games on smp

Robpol86 · Post by **Robpol86** » Thu Mar 27, 2003 10:32 pm

I have a multiprocessor system with windows xp pro sp1. whenever i try to run games, i get the damn BSOD after like 30 mins. with any game. ut, tribes2, bf1942, etc... the bsod is "IRQL not less than or equal" i 4got the stop code. newayz, when i got imagecfg.exe and set the affinity to proc1 games run longer (like 2 hrs). but every now and then that bsod comes up when im playing games! does this happen 2 ne1 else? im thinking its because the stepping is different from both of my procs. but both take the same vcore and fsb (133) and clock (866 MHz). btw i heard that a SBLive card causes probs. i have the sb live! platinum 5.1 on pci 2. i installed the via 4in1 drivers. when i had 1 proc i had no probs @ all, never got a bsod until smp came in. my mobo is an Abit VP6.

jester22c · Post by **jester22c** » Thu Mar 27, 2003 10:39 pm

With two cpus there is twice the probability that a cycle will get dropped and/or things will get screwed up. Most games aren't written for SMP (some are... quake etc) but Windows (NT based) is supposed to handle multithreading emulation for you. It does a decent job most of the time but does foul up on occassion. If you are getting errors like that constantly there is definately something wrong. Does this happen with the same 1 or 2 games, or is it with everything?

Robpol86 · Post by **Robpol86** » Thu Mar 27, 2003 11:46 pm

it gives me that bsod with any application that utilizes 3d grafix. im thinking its either the stepping difference in both processors or something to do with either of the processors cache

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 7:05 am

That's interesting... My friend has a system with two Pentium III's @ 900 MHz running XP Pro, and he has had no problems with his.

fuuucckkers · Post by **fuuucckkers** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 11:21 am

Robpol86 wrote:it gives me that bsod with any application that utilizes 3d grafix. im thinking its either the stepping difference in both processors or something to do with either of the processors cache

It might make a difference what type of 3D graphics you're using within a game and/or program.

openGL, Direct 3D, 3DFX (GAG!), ..

jester22c · Post by **jester22c** » Fri Mar 28, 2003 12:22 pm

The type of graphics shouldn't make any difference at all seeing as the only literal difference is the driverset loaded to render. 3DFX btw is not a rendering method (3dfx cards still run off of glide/d3d/etc), and it isn't ick

I have a voodoo 3 in one of my rigs that will run most all new games at remarkable framerates. I can play Return to Castle Wolfenstein at full detail without any lag

... so ha

As to the problem itself... stepping shouldn't really make that much difference as long as the fsb is the same on both. I've used multicpu machines with unsimilar stepped cpus before and they ran fine. My guess is that it's a software issue and probably windows itself.

Robpol86 · Post by **Robpol86** » Thu May 15, 2003 11:49 pm

ok well i was gettin sick of bsods messing up my games... i always use imagecfg.exe to set the affinity of the game to proc1 (since 0 does most of the work). it gave me more game time but still crashed every 2 hrs of game play. so i thought to myself "Hey, maby its the cache on the procs that r miss-matching". so i turned off L1 and L2 cache. lol, it totally screwed up performance. it took like 10 or 20 mins to boot xp. so i turned the cache back on but disabled L2 ecc checking. @least gta3 doesnt crash nemore w/ imagecfg.exe. i thought i solved my prob so i installed vicacity w/o imagecfg.exe and after 30 mins, a bsod. this time i actually read more than the 2nd line and stop code. it told me that nv4_disp.dll was the culprit. damn display driver. ne1 know of a fix 2 this. i checked everywhere and viarena told me alot of fixes and most didnt work. 2morrow im going to lower my pci memory thing from 255 MB to 32 megs (via reccomends) and if that doesnt work ill use VisionTeks drivers. but i dought it will help. i just need a hacked nv4_disp.dll thats stable

Robpol86 · Post by **Robpol86** » Sun May 25, 2003 12:22 am

ok i solved my prob, i think. i used IntFiltr to set the affinity of my video card and sound card interrupts. so far no bsods w/o usin imagecfg.exe

fuuucckkers · Post by **fuuucckkers** » Sun May 25, 2003 6:25 am

Robpol86 wrote:i just need a hacked nv4_disp.dll thats stable

Have you heard of the Omega display drivers?

I think their only for nVidia cards... but its those.. tweaked out to give a major performance boost. Depending on the OS.. they should be stable (but sometimes not).

My friends have them...and for 3DMark2001 benchmark.. the tweaked display drivers add about an additional 2000 points on their final score.

http://www.omegacorner.com/nvidia.htm

Robpol86 · Post by **Robpol86** » Thu Jul 03, 2003 2:12 pm

ok i managed to lower my bsod count w/ diff meathods. but heres another.

i had my bios set to MPS 1.1 (or 1.01). SiSoft Sandra told me to make it 1.04 (or 1.4) because it had sum fixes. so i did. i havent tested ne games on it yet. will this affect my stability?

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games on smp

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