• Registered: 2007-06-16
  • Posts: 214

Topic: Win7 performance - FF800

Hello!

After trying hard to make my system running with win 7 and FF800 it seems I somehow succeeded.

Driver 3.014 behaves much better on my machine as previous version. I got no BSOD's using Ricoh 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller. In a half hour hard running time (45% cpu load from my DSP app) there was even no errors in Fireface settings dialog.

This "remarkable" performance was achieved by obeying some basic "rules" from Timur on this forum. ACPI-Compliant Battery is disabled, power scheme is set to max. performance, etc.

I use HP EliteBook 8730w with win 7 ultimate 32 bit. By turning off device by device and looking DPC Latency Checker, it is clear, there are performance issues with Nvidia graphics and wireless networking device.

This "remarkable" flawless performance is of course achieved by disabling wireless device and using standard VGA graphics driver. I do not care much about graphics; I use win32 GDI system for "fast" drawings and GDI+ where graphics performance is not critical - no graphics accelerators as DirectX. But I do need wireless networking with my DSP tasks. Timur adviced Broadcom wireless drivers for win7. HP provides Intel and Broadcom drivers, but I can not force Broadcom driver instead of Intel. How can I do that? Uninstalling Intel driver and installing Broadcom allways results with Intel driver. Even delete driver check box doesn't help. Intel driver was unintentionaly installed by microsoft update...

Timur also adviced some software used for tuning performance with nVidia. This post was deleted as forum had problems at that time... Any input from Timur or anyone else will be appreciated.

System:

HP EliteBook 8730w
win 7 ultimate 32 bit
Nvidia Quadro FX 2700M
T9600 Centrino Duo
4GB ram
7200 300GB hard drive

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Win7 performance - FF800

The reason why Windows keeps reverting to the Intel driver is because your laptop is using an Intel WLAN chipset. You can either try to get new drivers directly from Intel (usually more current than the ones on laptop vendor's sites) or try the following utility:

http://www.martin-majowski.de/wlanoptimizer/

  • Registered: 2007-06-16
  • Posts: 214

Re: Win7 performance - FF800

Tnx for your input. Will check wlanoptimizer asap. Just one question: which software to use when optimizing nVidia display driver?

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Win7 performance - FF800

For forcing NVidia drivers to a fixed power mode(aka turning off PowerMizer, aka keeping it from switching GPU clock-rates):

http://somemorebytes.com/wp/index.php/s … pmmanager/

Some Nvidia GPU suffer only from the switching itself, some suffer at certain power modes (2D, low power 3D, high performance 3D) and some suffer from both.

Some work without issues and that sometimes can be attributed to certain driver versions/settings. The 330M GT in my Macbook Pro cannot be cured with PowerMizer Manager alone. I first have to hack a "Quadro" driver version 261.28 (only distributed by Microsoft instead of NVidia via Update or download) to install (the NVS5100 and 880FX are both based on the same chip as my 330M) which cures both problems the DPCs when switching and the DPCs in all power modes. Because the driver is somewhat unstable I then install the current 266.58 regular driver over it. That keeps curing the ongoing DPCs but brings back the switching DPCs, which I then cure via PowerMizer Manager. Trying to get Nvidia to fix their drivers for two years now.

  • Registered: 2007-06-16
  • Posts: 214

Re: Win7 performance - FF800

Tnx Timur for your effort. Fixing wireless and nVidia will bring new life to my computer.

  • Registered: 2007-06-16
  • Posts: 214

Re: Win7 performance - FF800

I noticed funny thing; readings with DPC latency checker somehow depend on CPU load. If I run stupid while(true){} proggy DPC latencies fall by 200%.

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Win7 performance - FF800

The DPC Latency Checker utility does not provide correct measurements (Xperf does as far as I know), but merely indications. Anyway, both DPCs and the utility itself are likely affected by things like CPU power-saving modes (Speedstep), process prioritization and process scheduling.

The latter is especially hard to control because each CPU kernel is able to work on DPCs on its own, but you hardly know which processes/threads share which kernel at a given time. All that the utility does is spam Windows with DPC requests itself while stopping the time between answers.

  • Registered: 2007-06-16
  • Posts: 214

Re: Win7 performance - FF800

Hm, interesting. For DPC I only know high causes troubles...

I did a lot of testing with win7 and ff800. Nvidia is NOGO no matter what I do with the PowerMizer. Downloaded the latest intel wireless driver; a little better performance but still far from what I had with win XP. However with wireless disabled and standard vga driver things work just fine. But we live in year 2011 and with win7 I'm forced to have year 1997 overall performance.

When I bought this laptop I was happy it has high power Nvidia graphics, but now I would be much happier with some cheap ATI. At least by moving one widow over another.

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Win7 performance - FF800

ManuelG on the NVidia forum promised that the next two Nvidia driver releases should address most of the DPC issues. But he promised something similar before. wink

10 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
  • Administrator
  • Offline
  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 25,599

Re: Win7 performance - FF800

Yeah, and he said 'next two'. Means all versions thereafter will be back to troublesome... HeadScratch fryingpan

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Win7 performance - FF800

Everyone with issues, please check if the following registry key contains NVidia settings on your system:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\ Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]

If it does then add the following entry (enter the name without the quotes) or run the file attached to this post:

"RmPowerFeature"=dword:00000050

Please report back if this solved the ongoing DPCs for you (they will still be 100 - 200 us higher than removing the NVidia driver). For getting rid of high spikes when modes are switched you either need to use "PowerMizer Manager" and choose a fixed mode or install modified 261.28 Quadro drivers.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?app= … h_id=26764