Ok, this has got me puzzled. I finished putting together my second Q9450 system on an Asus PK5 DX. The first is running fine. I installed Vista Home and left it running while I went out. That was at about 11:30 am. Came back and looked at it shortly before 8 pm. It was still running. But it had not completed a single WU. It did finish 3 with a few minutes. So it had run about 8 hours and completed only 3 WU. What is really strange is that Bonic reported that the total work time on these 3 units was around 11 minutes. Where did the other 470 minutes go?

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Do you have your computing preferences set wrong? Can you set it to 'Run Always'?

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Thanks guys. I did have Vista set to performance, but did not have Bonic set to run always. Just made that change and will see if it helps. Checked it at 4 am and it had completed 5 additional tasks. One said it had used 15 mins of CPU time the other 4 about 1:20. So theres another 7 hours of missing work.

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Thanks guys. I did have Vista set to performance, but did not have Bonic set to run always. Just made that change and will see if it helps. Checked it at 4 am and it had completed 5 additional tasks. One said it had used 15 mins of CPU time the other 4 about 1:20. So theres another 7 hours of missing work.

Have you checked that in the Vista "performance" setting, nothing ever powers down after a preset interval?

F.

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Thanks guys. I did have Vista set to performance, but did not have Bonic set to run always. Just made that change and will see if it helps. Checked it at 4 am and it had completed 5 additional tasks. One said it had used 15 mins of CPU time the other 4 about 1:20. So theres another 7 hours of missing work.

Have you checked that in the Vista "performance" setting, nothing ever powers down after a preset interval?

F.

It did have the hard drive set to power down after 1 hour. Put that back to never turn off. Did that about 8 this am. Now about 1:30 pm. It has only completed 1 additional task which reportedly took 45 mins.
I installed Speed fan and found that the CPU is throttling from 0 to about 60%. This looks like thermal throttling. But temps are staying below right around 50c per core. I have gone thru the Bios to see if there was anything there that was casing this. I was surprised that “Intel Speed Step” is not shown in the Advance tab. The board’s manual and online references show it on screen shots, but it’s now showing up in my Bios. Any body with a P5K Dx having same problem. Speed Step could be the problem, but I can’t seem to find a way to turn it off. The manual says that it’s disabled by default, but I can’t confirm that.

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Thanks guys. I did have Vista set to performance, but did not have Bonic set to run always. Just made that change and will see if it helps. Checked it at 4 am and it had completed 5 additional tasks. One said it had used 15 mins of CPU time the other 4 about 1:20. So theres another 7 hours of missing work.

Have you checked that in the Vista "performance" setting, nothing ever powers down after a preset interval?

F.

It did have the hard drive set to power down after 1 hour. Put that back to never turn off. Did that about 8 this am. Now about 1:30 pm. It has only completed 1 additional task which reportedly took 45 mins.
I installed Speed fan and found that the CPU is throttling from 0 to about 60%. This looks like thermal throttling. But temps are staying below right around 50c per core. I have gone thru the Bios to see if there was anything there that was casing this. I was surprised that “Intel Speed Step” is not shown in the Advance tab. The board’s manual and online references show it on screen shots, but it’s now showing up in my Bios. Any body with a P5K Dx having same problem. Speed Step could be the problem, but I can’t seem to find a way to turn it off. The manual says that it’s disabled by default, but I can’t confirm that.

You must have the CPU Ratio Control set to "Manual" (as I would expect for overclocking), so the Speedstep option is not displayed.

F.

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Thanks guys. I did have Vista set to performance, but did not have Bonic set to run always. Just made that change and will see if it helps. Checked it at 4 am and it had completed 5 additional tasks. One said it had used 15 mins of CPU time the other 4 about 1:20. So theres another 7 hours of missing work.

Have you checked that in the Vista "performance" setting, nothing ever powers down after a preset interval?

F.

It did have the hard drive set to power down after 1 hour. Put that back to never turn off. Did that about 8 this am. Now about 1:30 pm. It has only completed 1 additional task which reportedly took 45 mins.
I installed Speed fan and found that the CPU is throttling from 0 to about 60%. This looks like thermal throttling. But temps are staying below right around 50c per core. I have gone thru the Bios to see if there was anything there that was casing this. I was surprised that “Intel Speed Step” is not shown in the Advance tab. The board’s manual and online references show it on screen shots, but it’s now showing up in my Bios. Any body with a P5K Dx having same problem. Speed Step could be the problem, but I can’t seem to find a way to turn it off. The manual says that it’s disabled by default, but I can’t confirm that.

You must have the CPU Ratio Control set to "Manual" (as I would expect for overclocking), so the Speedstep option is not displayed.

F.

Yes, I do. So any idea why the throttling?

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What bios are you running?
You might consider updating to the most recent 0812....

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

What bios are you running?
You might consider updating to the most recent 0812....

Mark, I knew you would have the answer. This board had 809 on it. I am putting three of these together and had changed to 812 on the other too. Forgot to on this one. Let's see if this does the trick.

Well that was not it. Still same problem.

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What bios are you running?
You might consider updating to the most recent 0812....

Mark, I knew you would have the answer. This board had 809 on it. I am putting three of these together and had changed to 812 on the other too. Forgot to on this one. Let's see if this does the trick.

Hopefully that will be the ticket....if not, we'll just have to root around until we find the answer....
It may turn out to be helpful having more than one of the same mobo running...you should be able to compare your bios settings line for line between them and maybe find a setting that is different...
Are the others Vista Home also?

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

What bios are you running?
You might consider updating to the most recent 0812....

Mark, I knew you would have the answer. This board had 809 on it. I am putting three of these together and had changed to 812 on the other too. Forgot to on this one. Let's see if this does the trick.

Hopefully that will be the ticket....if not, we'll just have to root around until we find the answer....
It may turn out to be helpful having more than one of the same mobo running...you should be able to compare your bios settings line for line between them and maybe find a setting that is different...
Are the others Vista Home also?

Sorry I was off line for so long. I am putting my whole farm into a rack system. Today, I put my main computer into a new case and into the rack.

I went thru and compared the bios screens line for line as you suggested. I only found two things that were different. 1st the DRAM timing. One has the following 5-5-5-5-18-3-52-6-3-3 The one that's not working right shows 5-5-5-5-18-3-42-6-3-3 The only difference is the 52 vs 42. Both boards have identical matched pairs of Corsair DDR2-1066. The other difference I found was the CPU voltage. One shows 1.168 v the other 1.200. Other than these the bios setting were identical. Yes, I did put them back to stock speed. I also swapped the ram to see if that made any difference. It didn't.

The biggest difference is the Op system. The one that works is running XP, the one that is having problems is running Vista Home. I have ordered a copy of XP 64. for these, but Vista was all I had sitting around.

Tomorrow I will try swapping the CPU’s and see if that changes anything.

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What bios are you running?
You might consider updating to the most recent 0812....

Mark, I knew you would have the answer. This board had 809 on it. I am putting three of these together and had changed to 812 on the other too. Forgot to on this one. Let's see if this does the trick.

Hopefully that will be the ticket....if not, we'll just have to root around until we find the answer....
It may turn out to be helpful having more than one of the same mobo running...you should be able to compare your bios settings line for line between them and maybe find a setting that is different...
Are the others Vista Home also?

Sorry I was off line for so long. I am putting my whole farm into a rack system. Today, I put my main computer into a new case and into the rack.

I went thru and compared the bios screens line for line as you suggested. I only found two things that were different. 1st the DRAM timing. One has the following 5-5-5-5-18-3-52-6-3-3 The one that's not working right shows 5-5-5-5-18-3-42-6-3-3 The only difference is the 52 vs 42. Both boards have identical matched pairs of Corsair DDR2-1066. The other difference I found was the CPU voltage. One shows 1.168 v the other 1.200. Other than these the bios setting were identical. Yes, I did put them back to stock speed. I also swapped the ram to see if that made any difference. It didn't.

The biggest difference is the Op system. The one that works is running XP, the one that is having problems is running Vista Home. I have ordered a copy of XP 64. for these, but Vista was all I had sitting around.

Tomorrow I will try swapping the CPU’s and see if that changes anything.

Somehow I cannot see the CPU being the difference, but anything is possible so it is not a bad thing to verify. I suppose there could be the rare chance of a CPU internally throttling itself, but I think they would just go into shutdown if overtemp unless the mobo/bios had throttling enabled.
Likewise, the small difference in RAM timings should be insignificant and could readily be adjusted in the bios to rule it out, as could the CPU voltage.

Another small possibility I suppose, would be a mobo that is defective and for some reason is not disabling throttling even though the bios is directing it to.

Have you installed the Asus Probe utility on all of the mobos and compared what the CPU temps are reading? That could be a clue if there is a large difference.

The only other thing I could think of would be if Vista has the ability to enable CPU throttling even without it being enabled in the bios, but I have no experience with Vista........

Maybe the problem will go away when you upgrade from Vista to XP x64.....

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

[quote]What bios are you running?
You might consider updating to the most recent 0812....

*snip snip*
Are the others Vista Home also?

Sorry I was off line for so long. I am putting my whole farm into a rack system. Today, I put my main computer into a new case and into the rack.
*snip snip*
One shows 1.168 v the other 1.200. Other than these the bios setting were identical. Yes, I did put them back to stock speed. I also swapped the ram to see if that made any difference. It didn't.

The biggest difference is the Op system. The one that works is running XP, the one that is having problems is running Vista Home. I have ordered a copy of XP 64. for these, but Vista was all I had sitting around.

Tomorrow I will try swapping the CPU’s and see if that changes anything.

* Snip snip . .

Another small possibility I suppose, would be a mobo that is defective and for some reason is not disabling throttling even though the bios is directing it to.

Have you installed the Asus Probe utility on all of the mobos and compared what the CPU temps are reading? That could be a clue if there is a large difference.

The only other thing I could think of would be if Vista has the ability to enable CPU throttling even without it being enabled in the bios, but I have no experience with Vista........

Maybe the problem will go away when you upgrade from Vista to XP x64.....

VISTA, itself has the same POWER-SETTING's as XP has.
Could be the CPU Vcore, but there's only a small difference . . .
Only a 'old' BIOS (setting), can give trouble, or a defective board !

Use VISTA32 myself with a Q6600, but also XP32 and run XP64 on a QX9650, hardly OC'ed @ 3150MHz, works great. All three, but XP64 is the fastest :)

Add:Use BOINC manager 6.1.0 x86 & x64 and the AK_V8_SSE3/SSSE3x and SSE4.1 optimized application on all the Quad's.
If possible DISABLE SPEEDSTEP
(Then there's NO throttling and you can start OC'ing rightaway.) ;^)
I'd try these optimized app's. They can be found here:
KWSN Ni N! N! Opt App's

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Have you installed the Asus Probe utility on all of the mobos and compared what the CPU temps are reading? That could be a clue if there is a large difference.

Also helps to connect the processor fan! >blush< :-)

Have you installed the Asus Probe utility on all of the mobos and compared what the CPU temps are reading? That could be a clue if there is a large difference.

Also helps to connect the processor fan! >blush< :-)

Yes, Asus Probe is installed. At last check the CPU temp was 43c.
Also yes I do have the processor fan connected.
Just tried installing slower memory to see if that made any diffrence. Put in some DDR2-800 and still have the same problem. Cruch3r suggested an older version of Bonic, 6.1.2, that did not help. Seems that someone in Germany is having the same problem. No one has figured it out there either.

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Hmmm. I wonder if you may have a program running that takes most of the CPU cycles when you're not "watching." Say a screen saver, other than boinc, that's processor intensive, or a task that's supposed to run only while idle. Have you opened Task Manager to look at the CPU time collected by your various running tasks? Make sure to add the "CPU Time" column using "View->Select Columns" so you can sort by it and see if there's anything unexpected with a huge number of CPU seconds logged.

IIRC, I had a similar problem with BOINC V6.x (don't know anymore which subversion from the 6 branch it was)... creeping CPU times. I reverted to BOINC 5.10.45 and everything went to normality. Might be worth a try. But keep in mind that installing BOINC 5.x on a Vista system needs some special instructions like not installing it in the program files folder or even disabling UAC (that's what I've done).

Or, find a tool that keeps track wich programm has consumed how much CPU time, like Iarson Taskinfo or similar.

HTH
Andy

IIRC, I had a similar problem with BOINC V6.x (don't know anymore which subversion from the 6 branch it was)... creeping CPU times. I reverted to BOINC 5.10.45 and everything went to normality. Might be worth a try. But keep in mind that installing BOINC 5.x on a Vista system needs some special instructions like not installing it in the program files folder or even disabling UAC (that's what I've done).

Or, find a tool that keeps track wich programm has consumed how much CPU time, like Iarson Taskinfo or similar.

HTH
Andy

All kinds off 'unnecessary' processes like several HTTP/WEB funtion's, witch only put you on security risk and the file indexing service(cisvr.exe), can take a consideral amount off CPU time, strongly depending on the CPU used.
Without disabling everything but cruching, there are about 50-55 processes, that can't be disabled, without crashing the whole system.
Please be carefull, when trying out, what can be disabled though :)

*Edit/add* VISTA has a taskmanager and processviewer, for XP(32&64BIT) there is a processExplorer

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Without disabling everything but cruching, there are about 50-55 processes, that can't be disabled, without crashing the whole system.
Please be carefull, when trying out, what can be disabled though :)

I would differ a bit with that last statement.....

Depending on the OS and what programs and devices the rig has to support, there are more than 50-55 processes/services that can be disabled...

My XP x64 crunch only rig (The Frozen Penny) has only 17 services running...and only 24 total processes in task manager, and that includes 4 Seti crunching apps, 3 Boinc support processes, and task manager itself.

I have recommended Black Viper's site in the past for some good Windows service info...he has some guides to help determine what can be disabled safely and what cannot....

But as always....my words of warning....

You can seriously bork your OS....if you make a mistake and kill the wrong things, you can render a rig unbootable....so take care.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster