PCMark '04 and '05 failing to run

[Tech Tweaker]

I'm running out of possible causes to this... I've never played with such old chips so I couldn't tell you if that has anything to do with it.

I guess one more thing to try would be a HDD swap.

Well, just eliminated that possibility.

I just tried a different HDD with a different OS installation (XP Home instead of XP Professional) here.

I really think it doesn't like running on this dual core. Because there are two cores instead of one it can't make heads or tails of it and can't decide which core to run the test(s) on, so it is probably jumping back and forth between the cores, or it starts running on one core but ultimately errors out when it realizes there are two of them. I only think this because it ran fine with several of my single core CPU's.

I think next I'll swap out the CPU for a single core one, and then if that doesn't work it's probably the board (which I highly doubt because I've had this same issue with two different motherboards now) and I'm screwed if that's the problem.

I may ultimately end up having to buy a copy of PCMark 05 so that I can run the tests individually to see if I can get the tests that are failing to run by themselves. I'd rather not have to resort to that, but at this point it's looking like it may be the only solution.

 

[Seebs]

PCMark 05 is written to take advantage of multicore CPUs so the fact that yours is a dual core should not be the cause of your issues. Think about it; if the benchmark only like 1 core systems; then the WR for it would be on a single core system, but it isn't... It is on a 4x system. It has to be something else.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

On a hunch, I swapped out the dual-core A64 X2 4200+ Manchester for an A64 4000+ San Diego E6 single-core, the result was 4823 PCMarks on the first run with all settings at stock and 4841 PCMarks on the second run.

The problem is the CPU! I just don't know why, or exactly how to fix the issue.

Well, at least this proves I'm not just paranoid in my thinking that it just had to be the CPU, because I knew I should have been getting much higher scores.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

This is definitely an issue with dual-core CPU's.

I just put in a different dually and ran PCMark 05 again, same problem, really low score of 1603 PCMarks.

It seems as if the benchmark doesn't know what to do with the second core on socket 939, I was watching the CPU utilization as it was running this time and Core 0 was at 82% while Core 1 was at only 18%.

 

[Bobnova]

Is your windows install picking up on the second core?
What does CPUz say core count wise?

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Is your windows install picking up on the second core?
What does CPUz say core count wise?

Yes, it shows two cores under Task Manager and shows two separate core temperatures in HWMonitor and Core Temp.

CPU-Z shows the core count as two.

 

[Janus67]

Have you set the affinity to use both CPU threads?

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Have you set the affinity to use both CPU threads?

I don't even know how to do that or what that is.

 

[Seebs]

I don't even know how to do that or what that is.

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to launch task manager.
2. Find the PCM05.exe process
3. Right click on it and go to Affinity: Make sure both cores are selected. There should be a tick box for each and then one to select ALL.

Done.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to launch task manager.
2. Find the PCM05.exe process
3. Right click on it and go to Affinity: Make sure both cores are selected. There should be a tick box for each and then one to select ALL.

Done.

Okay, had a chance to try this today.

Went in and checked and both cores were already selected, but I manually deselected and then reselected them to make sure.

I'm afraid it didn't solve the problem though and my results are still just as low as they were the other day.

I can see in task manager that both cores are being utilized, but they are being utilized somewhat unevenly.

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Okay, I finally found the reason for my issues.

It was a driver issue. Apparently when you use the default driver for AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors (on socket 939 at least) downloaded via Windows Update/Microsoft Update in Windows XP it does not properly utilize the cores and runs the system as if it is a single-core or something similar.

I discovered the problem because of two things, 1. when I went into Task Manager and manually set the Affinity for the PCMark05.exe process to only run on a single core (Core 0 in my case) the benchmark completed normally with the kind of results I would expect from a single-core CPU in all tests, 2. I went to Futuremark's website and found in the FAQ's that this is apparently a common and documented issue with a documented fix.

Q: Why are my HD results .00x MB/s on my system with the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core CPU?
A: In order to get the HD tests to run correctly on the AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core CPUs, you can: 1) place switch "/usepmtimer" in the boot.ini file (defining the operating system startup switches) OR 2) install the AMD Processor Driver for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (v1.2.2.2), which adds the switch to boot.ini. The driver can be downloaded here: http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/amdcpu.exe

The link they have posted is a dead link by the way, such is why I had to go searching for the driver. So, I went to AMD's website and downloaded the driver and ran it. Now all is fine with my system.

Actually, it seems as though the system as a whole is running more smoothly now because before under the default Windows driver it took forever just to get the OS fully loaded and get all of the background processes to finish on start up of the system. Now, after I loaded the driver and rebooted there was not this long wait time for the processes to finish and the OS to load up.

The apparent (and documented) cause of this issue is a missing line of code in the Boot.ini file (/usepmtimer), and loading the genuine AMD driver appended this code and solved any other issues I was experiencing.

 

[jaymz9350]

Nice to know as I'll be doing this soon on 939 (Ultra-D arrived to day, but no chipset heatsink)