Is this supposed to be happening on a Q6600?

Alright, look at this. IT seems only one core is being utilized extremely. The biggest programs Im running are WMP 11 and limewire, and the sound is REALLY distorted and I'm on my last nerve. Before It is asked, I have done the multithread hotfix, turned off indexing, and a couple other things. Please help. The sound is terrible and I can't stand it anymore.

Thx

EDIT: I Have xp sp 2

 

it mainly matters with the program that you are using.

some old games/programs will just utilize one core only, some tries to split the load between cores.

the best way to really tell if you system is utilizing all cores by using multi-threaded programs like:
- wPrime
- WinRAR 3.62+
- Unreal Tournament 3 (UT3)
etc...

 

What is a cpu temp at idle supposed to be? on average do you think. This is with using the opera browser and limewire.

 

Now, I cannot recall the source that I think I read this in (and it's too late to go googling right now), but I believe that there is a registry setting that can be used to limit Windows to using fewer than all of the available cores.

I'll see if I can find my source again tomorrow, in the meantime, perhaps you'll be able to find something (or someone will come by quickly enough to stop you from wasting time by pointing out how clueless I am ).

 

This is after about a 25 sec extraction using winrar 3.62.

 

Well, look at it this way, ur providing hope : D.

I also found this word document online, could this provide a bit of help?

 

Thats extraction... which would not use the cores.

You need to encode something with WinRAR to really see the difference.

I just recommend to use wPrime... its simple and easy to use.

 

you could just set the core affinity so the limewire uses core 1, and WMP is core 0.

open task manager > process tab > applications (right click) on the limewire.exe > set affinity > check only core 1.

 

Aaah, someone came along who may have cleared up my confusion, "affinity" has the ring of familiarity to it.

 

Thx, but I've already messed around with different affinity configurations.
And I just tried that. A bit of an improvement, but still a little stuttering. Thx.

Here's my wprime bench. Is this average? I noticed that it took core number 2 longer to finish.

 

holy crap...

you're wPrime score says your system is fine.... which it is.

if you want to get a better score, either install SP3 or switch to Vista.... other than that, your system is fast and healthy

 

yea your q6600 is perfectly fine dont worry.

 

if you really want to see all cores up to 100%....

run wPrime again with the Task Manager open (under Performance tab)... its cool to see all cores at max.

 

He's mad that his sound is distorted. So his computer is not fine, sorta..
Pimp does it happen with just one program, or when you run both at the same time?

 

Im thinking it may be my hard drive, because it only happens when Im downloading, or opening up a program, or anything of that sort. I should've thought about that earlier. And Gophn, does that holy crap mean I have a really good score? Like epic lol?

Oh both cuz and sometimes one. Like when you unplug a mouse from a USB port, you hear the DEE-DOO. Or when you plug it in you hear the DOO DEE. Yea it's a bit distorted.

thx

Pimpaholic

P.S. Already defragged using perfect disk 2008 and already did a system file defrag.

 

Actually I did, and it was pretty killer. I noticed all my cores were averaging at about 74-75 the whole time, and I fn+1'ed that b***h lol.

P.S. Where can I find SP 3?

 

Windows XP SP3
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...a8-5e76-401f-be08-1e1555d4f3d4&DisplayLang=en

as for sound quality...

The sound quality is good, its need some configuration within the RealTek software.
Set the Environment option to Carpeted Hallway. And if you want even more quality, set the Equalizer to Soft (as in Soft Rock)

 

Thx for the link.

As for the sound quality, its fine, I like it, but its only more distorted when im running major programs.

Will SP3 utilize the cores better?

Thx

Pimpaholic

 

Yes SP3 does help increase performance... slightly when you are benchmarking.

 

Alright cool. Thx, its downloading now. Be back with results when I'm finished.

 

Well there doesn't seem to be very much of an improvement. There is a little less stuttering, but it tends to skip more. Any other suggestions?

P.S. Here is a word document that I found online. Is there anything in there that would help?

thx

 

Here is my new score after installing SP3. Not the biggest improvement:

 

Yo pimp I remember something... My roommate had an issue with a realtek driver and XP HOME SP2... Do you have Home? I can lookup the fix that we did. It was not nice though, some things have to be cleaned manually from the registry...

 

Yea hook me up plz. But what do you mean it wasn't nice? Like it could potentially damage my system?

Thx

 

No you have to manually edit your registry to get the fix to work Any time you start deleting things, bad things can happen. But its easy to backup your registry. Let me see if I can get the details on it, it took us almost a week to find information on the issue. There was supposed to be a hotfix included in SP3 for XP Home...

Can you give me your realtek audio driver version?

 

5.10.0.5591

 

Any input at all please (relating to the topic at hand of course for you technical peeps).

 

I just know I'm going to hate myself for saying this, but ... you may be better off running _Vista because of the better I/O and thread prioritization, which should give more precedence to your audio over things like background file I/O to the hdd.

EDIT: Well, I'll salve my conscience a little by suggesting, not that that you get rid of XP and convert to _Vista (-ism), but that you perhaps dual boot XP and _Vista so that you have XP for performance on games and the like, and _Vista for nonperformance use and audio.

 

I don't find this fair though. I know of others on this forum who use xp and have pretty much the same specs I do. They don't seem to have this problem. I'll always have a penetrating thought in the back of my mind that there is something wrong with my laptop, and I'd really like to fix it.

P.S. I planned on going to vista anyway, but only when I get 4 g of RAM. And that'll be a while because I'm still savin up for my second 8800m.

 

Did you try an older driver?
I looked up that issue I had and it was with no sound, so its different..

I'm sure someone asked you this already but do you have any sound effects enabled in the realtek HD control panel thing?

 

Yes I do. Carpeted hallway with a soft overtone on the equalizer as suggested by Gophn.

BTW I'm using the version R1.91 as shown on the realtek site.

P.S. Hey Im willing to downgrade to try out the fix. Can you just send me a link?

Thx

Oh and I wouldn't know where to go for an older driver, unless you hack unprotected directories through google.... Hmmm. lol

 

Try the one from the driver cd's that were sent to you with the computer?

 

I could do that. I'll do it tomorrow. Can you give me the link to the fix so i can just skim over it?

Thx

 

The computer its saved on is down right now. Shipping out the video cards and don't have a spare here. This is similar to the problem http://forums.driverguide.com/showthread.php?t=2578
We couldn't get the driver to install properly we had to remove some registry values to allow the driver to run.

 

Pimp can you link me to your original post about this issue?
The moderators turned off forum searching it seems..

 

Aha. How much RAM are you running right now?

 

I'm running 2 gigs. And psycho, what do you mean my original post? I'm not sure I follow.

 

You had a post open about this issue some time ago. I looked back a few pages but couldn't find it.

 

Maybe you're talking about this one:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=236263

 

Give me a list of the specific programs you are running when you see this issue.
I can try to replicate it here.

 

Limewire 4.16.6, WMP 11, Opera Browser 9.26. Those are the biggest ones.

P.S. Thx psycho, you seem to be really committed to helping me out.

 

So... anything psycho?

 

Have you thought about going to 4GB, or maybe even 3GB?

 

How`s the RAM usage btw, in Vista I was over 1 gigs at all times, and have only 2 Gb of RAM.
The system was screaming for more RAM...

 

Yes I have, I planned on getting vista as soon as I upgrade to 4 gb. And Ram usage at idle is about 285-290 mb.

 

It will jump to 8-900MB with Vista, so 4GB is a must.

 

this is why I'm waiting to buy 4 gigs lol.

Am I to believe I will not receive any more help on this until I upgrade to vista? If so I'll just stop asking for help now to save a lot of time.

 

I dunno, I mean, if reinstalling the sound driver, unplugging the network cable(I`m thinking flood here) or defragging the HDD don`t do the job, a fresh instal is your best bet

 

Good point. Well thx for all your help anyway, guys.

 

Nothing yet, I'm having issues installing OS's to this Intel Raid when I have more then one Raid Array set up.

220GB RAID 0
225GB RAID 5

I have to Install to one hard disk, then ghost, repeat for
XP
Vista 32
Vista 64
Red Hat
Fedora
Kubuntu

Trying to get them all out of the way in case I have to do it again