Processor Speed being misreported

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 8:25 pm

Okay, so I'm compressing a VOB from the Evangelion DVDs in VirtualDub, right? Settings were Full Processing, XviD Quant 2, with the deinterlace and resize filters enabled.

All of a sudden the processing rate drops right down to 0.0 ~ 1.0 fps, down from 20 ~ 22 fps. This is understandably a little puzzling, as my system is an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ with 768mb of RAM, and the file I was compressing was on my fastest, largest hard drive (120gb, 7200rpm with an 8mb cache)

So I right click "My Computer" and check out my system performance stats. For some reason I was using 100% of my CPU resources which drew a "what the fuck?" from my mouth.

So I checked my system stats on the properties page of "My Computer". My processor speed was, for some reason, rated at 769mHz. Which is almost exactly half of its true speed of 1539mHz, or 1.54gHz. This scared the living piss out of me, as I cant afford to replace my CPU right now if it ups and dies on me.

The odd thing is that whenever the processing speed in virtualdub was at 20fps, then the processor was rated at 1.54gHz, and when it was 1.0fps, it was rated at 769mHz. I thought it may have something to do with overloading the processor on a very hot day, as for the past 3 or 4 days we've had temperatures up around 43º Celcius (which is something like 110º Fahrenheit), and even with the side of the case open, there was ALOT of heat in there.

Can anyone tell me if this is a concerning problem, or whether its just a system oddity when you tell your computer to do alot of high-end stuff.

bum · Post by **bum** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 9:30 pm

hmm, ya have to check that your fsb setings are right. sometimes thiers a little switch on the motherboard and then ya gota go dig in the bios. it happened with me, actualy with me it said i had a 1.4ghz athlon on the POST , , but after fucking with the fsb and that little swich on my mobo it corectly show'd it as an athlon2600 . oh and, sometimes xp has a realy shity problem (even with sp1 installed) where explorere just sudenly starts using 99% of system resources for no good reason. actualy, sometimes it also happens when you rightclick>properties for some random file. when this happens, pres ctrl+alt+delete , click on proceses, ricktclick on explorer.exe and end task. then when its closed click on the applications tab, click on new task, and then type " explorer " (without the quotes) and press enter

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 9:36 pm

bum wrote:hmm, ya have to check that your fsb setings are right. sometimes thiers a little switch on the motherboard and then ya gota go dig in the bios. it happened with me, actualy with me it said i had a 1.4ghz athlon on the POST , , but after fucking with the fsb and that little swich on my mobo it corectly show'd it as an athlon2600 . oh and, sometimes xp has a realy shity problem (even with sp1 installed) where explorere just sudenly starts using 99% of system resources for no good reason. actualy, sometimes it also happens when you rightclick>properties for some random file. when this happens, pres ctrl+alt+delete , click on proceses, ricktclick on explorer.exe and end task. then when its closed click on the applications tab, click on new task, and then type " explorer " (without the quotes) and press enter

Ah, well, I haven't been poking around on my motherboard recently, and the problem just seemed to pop up out of the blue. I have recently installed a new stick of RAM and a new hard drive, but my mobo is jumperluss (or at least it says so in the manual, heh) and in the BIOS AND when it performs the POST (power on self test, for those of you reading this and going x_o ) its rated as its proper speed.

The thing is, it ONLY happens when I try to encode a VOB to an XviD AVI. And the processor clock speed swings between its proper value and half its proper value. When I encode any other type of file to AVI or MPG, its fine. Oh, I think it was playing up when I was using BeSweet to transcode an AC3 file to an MP3. But I doubt very severely whether its the bus speed. my FSB never plays up.

It might just be thermal issues. We're having a very hot summer here.

bum · Post by **bum** » Fri Jan 09, 2004 9:19 am

if its a problem that only hapens in a specific instance then its probaly something with divx. or mabey its a windows problem and shouldnt SP2 have bein released fucking ages ago by now ? . meh , have ya tried encoding the vob so, say divx or something and then re-encoding it to xvid ? .

oh and, are you in queensland ? here in sydney we're having like the coldest summer in existance. we're barely reaching low 30's . last summer we we're floating in the 40's and dying of heat prety much every day

SS5_Majin_Bebi · Post by **SS5_Majin_Bebi** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 12:59 am

bum wrote:if its a problem that only hapens in a specific instance then its probaly something with divx. or mabey its a windows problem and shouldnt SP2 have bein released fucking ages ago by now ? . meh , have ya tried encoding the vob so, say divx or something and then re-encoding it to xvid ? .

oh and, are you in queensland ? here in sydney we're having like the coldest summer in existance. we're barely reaching low 30's . last summer we we're floating in the 40's and dying of heat prety much every day

It was the heat (yes, I'm in QLD). The 43º C day was the worst, it was the day when it was playing up the most. I left it off for about 12 - 15 hours, and when I switched it back on, it was fine. But just to make sure, I installed a few system checking things, like MBM5 and AMD CPU Info. The good thing is, I kept checking it when I was encoding yet another VOB, and not only did the CPU behave itself, it actually clocked up to just over 1600mHz, from a normal speed of about 1540mHz. How about that, eh?

It goes without saying that I need a new Heatsink and fan, though. Normally my CPU runs at about 51º C, which I'm a little apprehensive about. I'd like to get that down by maybe another 5 degrees if I can, coz I dont know what the crash temperature of a Palomino core (i think) AMD Athlon XP 1800+ is. But if its chunking on a 43 degree day, more cooling is in order, methinks.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 2:40 am

My Asus Geforce 3 Ti 500 hit had a fan problem, it hit about 85 degres operating temperature and burned itself out. Tee hee. Heat + Electronics = Bad

Heat makes CPUs and GPUs operate slower aswell. You should also note that AMDs do not run at their number. An Athalon 1800 does not operate at 1800mhz. They made this funny little numbering scheme to compare themselves to P4s. Basicly, an 1800 Athalon is supposed to be 'As fast as a P4 1800mhz' while the Athalon is actually running slower then you have assumed.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 3:04 am

DJ_Izumi wrote:Heat makes CPUs and GPUs operate slower aswell. You should also note that AMDs do not run at their number. An Athlon 1800 does not operate at 1800mhz. They made this funny little numbering scheme to compare themselves to P4s. Basicly, an 1800 Athlon is supposed to be 'As fast as a P4 1800mhz' while the Athlon is actually running slower then you have assumed.

No, they don't claim that the Athlon 1800+ is supposed to be "as fast as" a P4 at 1.8GHz. They claim that it's supposed to <i>perform as well as</i> a P4 at 1.8GHz.
Besides, Bebi did say that his Athlon 1800+'s normal speed was 1.54GHz, so I'd assume he knew about the Athlon numbering system already.

Where's DW when you need him?

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 3:04 am

I ment that, poor semantics on my behalf. :/

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 12:54 pm

Scintilla wrote:
DJ_Izumi wrote:Heat makes CPUs and GPUs operate slower aswell. You should also note that AMDs do not run at their number. An Athlon 1800 does not operate at 1800mhz. They made this funny little numbering scheme to compare themselves to P4s. Basicly, an 1800 Athlon is supposed to be 'As fast as a P4 1800mhz' while the Athlon is actually running slower then you have assumed.
No, they don't claim that the Athlon 1800+ is supposed to be "as fast as" a P4 at 1.8GHz. They claim that it's supposed to <i>perform as well as</i> a P4 at 1.8GHz.
Besides, Bebi did say that his Athlon 1800+'s normal speed was 1.54GHz, so I'd assume he knew about the Athlon numbering system already.

Where's DW when you need him?

I'm right here reading. Well not really, I haven't been to the forums in a bit, but you covered it pretty well.

Performance != Speed.
Performance = Speed * Efficiency (instructions per clock)

Basically the Athlon is more efficient than the P4 core and thus peforms better at lower frequencies. That performance # was given since we needed to give consumers something to compare with and well let's be honest...most people like looking at numbers and not technical stuff like I've just written...

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Mon Jan 12, 2004 3:44 pm

AMDs official spin is that the performance ratings are based off of CPUs with the older Thunderbird core. So XP1800+ is equal to an AMD cpu with an 1.8Ghz Thunderbird core. Which the Thunderbird is no longer being made, being replaced by the palimino, thoroughbred and barton...

So how good these ratings are is kinda suspect and it's making my life difficult in finding the actuall clock rates of them :p.