SuperPI tweaks
These are tweaks collected by D_o_S on xtremesystems.
note: these tips are for superpi only. some may work well for some benchmarks but may hurt your scores in others. pedro rocha's tweak (best results on A64 + win2000, other combinations may work well too but may also fux up stabillity and therefor your overclock, thus doing your score more bad then good.) is an excellent exampe for this. it will boost your 3dmark2001 score by quite a bit but it will have a negative effect on your pifast score.
(from macci) sometimes you'll get better results with the japanese version of superpi then with the english version but for instance with P-M's (dothan's) it's the other way around.
I don't really know wich OS is better for 1M calculation yet, some say win2k3 server (what sp, I don't know, I'm guessing SP4) although I suspect that for A64 any 64bit OS will be better. also someone mentioned win XP SP 2 is faster then Win2k3 server...
use winXP (pro I suppose) SP1 for 8M, do not!! use win2k3 server.
(from Tom Holck) for 32M, in order of efficience : amd 64 bit, XP64, win2003 32 bit sp4, win xp, win 2000
(from CodeRed) win2003 64 bit is fastest
(from CodeRed) A64tweaker settings for BH-5:
2-7-12-2-2-5-2-2-1-1
Max async latency = 6ns
Read preamble = 5ns
Read Write Queue Bypass = 16x
Bypass Max = 7x
Dynamic Idle Cycle Counter = enabled/16 clocks
(from Hilppa) run --> msconfig --> diagnostic boot mode
This will shut down lot's of services and give you a nice boost
(from Hilppa) Remember to run superpi.exe in Real time mode (from task manager) and turn off explorer.exe and userinit.exe during the run. You can run explorer.exe after the run from task manager. (typically C:\windows\explorer.exe I think)
running superpi in realtime doesn't give me a noticeable gain on Axp or P4.
Some people experienced worse scores from killing explorer.exe and minimizing superpi.
set page file to 0. this didn't help me mutch but I didn't' time it with process timer so it might help a few milli seconds.
I use blackviper's registry patch instead of diagnostic mode... disables a lot of services mostly and adds some other tweaks like the no page file tweak...
if you use page file, delete, defrag and set again.
clean install is best offcourse and defrag right away after installtion aswell best to use a 3rd party defrag tool. most will do a much better job at it then the windows defragger.
Ramdisk tools:MAXMEM is often used. I haven't tried it myself though. afaik, it's slightly better then the boot.ini maxmem tweak but it's not compatible with it.
(from Gautam) there's also RAMdisk
(so the boot.ini maxmem tweak (doesn't always help and slows your system down): look in the advanced options of boot.ini, there is "MAXMEM"
in the boot.ini after /fastdetect add /maxmem=104 (or 105)
for example : multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003" /fastdetect /maxmem=104
if the option isn't available through msconfig then the boot.ini will do the trick.
link :
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...tid=21045&stc=1
for the cpu, high mhz is more important then high fsb in dispite of the fact that high fsb is faster in most applications.
for the memory, tight timings are more important then high bandwith, offcourse there are limits to this and you'll have to find a good compromis. Dual channel is also a major plus.
when you get an error, the first time it'll most of the time be "not exact in round" but if you run superpi a seccond time it will give you "not convergent in SQR". Deleting all the files in the superpi folder except the .exe and .txt files will rid you of this error message. Offcourse, if you're overclock is completely unstable you'll just get the errors again, but if you're on the edge where shear luck is the only factor that plays a role between a succesfull and a bad run, this can help.