About two posts ago, GTaudiophile brought to my attention a thread in the forums that talked about game stability and gameplay issues when using AMD's dual core processors. Honestly, I was a bit surprised as it is nothing I had encountered in my dual core testing, but admittedly I hadn't really done much personal gaming on the X2.
I had some other things to take care of earlier this week that prevented me from building a X2 game box and trying to duplicate some of the results mentioned in the thread, but now I'm ready to do just that.
I will work on getting to the bottom of it, but I do need something from you all. I want to know if any of you X2 owners are having any problems with games and, a few details about your configuration:
1) Have you installed AMD's processor driver?
2) Is your X2 machine running a clean install of Windows, or did you simply upgrade with your copy of Windows originally installed on a single-core CPU?
3) Have you tried using RunFirst, and what has its impact been?
Of course, do list whatever games you are having problems with and any more details about your system config. We'll see if we can't get to the bottom of this.
Take care.
I had some other things to take care of earlier this week that prevented me from building a X2 game box and trying to duplicate some of the results mentioned in the thread, but now I'm ready to do just that.
I will work on getting to the bottom of it, but I do need something from you all. I want to know if any of you X2 owners are having any problems with games and, a few details about your configuration:
1) Have you installed AMD's processor driver?
2) Is your X2 machine running a clean install of Windows, or did you simply upgrade with your copy of Windows originally installed on a single-core CPU?
3) Have you tried using RunFirst, and what has its impact been?
Of course, do list whatever games you are having problems with and any more details about your system config. We'll see if we can't get to the bottom of this.
Take care.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
17 Comments
View All Comments
LEKERMEG - Wednesday, January 18, 2006 - link
Well as the subject states ive already listed a set of games that works/not works in a other forum..unfortunatly its written in norwegian.
Some games are testet on x2 3800+ and 4400+ and a opteron 165
its viewable here:
http://www.diskusjon.no/index.php?showtopic=491003...">http://www.diskusjon.no/index.php?showtopic=491003...
PrinceGaz - Monday, September 19, 2005 - link
I'm not sure if the AMD processor driver actually adds this itself, but in the "boot.ini" file it is well worth adding/usepmtimer
to the end of the line which loads Windows XP, so it reads something like
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn /usepmtimer
That has worked with several older games and other programs that failed to work without it on my X2 4400+ (the ageing 3DMark2000 being an example). By the way I'm running XP Pro 32-bit, without the AMD CPU driver.
Even with /usepmtimer, a number of older games stutter when running and eventually crash. They are the ones where I have found "runfirst.exe" to be most effective as in almost every case it has cured the problem completely.
There are always going to be some games that refuse to run on dual-core machines though, the same games that refused to run on Hyperthreaded processors no doubt. Us AMD fans with an X2 can probably thank Intel and its introduction of HT a few years ago for the fact that almost all games today run fine.
KillerBurke - Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - link
I have searched the boards and tried the various fixes (including AMD driver) and still this issue persists. Seting affinity had no effect.Clean install Win xp64
amd x2 4200 (no overclock) updated driver
ASUS SLI- Premium
BFG 7800GTX OC(stock overclocking)
2 gig (matched 1 gig sticks) OCZ Platinum rev 1 2-3-2-5 -very stable in Burn in testing (set to 1T, didn't make a difference when set to 2T)
Enermax 535 watt PS (very stable rails)
WD raptor 74gb drive primary
Maxtor diamondmax 16mb 300gb storage
Zalman 7700 alcu HSF
nec 3520a
Sony oem dvd drive
BF2 - no issues -max settings plays for hours both single and multiplayer
Americas Army = no issues - same max settings
COD UO = no issues - same max settings
tried 32 bit version of Far Cry - locks after about 1 minute
tried 64 bit version of Far Cry same deal (yes I installed it exactly as instructed)
Far Cry plays for 1 minute about and then locks every time - the video stops and sound continues for about 15 seconds then looping sound effect and then complete lock requires hard restart.
Drivers I have tried various sets with no change for primary parts based on suggestions from others- it only seems to be Far Cry?
Other games just look and play ridiculously well with this rig - it just is very aggravating to not be able to play Far Cry
Any HELP!!!!
humunculus - Friday, September 9, 2005 - link
I just built a new system with 4400 X2 and installed Windows XP Pro on a new hard disk. DFI Lanparty SLI DR, BFG 6600 GT OC, OCZ Platinum Rev2 (2x 512 each).I have not had any issues with games but I have not played any at great length. Why do we need the AMD drivers? And what is "run first" sorry for the newbee questions. I hope they are OK to ask in this thread.Kyanzes - Wednesday, September 7, 2005 - link
AMD X2 4200+
MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum (NF3U)
MSI X800XT PE
1 GIG DDR 500
550W Enermax
1., Installed AMD drivers (in hope it will fix the problems)
2., Clean install of XP SP2
3., Tried runfirst and it helped in all games I had issues with
Pariah - stops with error message w/o runfirst, runs for hours with it
Splinter Cell (the original, 1.2B patch) - serious cutscene slowdowns w/o runfirst - problem gone with runfirst
Metal to the Pedal - crashed with error message - official game patch fixed the problem
Need for Speed Underground 2 - random crashes - gone with runfirst
Cold Fear - I have no issues running this title (no runfirst)
Shadow Ops Red Mercury - No issues at all, didn't have to use runfirst
Otherwise all appz seem to work flawlessly had issues with gamez only.
Voodoo128 - Tuesday, September 6, 2005 - link
I've had my Rig for 3 weeks and I've had a hell of a time determining what the problem was. I went through 2 different powersupplies, 2 different Motherboards, 3 sets of RAM, 3 Different Video Cards, and finally swapped out my processor to a 3500+ and my Rig works fine now.Here are the Rig details
AMD X2 4800+
Zalman CNPS7000B AIcu cooler
OCZ Platnium 2GB 2.3.2.5 Memory
DFI Lanparty UT SLI-DR
BFG 7800GTX OC Video (will SLI once I get my other Video card which I thought was the problem back)
Soundblaster 2ZS Gamer
2 74GB WD 10K RPM HDD in Raid 0
Thermaltake 680W powersupply 38amp V12+
Thermaltake Armour Case
1) I installed the AMD drivers with mixed results
2) Fresh installs of Windows XP SP2 everytime (reloaded windows about 10 times so far)
3) No
4) I have experienced slowdowns in BF2(Framerate drop and stuttering), Psychonaughts (Absurd slowdown), UT2004(Stuttering), Republic Commando(Slowdown and stuttering), Dungeon Siege II (Framerate drop and stuttering, GTA: San Andreas (Feels like a speed hack, where my char runs at super speed).
Once the problem occurs exiting out of the game and going back in DOES NOT resolve the issue, rebooting the PC does though. I usually can get these games to consistantly do what they are doing above after about 45 mins of play, sometimes much faster such as the case with Dungeon Siege II and UT2004.
Myrandex - Sunday, September 4, 2005 - link
With my Athlon64 X2 3800, I did reformat, and I installed the Proc Driver from AMD's website, but I didn't do anything with Runfirst. It games just fine with no stability problems, but the board does appear to be a lot less overclocking friendly compared to pre X2, and I had to get a bios update to make the board work properly.Thor86 - Friday, September 2, 2005 - link
Installed this cpu over my existing XP Pro OS installation. The OS recognized the new processor and installed the new MULTI CPU HAL, and rebooted.No AMD drivers until later to test out if it would fix things, but the AMD drivers seemed to have made things worst in my case - see below.
Games that I mainly play are the following, and what I tested:
BattleField2 - No AMD driver - worked no problems
CS:Source - No AMD driver - Used WinXPLauncher to set affinity - loads the first time, then after a couple of loads, it stops loading and just freezes the machine.
Diablo2 - No AMD driver - Used WinXPLauncher to set affinity - loads sometimes, but never exits game properly and freezes machine.
So after installing the AMD drivers, CS:Source never loads even with or without setting affinity, and same with Diablo2. Both just give me a black screen and hardlocks the machine. BF2 loads no problems.
Then, tried the repair install of WinXP Pro and even after that, none of my games would load, even setting affinity or using AMD drivers.
So back to single core AMD for now and all my games loads and exits multiple times without ANY issue. Now just waiting for some concrete resolutions on this matter to pop up. Thank goodness for Ghost backup images. :)
Visual - Friday, September 2, 2005 - link
I think it would be good to test a dual-opteron system for the same problems, this way it can be more obvious if the problems with some app are due to the shared l2 on the x2 (opterons dont share cache) which would imply some errors in the design of the x2, or due to some other race conditions between different threads which would imply some errors in the application design itself.Also I'd think that incompatibilities with win xp 64bit are more likely reason for problems than incompatibilities with dual (or dualcore) cpus, so experimenting with all combinations of 32bit/64bit and singlecore/dualcore/dualsocket might desirable. Seems like too much work to do for all problematical apps though.. maybe do it with atleast a couple?
Visual - Friday, September 2, 2005 - link
oh yeah and some tests on the intel dualcores might be good too