Sluggish i7-920 on Gigabyte GA-EX58-EXTREME

[ahmad.obay]

Thanks for the replies everyone...

Deanzo,
Didn't drop your post... will get hold of a digital cam and post the BIOS readings.

Dave1979,
Seems even with a faster RAM you get the same issue. I don't think it's the RAM anymore. I went to the shop where i bought my PC and tried a Kingstone 6GB kit and still get the same result.


LutaWicasa/Evilsizer/BenF,
EIST & C1E are disabled now. Still the same


Rody9933,
What is the 1.5Gbps jumper? i dont recall seeing any jumbers on my HDDs

Dejo,
Yes, i reset my BIOS to it's default values many times actually. No luck

Gunny51,
My LG DVD actually slows my POST & booting, but I've tried disconnecting it completly and still have my systems lags.

 

[ahmad.obay]

Rody9933,
I cheeked the HDD manual and there is no jumper to limit the speed to 1.5Gbps

 

[ahmad.obay]

Dejo,
Just reset the CMOS now. No difference.

 

[Evilsizer]

well i know for a fact seagate drives come with a jumper on them. that jumper limits the drive to the SATA standard, remove the jumper and it will use SATA II. the term SATA and SATA II may not be correct but its better then the branding they use on the boxes. where they state its 1.5G or 3G as the SATA standard. the only other thing i can really suggest to you now since you have ruled other things out. is if you havent done so, install the chipset drivers from intel's site. there is something either HW or software related causing the problem. other areas to check out would be in the hard driver or ide properties to see if its using a UDMA mode. i know it sounds weird but it might be using a IO mode for access to the HD's for some odd reason.

 

[Dave1979]

Hi Obay,

Worth checking the Hard Drives are actually using SATA drivers and not IDE emulation. When I built I just peiced it all together powered up and popped in the Vista 64 OEM disk. Don't recall any drive options being provided but looks as though both were set up as PATA not SATA.

Under the Integrated Peripherals bios options check the first option:
SATA RAID/AHCI Mode is set to Raid or AHCI and not to Disabled (depending on what you need).

As this was not set during installation on mine when I switched to AHCI Windows Vista would not load. There is a registry key that needed changing in Windows prior to the change in Bios. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 for details. Once the reg key is changed, the bios is changed, and windows reboots - a series of new drivers will be downloaded and installed automatically and a reboot will be required.

I also, on same menu, disabled USB Storage Function (for detecting them during POST) as didn't need this - windows will still detect USB storage devices once started.

Overall, mainly due to the change from IDE to SATA2, my system is now working more satisfactory. I am wishing I did go for a fast HDD though, maybe a future purchase...

Hope this helps,

David

 

[ahmad.obay]

Hello Dave,

Switching to AHCI & SATA --> no fun
Upgrading to latest BIOS F6 -->

contacting Gigabyte now, but they take forever to reply to each single email with a stupid answer.

 

[ahmad.obay]

Is it possible to have a hardware conflict in a new systems like this one?

I remember a wrong IRQ can cause all these issues but we are beyond that now ^o)

 

[Dinosaurjr]

Hi,
I have built the same system about a month ago. Did not notice this problem yet, but i am curious. The only thing that slowing down performance is constant windows indexing in Vista if you ask me!!
Will post if come accross this issue.

 

[ghost_recon88]

Did you ever try loading BIOS F7c on there?

 

[ahmad.obay]

Hello Dinosaujr,
My latest communication with Gigabyte resulted on blaming the Seagate HDDs for the bad performance. Check out http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/15863. I'm still testing though. Don't have any WD drives to test with

ghost_recon88,
Thanks for the file. Where did you get F7c from? I can't find it on Gigabyte website. I upgraded from F5 to F6 (the latest online) and that didn't help.

 

[Evilsizer]

did you check the drives firmware?

 

[Dinosaurjr]

Guys,

Get the latest bioses from http://forums.tweaktown.com/f69/gigabyte-latest-bios-28441/
Ahmed, Thanks for the article! Turns out i have installed my OS on a Seagate 500GB drive. Drive only scores 5.8 in vista. Right ow i'm considering buying a WD Velociraptor to install Vista on.

 

[Evilsizer]

if you want something fast, why not get a OCZ Vertex SSD?

 

[Dinosaurjr]

BOOT Issue?

I'm using F6 Bios now, and just noticed an issue.
I,ve set up Vista Installation on External USB HDD.
When i press F12 (Boot Menu) to boot from USB-HDD, my system still boots to my active Vista OS.

First/Second/Third Boot Device
First: USB-FDD
Second: CD-ROM
Third: Harddisk

Found out that USB-HDD boots fine when setting USB0 HDD 1st in "Hard Disk Boot Priority" Menu.

Has anyone else experienced This?
Could this be an issue with the F6 Bios?

 

[Dinosaurjr]

EvilSizer,

I had indeed considerd SSD, But most of them are 2,5" and prices are still a bit too high for a few gigs.
For now best value hdd is still 150GB WD velociraptor. Will cost me about 170 Euro's.

BTW:
Anyone need a VISTA OEM SLIC Bios? Check this Forum: here

 

[[BIOS]O.o]

Interesting tip [BIOS]... what makes you believe it's the heat sink?

seen it before in a couple pc's iv built for clients after cleaning the CPU with an alcohol swab and re-applying AC5 it fixed it some times if its not seated it right your temps probably wont spike but if you HS and CPU don't have a solid connection it has to try a lot harder to keep cool, im not doubting your intelligence at all its just it happens. if that dosnt solve it then im going to assume its your board make sure that your volts on you memory are at or below 1.65V the X58 boards just hate anything more than that. Good luck!

 

[ahmad.obay]

Guys,

Thanks again for all your help. I found that the reason why the system is extremely slow on Windows 2008 is due to Hyper-V & the nVidia graphics card. Obviously they can't live happily together. For explanation check out the following links:

• Hyper-V made the machine unusable : SUPER SLOW
• Video performance may decrease when a Windows Server 2008-based computer has the Hyper-V role enabled and an accelerated display adapter installed
• Bad Performance with High-End Graphics and Hyper-V

That however doesn't address the lags in Windows 7 & Windows Vista so I'll keep investigating.

Dinosaurjr,
Thanks for the link. Will use the new flash and let you know.
Regarding your plans to switch to WD, make sure first your low score is due to the HDD. The affected models are Barracuda 7200.11, ES.2 SATA, and DiamondMax 22 the reset should be OK. There is also a new firmware for these models on Seagate website. As I explained above, the reason turned to be Hyper-V not the HDD.

BTW: Very interesting link ... Thanks for that


[BIOS],
Thanks for the clarification. Will give it a try for sure. Shouldn't that be reflected on the CPU temperature reading? If it's a spike on the CPU temperature, shouldn't SpeedFan be able to show it for example?

 

[RENerz]

Me too!

Hi all!
I found my way here after googling Core i7 and slow.
I'm new to a lot of the jargon so bare with me if I describe things incorrectly. I'll be as accurate as I can be from memory and will double check things if something spurs your interest.

I have basically the same problem, but my setup is quite a bit different. Perhaps some of this may help you:

System
Core i7 920, stock settings and fan
Asus P6T Deluxe (does not have that external OC thing)
Corsair XMS3 1333 6Gb kit (3x 2Gbs) - reports tripple channel mode
Vista Business x64 (DVD is brand new from microsoft a few weeks ago, came with a service pack I believe)
WD Caviar Black 640Gb SATA
LG SATA DVD burner
D-Link WA-556 wireless adaptor (N-Extreme pci-e adaptor)
ATI Radeon X800 XL 256Mb

My boot time is a crawling 2:30 as well.
I initially bought this in mid februrary, put it together and installed with Vista 32bit as that was all I had, and was frustrated with how slow it was. I didn't have much to compare it to at the time. Of note, my old generic D-link G wireless card was barely operational upon switching to Vista. I don't think it was a driver error as I updated all over the place and it did run, just with poorer signal and much more slowly than it did in my old system under XP. At this point I got the new WA556. It offered only a slight improvement. (My router is my landlords and I do not believe it's D-link's proprietary "N-Extreme" etc. I've not saying its not up to those specs. I'm saying it can't do 54Mbps period.

anyways. I then got a new laptop, Gateway p7805 (which has a dual core P8400 in it i believe and 4Gb ddr3). Anyways, The HUGE performance difference in running windows between the laptop and the desktop has indicated to me that something is very wrong with my i7 system.
All the core temps are nice and low at idle (high 20s to mid 30s) as reported by Superfan.
Also, I do have other hardware not listed, but I've removed all of it and not noted any improvements etc.

Things I've tried:
0) Since the video card is so old, turned down all graphics settings to lowest. It's ugly now, but did not fix poor performance.
1) Got the newest bios (as of a week ago) for the P6T board. No change.
2) Tried using only 1 dimm of ram as I'd read this helps, no change.
3) Overclocked to approx 4.0 Ghz, WAS much faster, but I don't think that addresses the issues at all. - did not leave at 4Ghz with stock fan!! returned to stock settings.
4) Benchmarked the HD with HD-Tune, compared to laptops, desktop HD outperforms laptops hands down.
5) Turned off the turbo mode and another power saving mode (in testing) which stopped the reported processor speed from fluxuating so much in CPU-Z. Otherwise, did not fix issue
6) Increased pagefile by nearly double what vista defaulted. only slight improvement
7) Removed wireless card..... shaved 30 seconds off of the boot time, but the system is still very slow otherwise. (I think the wireless issue is a separate one from everything else, and I intend to exchange this individual card for another to see if maybe its just a bad card).

I intend to reseat and put new thermal paste on the heatsink, I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Anyways, I thoguht it was interesting that I was having a similar problem with an Asus board and the WD drive, so I wanted to throw that out there.

 

[RENerz]

Follow up

I believe I may have fixed mine.

A fresh install of vista (3rd now) seems to have cleared it up. This time I paid extra attention to ensuring the AHCI drivers were all installed properly.
*** NOTE*** I had previously gone back after installing vista and made sure AHCI mode was turned on in the registry as per the microsoft instructions.... This did not seem to be enough.

When Vista comes up asking about partitions, click the "install drivers" button, show where it is on the mobo disk and let it load.

I have two DVD ROM drives, one SATA and one IDE. Because of my troubles I had just the SATA one plugged in... part way through the Vista install it coudln't access it anymore and needed a driver for it haha , this was a good sign. I just restarted the process and used the other one.

Vista installed in about 18 minutes which seemed very reasonable to me.
With no drivers installed (other than the AHCI ones) the green loading bar would go by 4 times, and once I typed in the vista password the desktop and welcome screen loaded literally instantly.

Later after loading more drivers (onboard sound, and the particulars of the P6T, - mainly SAS and SATA drivers) its now taking longer to load but still seems quite fast once in windows.

Don't know if that helps you guys at all since it was a different board, but I believe the AHCI stuff was the problem with mine.

Good luck!

 

[ahmad.obay]

Thanks for the feedback RENez. I did some testing with AHCI enabled vs disabled and found that when it's disabled the HDDs scored higher on HDD Tune.