use it to do some light c++ programming and office stuff and it's just as capable as any full size laptop. What it isn't suitable for is Heavy 3d modeling, full HD gaming (highest settings), Heavy audio/video work etc. But for any of those you mentioned even a less powerful netbook would be able to cope with them easily.

Hope that helps

 

yes it does most appreciated

 

Does anyone encounter choppy mp3 playbacks? I mean like it plays fine then it lags for a second. I don't remember my old MSI wind having that problem. Tried the stock drivers, newer drivers both the same result. Starting to think it could be windows that needs a clean install.

 

Have you monitored your CPU usage? Might be a task using up CPU too much.
Hmmm, might be a problem with disk fragmentation too...

 

Yea i tried looking at the resource monitor for quite a while but i couldn't catch what was the cause of it. Defragged both drives no improvement. But adjusting my page file helped a little. Previously i set about 3gb of space on my D drive. After that i changed to 16mb on my C drive and removed the D drive page file. It became much better. But the problem was still there, I'm going to go for a clean install and see how it goes.

BTW u guys might want to give this a try. It is actually modded realtek drivers to work with the creative emulation. I did it on my G73 and it was beautiful. It installed just fine on my VX6 but didn't have time to test it out.

Credits go to "TheMarkness" for making this possible.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/519478-creative-x-fi-mb-your-g73-realtek-hd-2-48-a.html

 

Sadly after formatting i'm still having this audio issue. I don't know whats wrong, it can't be that a dual core atom isn't able to play mp3's smoothly. Have anyone else encountered this before?

What happens is when i play music in winamp/wmp/itunes the song will play fine then it will lag for like a split second and continue playing.

 

I have to say that i haven't encountered this on the 1215n (which is pretty much identical), everything is working fine for me so i can't really shed any light on this for you.

 

What's the actual purpose of this except looking fancy? If it has more than 10-band-equalizer with more than 25 steps each, I would gladly try it out!

I have a VX6 too and just calibrated the soundcard using the real time analyzer Praxis. You can put my settings into your Realtek HD Audio-Manager equalizer and tell me how it feels:

RTA+ (250Hz-8kHz)
---
32Hz: 24 (max)
62Hz: 22
125Hz: 18
250Hz: 24 (max)
500Hz: 13
1kHz: 15
2kHz: 15
4kHz: 12
8kHz: 0 (min)
16kHz: 24 (max)

32, 62, 125Hz are actually max since the curve drops there. I changed them a little bit to give the bass are more bouncing sound.
250Hz has to be maximum and 8kHz minimum to be equal - thus the big spread, which seems sub-optimal to me...
16kHz is maxed since the curve drops there too.

PS: Of course everyone else can try those settings too, since I calibrated the soundcard only, not the icePower drivers of the VX6, which I may do some other time...

 

It gives the creative crystalizer, mixer, bass boost and a few other features. I didn't really test it out as i'm having trouble with my vx6. Kind of fed up because i'm very sure it should be able to handle mp3 playbacks. But it just lags, i might just send it in to asus.

 

i cant make sense of the user manual for the 1215n, how do i burn recovery dvds?

 

Check other MP3's too. I got one that "lags" too, but that must be because of the enconding of it being not quiet compatible with WMP, since it plays fine with other players.

Also uninstall hack and modded drivers and try the newest one from RealTek website. Mostly likely reason for your stuttering.

 

Today i took some time to debug the system. I did a clean install, and played the mp3's it worked fine. This is without any drivers installed. So i concluded it had to be a driver issue. Then i installed the drivers one at a time while playing at least two tracks before installing the next. The result was weirdly the ethernet driver. I was like ... The driver i had was an atheros. So for the time being my ethernet port has no driver and can't be used. I also disabled it in the bios. System works fine now. Who would have thought the Atheros ethernet driver...

 

Have you tried letting windows find an ethernet driver off windows update? It wasn't long ago that the windows driver was the best solution for the ion 2 due to the issues with reference drivers.

 

I did that from the beginning since I never use it. Drivers are installed though.

 

Not at the moment, i'll give that a try when i get back. At least for now the culprit has been found.

Edit: Windows update couldn't find a suitable driver. I downloaded "AR815x_v1.0.0.46_WHQL" from atheros. I think its the latest but same problem. So i ended up leaving the driver installed but disabling it in the bios.

 

About this... there's a "funny" story I had with my own EEE.

I got the 1215n from an e-shop, as it was - preinstalled with random rubbish. I already knew I would be reinstalling the system but I did not have the necessary image to do so. (For your information, I downloaded a W7 Home Pro 32 image from torrents, but I used my own key from the sticker on the bottom of the laptop, so it's legal).

So anyway, I didn't have that iso, so I decided I'll just use it even with all that bloatware. But I noticed something strange. Every time I started downloading a large file via Wi-Fi, the transfer would stop, and from then on, my CPU usage would rise to 25-30% usage even if I did nothing.

A quick trip to the performance/resource monitor showed that those 25-30% were taken by SYSTEM INTERRUPTS! (Deferred procedure calls and interrupt service routines). I knew something is very wrong. I was googling this problem all day, because I refused to believe my device was not functioning right after I got it. I wanted my laptop so badly!

The connection would not resume working and the signal icon (and the entire "networking" area of control panel) would become inaccessible. It would just hang there, white window, you know how it goes.

Rebooting the system won't do anything as the system will hang on the "logging off" shutdown screen. I had to hold the power button to force it to shut down. Then, when I booted, all of the changes I did to the system would be gone of course, because the session was not saved during logout.

I panicked a little, I thought maybe the laptop was damaged. I tried uninstalling ALL of the 34 (yeah, what the heck asus? 34 programs on a NEW device?) programs, including the atheros drivers (but I didn't know it could be them at that time).

It was fine for half an hour, then it resumed going haywire again. Again, the same problem with system deferred procedure calls. I tried Procmon and Procexplorer to see what's happening but sadly nothing I could find out was helping my case.

So as a last attempt, I finally managed to get a copy of that ISO with W7 on it. I cleared the entire drive (lost expressgate because I had no interest in it at that time, as well as the boot booster). Installed W7.

Peace.

Calm music.

I won.

It has been working ever since - no system interrupt problems. I really wonder what caused it, but I am glad it's gone.

Can you check if your CPU is being used by the deferred calls too, when the MP3 fail thing happens? Maybe your issue is the same as mine.

P.S.: Oh, I also did a /sfc scannow to see if my W7 asus installation wasn't damaged, but it wasn't. So that's not it.

P.P.S.: I am using the atheros drivers version 1.0.0.29, no problems.

P.P.P.S.: SON, I AM DISAPPOINT. I mean BROADCOM, I AM DISAPPOINT. Your wi-fi so-called N can only do 72Mbit/s, peaking at 5MB/s transfer rate. My previous netbook, the wind U120, which is way older... has an atheros wifi in it. Guess what, it can do 300Mbit/s, peaking at 16-20MB/s! I quit using LAN because it was really faster (Lan transfer speeds were at 10MB/s). Now I have to use LAN again because I have a habit of copying HD movies onto my netbooks. And pulling 8GB over 5MB/s line sucks.

 

I don't quite understand what this deferred calls thing is... How do i go about checking it? I know how to get to resource monitor but thats about it haha. I stared at it for hours but couldn't understand a thing.

 

I made a "guide" for you! ^_^

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/9081/deferred.png

A value of 5% is high, but can happen. Anything more than 5% cpu usage (long-term) indicates a driver / hardware problem. Ideally, it should hover around 0-1%, depends on what you're doing.

 

Just gave it a try, its not the system interupts. Mine hovers around 0 - 1. Average is around 0.5 - 0.6. Only my audiodg.exe is running around 6 - 9. And at times 15.

 

That one is RealTek. Try to deactivate all effects (except equalizer ;-) to save some cpu power for games.

 

Actually, the "audioDG" is not realtek's. It's Audio endpoint builder, something present since Vista. It's basically Microsoft's audio handling (albeit it does basically "run" realtek's stuff in it, the audiodg itself is Microsoft's "wrapper"). I noticed that more or less the only thing that affected it was the sampling rate. Equalizer and other niches did not yield much change, nor did giving priority to apps. Anyway, if you want to experiment, do this.

Right click your microsoft sound trayicon (not the realtek one), go to "Playback Devices", select your speakers, click "Properties", go to "Advanced" tab and there select a different sampling rate. You can easily go for the lowest setting, 16bit 44100Hz (CD quality). I don't think you'll notice any difference in audio quality, but the CPU usage should drop. If you wanna measure the other way, push it up to 24bit 192k Hz, and play something. You'll see the CPU usage going as high as 15% (in 1215n's case, which is a lot considering you have 4 threads). When I pick the lowest setting, it hovers around 2-5% for MP3s :3

 

I did try the sampling rate at CD quality when i was having my audio issues. Didn't help at all. I still believe its a driver or bios issue here. I've wrote a pm to "Gary Key" who was the asus representative that helped with the G73 issues. But i've yet to get a reply from him.

I have a question, for those of you who upgrade to SSD, do you do it yourself by voiding the warranty or do you send it to asus to do it for you?

 

hey guys, due to the 1215n and vx6 been bottle necked by processor. do you think they will do a refresh with sandy bridge for them. im mean the vx6 is JUST barely been released and its december and there seems to be limited stock of the ones that have come in.
i also seen 1 site that sells them say its discontinued.

 

Code:

Atheros.  So for the time being my ethernet port has no driver and can't be used.  I also disabled it in the bios.  System works fine now.  Who would have thought the Atheros ethernet driver...[/quote]

[I]I think I found the real culprit here. 

You see, when I first got my 1215N, it came preinstalled with their Win7 of course. It had a very annoying issue where it would randomly "lock up". Deferred procedure calls would take 25-40% of my CPU and anything I would do after the lockup would not get saved. Like if I had my skype opened, the entire settings would get lost. Or if I had torrents running, the entire torrent history would get lost and I'd have to re-add them all and as well as re-set all of my preferences.

So I was like "omg this sucks, new netbook and I'll have to RMA it already". As a final attempt I installed this *cough cough* "legal" version of Windows 7 Ultimate that was lying around. Voila. No matter what driver I used or what I did, there were no lock-ups, no freezes and no nothing.

So after two weeks I said to myself "You have a legal Win 7 key so use it you dummy". I downloaded Win7 Home Premium installation disc and reinstalled my system, to have a legal one.

Guess what, the problem was back. I was like "What? Why would Ultimate work and Home Premium not?". I remembered a hunch from you and disabled the LAN adapter in bios. Voila, no lockups. So I was like "okay, but I know it was working on the Ultimate, and I know I use the exact same driver as I used then. So what was different?" and then I realized that I did have a different setting in the windows power management.

[B]ASPM. Active State Power Management. Something Microsoft includes since vista. It should basically lower the power for PCIe lines that are A) not being used or B) have devices that support this feature.

I googled something and there seem to be linux users who have trouble with atheros devices because their ASPM support seems poor. So I went to the settings. ([U]Start->power options->change plan settings->change advanced power settings->PCI Express->Link state power management->turn both OFF[/U]) and I have not had any lock-up ever since.

The reason it only shows when you install (any) drivers is because they have to first tell the system that a device (our Atheros lan) supports ASPM. Which they do, and the system then downclocks them and makes our system lock up.
[/B]

EDIT: No, the issue is still present...

Code:

It was stable for a day now, but then it happened again (System NT+kernel etc taking up CPU, unable to save data, unable to browse and use connection). However, it happened right after I closed the lid. I wasn't able to reproduce it again, but I disabled the ACPI Lid (by installing it as "printer", a known hack-ish workaround). I don't use the lid for anything really, I have windows set as "do nothing" for lid actions. I'm going to continue testing.

EDIT: So far so good. I'll continue testing.

It's really upsetting though. Why should I go through such great measures to make my EEE work like it should work out of the box? And I don't think it's a hardware malfunction, because before with Windows 7 Ulti (illegal sadly >.<), it was working just fine! I don't get it...

Anyway, things I had to do to prevent failure so far:

1) Set ASPM to disabled
2) Disable (overwrite) the driver of ACPI Lid

I did not have to do that in W7 Ulti - neither of these two things in fact. Weird... And I was using that ultimate for over a month, so there is no chance I was "lucky" and avoided a crash by a chance.

Okay, none of this actually helped. I still get the exact same problem. I am going back to that Win7 Ulti although I don't understand what is going on.

 

I vaguely remember doing that previously and still had the problem. Thats why i just disable it in the bios.

 

The bottle neck seems to be neither of the processors. Playing "Dead Space", the game crashes on certain effects with only 50% load on GPU and CPU. So it seems to be a Nvidia driver problem and an unknown hardware problem (PCI Express?).

I don't think so, because recently Asus announced not only a mouse, but also a set of bags and an external HDD, all in the style of the VX6!

 

I am going to get to the bottom of this. Even with Win7 Ultimate, the error is back again. Even when I disable the atheros LAN in the bios, it still frequently goes into that weird state where "System - NT Kernel" takes 25% of my CPU and the entire machine refuses to work henceforth.

This is a challenge and I will not back down - I am going to figure this out once and for all

 

ok. but i thought they would keep the chassis, just put new processor inside.
Lol i dont intend to game massively on the vx6 but wouldnbt mind every now and then playing something on low res.
ill get one eventually ill just have to sell things lol cos i just got an 8540w

 

looooool! Good luck and please find out why Dead Space always crashes when I see meteroits steam!

You will be surprised how many games you can play on full settings (except the newest ones)

 

it be nice but i mean the odd game of cod 2 or something similar. be epic if it was strong enough to play black ops even if its not better but still.
basically i dont intend to run much intensive stuff but its nice to know that if i fancy playing them that i can. should be able to even it is based off the 310m.

 

Hello to everyone, it's my first post here.
I recently bought this netbook and i experience the same issues as 'Roben'.
As soon as i overclock the CPU, my ethernet adapter loses the network connection. I'm not a noob and i know what i'm doing, although Win7 is a bit new to me, i got used to it fast. I'm using the stock bios (version 0110).
My newtwork adapter is 'Atheros AR8152'. I tried different network driver versions, that i downloaded directly from (Atheros/Asus) website, but with no success, so i suppose that it's not a driver issue.
I just hope that there is a software based resolution for this problem. If the problem is in the PCI-EX bandwidth, then I don't really understand why other people don't experience the same problem. I bought my netbook from B&H, everything else seems to be working right.
Some help will really be much appreciated. I just can't get used with the low CPU speed of this netbook, with the overclock it's working much better.

P.S. I tried overclocking CPU with different FSB, the lowest fsb that i tested with was 113.5Mhz, and it didn't help.

 

sonixblast, could you please make a backup file of your bios with the "äsus update program" and host it anywhere to ppl download. i`ve uploaded mine but havent made the back, so, we cant overclock cpu now as good like version 0110. could you please do it ?? i`havent been able to find it anywhere, you are my and other ppls last hope.

 

I am very interested in buying one of these, but I do have one concern. That being the power pin inside the laptop. Does it really break that easily from what I have read a lot of people have broken it? Are they just being careless or is it really that bad?

 

Well the power pin is pretty thin and small however i havent had any issues so far and i dont think i will tbh. It's not that bad really - just dont leave it on the floor so theres no risk of standing on it.

 

Thats good to hear, how long have you had this netbook for?

 

Since the beginning of september.

 

Ok guys, here is my stock bios (v.0110), people were asking for it, so i uploaded. I give no warranty that it will work on other PCs. (Model nr. - "Asus 1215n-PU17-BK")

http://rapidshare.com/files/437798948/BIOS_0110.ROM
Deposit Files


P.S Can someone help me solve my problem?

 

This issue was raised a few pages back and my theory is that just like with older machines in order to maintain stability the pci clock had to be raised to avoid crashes and other problems on overclocked systems. The slider for the pcie speed is greyed out i setfsb and usually you can adjust it separately which says to me that the pcie clock is locked.
If i am right then this could explain why the ethernet adapter fails under higher overclocks, due to the inability to move to a higher frequency pcie clock. But like i said this is only a theory.

 

Yes this was covered on p26, it's the PCIe reference clock. Since the ethernet card is sensitive to timing, it will not be able to function correctly.

 

And what about USB LAN adapter? I didn't try it, but it should work. It is said that simple solutions are the best .)

 

Is there a way to overclock a bit the PCi-EX frequency?, or to put priority on the LAN adapter?
I'm planning to upgrade the bios to the latter version, the one that i have atm is working well, despite the lan issue and keyboard delay in flatout2. From what i've read the new bios limits overclocking, but it may make the system a bit more stable. How do you think guys?, is it worth to upgrade?
I overclocked my CPU to 2.36Ghz, and the CPU score in 3dmark 06 has grown from 960 to 1200. It's really working much nicer

 

I've been reading up on the 1215n, and the D525 CPU apparently doesn't have speedstep.

Anyone been using a program like RMClock or CrystalCPUID to set power states on the CPU?

 

So I just bought one of these and I have heard that it comes with an incredible amount of bloatware. I plan on reformatting it when I get it. Is there a list somewhere of the drivers that I will need? Also has anyone had any problems loading windows7 64-bit onto it?

 

You don't need to format everything, just the first two paritions (data). Don't touch the last two!!! This way ExpressGate and the backup solution will work afterwards too.

32-bit Drivers (will work with 64-bit too; exception see below):
ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

Win7 (64-bit) runs smoother on my VX6. Only problem: you need a 64-bit version of "KB filter driver". Google for that one.

Do you plan on upgrading RAM? If so, please tell me how much you can access from it.

 

I don't really care about the backup solution, also what is express gate?

 

Linux-based semi-OS that gives you near instantaneous access to internet, chat, and similiar goodies.

 

Ahh thanks, unless that is necessary for the computer to function I will probably get rid of that too, haha.