What can I do to boost Core 2 duo performance?

Yeah I already got the latest bios, I downloaded the latest drivers too, but now everything is messed up.

Did I do something wrong? Now even when I put in the cd that came with the board the thing is still messed up.

I've even tried reformatting serveral times before I got the latest drivers and bios.

Make sure your RAM is running synchronous to the FSB. If you haven't overclocked, you should manually set it to 533 MHz. However I doubt this would produce such dramatic performance degradation. Have you tried overclocking? Check out wusy's Conroe overclocking guide. Even if you only follow (to the letter) parts 1 (tidying up BIOS) and 2 (memory adjustments), you might be able to solve your problems. However, since you already have DDR2 667, you might as well raise the FSB to 333 MHz or beyond.

I have a E6600 and it's the fastest performing processor I've ever owned, even at stock speed. I've owned PCs for 20 years.

What was I trying to say is that since you're the exception to the rule, I'd think the problem resides with your setup, not the CPU itself (unless you got a dud, obviously).

You followed wusy's guide in two minutes? Damn!

I suspect you are either

1- extremely frustrated by your inability to extract the performance you expected or,

2- Planting FUD for AMD.

Overclock it to 2.33 GHz and check back with us. Follow wusy's guide to the letter. No quickies.

I apologize, but it's just that I'm starting to see a pattern of threads, one about CPU temps, another about a co-worker's Conroe HP, and now yours, that simply don't match my own experience, what I can see with my very own eyes. My Conroe runs at 1.6 GHz most of the time (because of Speedstep) and it's still faster than anything I've ever owned. All of these threads are started by people like you, relative newcomers with 30-80 posts. It just seems odd. Maybe I'm being too paranoid but still...

What are your motherboard and CPU temps? Maybe the heatsink isn't installed properly. Troubleshoot. The problem is not the Conroe, again unless you got a dud.

There's just no way in friggin' hell that a Conroe doesn't outperform an Athlon xp 2400+. No way. Even the suggestion is absolutely preposterous.

He shouldnt have to OC to get more performance than his old system so something else is up. Definitely reset CMOS (that fixed so many of my problems ) and make sure that your RAM is at a 1:1 ratio with the FSB. Remember also that alot of those settings in wusys guide are for OCing, for example the the RAM timings loosening and vdimm increase, and the overvoltage protection (for those of you who dont want your mobo screaming at you because you set your C2D at 1.8V )

No, no do the other things in the guide that are relavent but like I said some arent relavent to those who arent OCing (which is why its called an OCing guide), so just pick out the ones that are relavent to you.

Don't go. We won't give up. Could you please tell us your CPU and motherboard temps? An improperly installed heatsink could be the cause of all your problems. Go check. We'll be here, don't worry.

I know Conroe. Conroe is a friend of mine. And you, Mr. Athlon xp 2400+, are no Conroe.

PS: For the youngsters and the unfamiliar with American culture, that was an old political joke by Ronald Reagan mocking Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas for saying that in reference to JFK to the vice-presidential candidate (and eventual winner) Dan Quayle in a debate. Sorry for the long sentence.

Could you be using the worst HD ever made? If its an ATA HD make sure that its not on the same ATA cable with a CD-ROM or DVD drive. Try running sandra test utilitys to find bottle necks and look closly at any suggestions sandra's wizard gives you.
http://www.sisoftware.net/

No, that was not the intention. It was just an aside.

At any rate, it seems Yupyup has gone Byebye. Nice try at defending him, though. I guess next he'll go to the AMDZone forums where everyone will tell him that yes indeed, Conroe is a piece of crap and the Athlon XP is awesome and he wasted his money.

40C isnt a high cpu temp, mine idles at around 45C and loads at around 63C (although mines an e6600) and its at stock speed with stock cooler.

It starts faster for me. XP boots a little faster than Vista but not significantly so. Maybe I just fine tune my PC better.

Thanks for sticking around Yupyup. If you persevere we will figure out a way to make your computer work as expected. Believe it or not, throughout this thread, I've always tried to give you the benefit of the doubt and tried to help. If you fix this issue I will retract any insinuation of deceit that I have made. There are many things that could be wrong, including a faulty CPU that you can get replaced under warranty, or a faulty hard drive, or a faulty motherboard. Perform a clean install of Windows again. Call Gigabyte. Don't get frustrated...we've all gone through this at one point or another. You'll get your money's worth eventually.

Just make sure it's a clean install and on a freshly formatted drive. If needs be you can try installing Vista Beta or RC and compare the performance vs. XP. Like I said, we won't give up until you fix this one way or another.

ok, I will add my 2 cents. I just upgraded from a 5 year old P4, and I can tell you that on my new machine with default setup (n ooverclocking, ram running at pc5200 speed) the performance difference is like night and day - and I had really tweaked my old machine to the max and had a gig of ram etc..

Forget about recommendations to mess with overclocking and ram speed etc, and blaming windows the product. You have something fundamentally wrong with your setup - either hardware or your windows installation - which is causing your PC to be throttled - with near default settings, ram running at pc5200 speeds etc, it should be very fast.

To give you an example, last night I ran itunes to play music, while nero decoded an avi onto a dvd, while browsing, checking email and writing a document with only a small impact on responsiveness - my rig is at default settings. Yes I have a faster version of C2D and a Raptor, but you should still be seeing multitasking benefits as the 2 cores spread the load in windows.

- Are all your latest drivers the latest release versions from the manufacturer website (NOT from the windows update site)?

- Have you checked for device conflicts in the device manager?

- Have you checked the windows error logs?

- Have you tried running with all the networking disabled?

- Have you tried a different graphics card?

- Are the jumper settings on your drives correct?

Get some software to benchmark different parts of your computer, like ram, hard drive, cpu,... See if one is below what you expect or if one will make your computer slow down.

I know the answer to your problem is simple, because they always are. Everyone gets technical and then some random with basically no knowledge of computers comes along and says "<Whatever>" and it works! The problem is probably so obvious that we overlook it

Its highly unlikly its your OS disk as you would have problems on install.

You should run all the benchmark and burn in tests on sandra. If nothing looks wildly wrong when compared to equal hardware in the benchmark do the burn in test. If everything comes back ok from the test then run the performance wizard. Try and change things it suggests.

Have you stopped all none used services? If you optimized your OS for the AMD and not on the c2d it could make up some of the performance. Not all but ive always noticed a nice improvement after turning off services.

Probably alot of HP firmware garbage. Could possibly be a problem if that stuff is not usually installed with windows. You could buy another XP Home disk if you think its the problem. Just get the upgrade edition if you have windows 9x/ME and if your a student then get the Academic Upgrade Edition of proffessional since its really cheap (coz you get 2 discounts).

Did you run memtest on your ram to make sure it doesn't have any errors? It's just a thought... but if you made it through PCMark then your ram should be fine.

I think you'd feel the most improvement if you got a new hard drive. Raptors are expensive but they have the smallest latency, which would definitely minimalize the lag when you open programs. My only complaint is that they sound like a monster is eating the platters when Windows loads

Yes, well XP home is apparently not so good with multi htreading - I would always recommend XP pro.

However, I don't think that your windows CD is to blame here.

have you tried looking for device conflicts and at the error logs like i suggested? Download this excellent tweaking guide:-

http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

It covers all the steps to create a perfectly optimised XP install, and has excellent sections showing you how to find IRQ conflicts (near the beginning of the guide), and error diagnosis (section towards the end). It has a LOT of detail, but is probably the best guide I have seen of it's type. I used it for my new build and learnt a lot - and I have been tweaking xp for quite a while.

I would recommend reinstalling and following the guide - it will take some time but may help you nail the issue.

Also, you mention that you have on board graphics - well these on board graphics solutions never perform very well, so that in itself could be a problem, I would always recommend a separate graphics card if you intend to do gaming. Buy a cheap 7600gt or somehting like that for the moment until the new DX10 cards come out next year.

Keep trying, you will find the solution in the end....we will keep helping.