CPU mark composite average 45%+ lower than others

[College Smart]

I've got a Core 2 Quad Q9400 at 2.66Ghz, stock settings (Asus P5N-D) on W7 Pro 64bit. After running the CPU tests and comparing it to 3 other Q9400s, I've noticed a huge difference in performance.

Results:
Integer Math, 506.6 vs. baselines of 1683+ (230%+ lower)
Floating Point math, 1991.7+ vs. baselines of 2589.3 (30%+ lower)
CPU Physics, 70.1 vs. baselines of 211.1+ (200%+ lower)
String Sorting, 1034.6 vs. baselines of 1700+ (65%+ lower)

I'm familiar with computer hardware, but I'm no pro. Everything appears to be properly installed. The heat sync is properly set and my core temperatures idle at 34C. I recently sent my motherboard in to Asus of diagnostics and they claimed that it passed all tests.

I should also note: modern games such as Bad Company 2 and CoD: Black Ops seem to perform very poorly somewhat regardless of my video settings, almost as if there is a bottleneck somewhere in my system. I know it's not the GPU because I've tried it out in other PCs with similar specs and they're getting double my FPS.

System specs:
Core 2 Quad Q9400 @ 2.66Ghz
Asus P5N-D
4gb DDR2 KVR RAM
Radeon HD 4770
Windows 7 Pro 64bit

[wonderwrench]

Make sure you are using the 64 bit version of PerformanceTest and not 32 bit.
Also make sure PT is using all 4 cores. Edit, Preferences and set processes to 4.

Bill

[College Smart]

Ah, that's what I get for downloading anything from CNET. With the 64bit version and the program configured to run on all 4 cores my performance is on par with other baselines, however CPU physics and String Sorting are still around 230% and 70% lower, respectively.

I read somewhere that low physics results could be due to your GPU. I wasn't able to find anything within in the CCC to turn off physics processing as suggested to users with NVIDIA cards.

[wonderwrench]

Ah, that's what I get for downloading anything from CNET. With the 64bit version and the program configured to run on all 4 cores my performance is on par with other baselines, however CPU physics and String Sorting are still around 230% and 70% lower, respectively.

I read somewhere that low physics results could be due to your GPU. I wasn't able to find anything within in the CCC to turn off physics processing as suggested to users with NVIDIA cards.

Are you using the latest version build 1019. If you are using build 1015,1016 or 1017 the string sorting results will be low. The physics test in PT is run only on the CPU.

Bill

[College Smart]

Yeah, it's 1019.

[David (PassMark)]

We are looking at using hardware accelerated physics for the next major PT release. But at the moment it is CPU based using the Tokamak Physics Engine.

Can you post your new CPU results with the 64bit software.

[College Smart]

CPU - Integer Math: 1650.7
CPU - Floating Point Math: 2545.2
CPU - Find Prime Numbers: 925.1
CPU - SSE: 9.3
CPU - Compression: 5621.5
CPU - Encryption: 16.4
CPU - Physics: 67.0
CPU - String Sorting: 1028.0
CPU Mark: 3848.8
PassMark Rating: 1655.0

[David (PassMark)]

While you need to be careful not to compare your results to over clocked results, the numbers on the last 2 test are well down on what they should be.

I looked at ten other Q9400 Win7 64bit machines and none of them showed this behaviour.

Can you check the CPU temperature again, but do it while the CPU is under full load and has had a chance for the heat to build up. Say at the end of the CPU tests.

[College Smart]

Under load I seldom break 49C. Average of 46 during tests. I checked to make sure the heat sync was seated properly and it looks good.

For the first two year I owned the machine I used the stock heat sync, which was quite insufficient. My load temperatures were into the 70s, idling around 50 if I remember correctly. Everything I've read online indicates it probably didn't sustain any damage from those temperatures, though.

[David (PassMark)]

Maybe it is RAM or bus speed problem. These last 2 tests do tend to use more RAM than the other tests.

Just speculation, but maybe tests that run inside the CPU and the CPU's cache are fast and the tests that make heavier use of main RAM are slow.

This might also explain the poor performance in games.

Check your BIOS settings for the bus speed and RAM timings.

In the advanced memory test run a test using these settings,
- Read
- Memory speed per block size
- QWORD

Then look at the graph.

On my machine (i5 750, 6GB RAM) I get a peak speed of ~10,000MB/sec for cached data, then it drops right of to 3300MB/sec for main RAM.

[College Smart]

I see. My write speed is fairly atrocious at a score of 846. It's 4, 1GB sticks of Kingston Value RAM.

I ran a CPU and RAM test, then compared it to a baseline that used the same processor/clock speed and DDR2 ram. My write speed was 130% lower and my physics and string sorting tests were 257% and 189% lower, respectively.

[College Smart]

And there are the test results.

[David (PassMark)]

The memory read speed graph above looks OK. (an average of 10,275MB/sec is fine)
Can you do the same graph for Write, if you think writing is slow.

The write speed should be within maybe 15% of the read speeds.

[College Smart]

Here are my write results; they look about 25% lower.

[David (PassMark)]

The values when writing data to L1 and L2 cache seem OK (the first 2 steps in the graph). But you have a big step down when it comes to main RAM. The Q9400 CPU has 6MB of L2 cache. Which is why you see the step down at this block size.

From the 2 graphs above, at the 8MB block size level, your read speed is 3000MB/sec. But write speed is ~600MB/sec. Which is way more than 25% lower. (if you export the data, you can get the exact values).

For comparision here are 3 results. All write speeds at the 8MB block level with 64bits.

Core 2 E8500 - 2603 MB/Sec
Core 2 E9650 - 2810 MB/Sec
AMD Phenom II B55 - 3628 MB/sec

So the interesting thing now is working out what is causing the problem. Start by looking at the BIOS settings. Check timings, bus speed, dual channel RAM setup, try pulling out half the RAM at a time, or swapping the RAM if you have some spare. What MB do you have? Is the BIOS up to date?