PC sub-par performance

A few months ago I went out and bought 3 PCs, all 3 virtually identical in the components (4 gig ram, GTS 250 geforce card, Windows Xp x64) except for the M.B & CPU.

The 2 AMD PCs used the
CPU : AMD Phenom II X4 940
M.B : GA-MA770-UD3 gigabyte

While the Intel used
CPU: Q6600 @ 2.40ghz
M.B: EP43-UD3L gigabyte

Now my problem is the intel PC is MUCH slower, at first I attributed this to an AMD vs intel difference but then I noticed that the intel PC performs even slower than previous Core2Duo PC's (E6750 cpu) I had purchased almost a year ago with half the ram. The game performance itself on the PC is great, however the main problem is loading times. Anything that requires loading takes alot longer on this PC than on the other AMD's or the Core2Duo's, almost up to 20-30 seconds longer. I've tried running some benchmarks but I can't seem to pinpoint the cause, I'm guessing there is a bottleneck of some sort.

So I'm looking for some advice on how to proceed, what type of tests to run to see if I can resolve this problem and what other information I need to provide. I tried overclocking the PC but that didn't seem to do much difference. I'm pretty sure all of the PC's I mentioned are spyware/virus free and no other major applications are usually running, the PCs were built primarily for gaming. The loading delays sometimes causes timeouts in LAN games due to the other PCs finishing loading much faster when a game is being started. However after the game starts the PC works flawlessly

 

Loading times are mainly governed by the slowest component in the system - the hard drive. Try reinstalling the chipset driver.

 

Hi mondrawy. Why have you double posted?

 

my bad, I was trying to edit and I must have misclicked. If a moderator can delete the other one I'd be grateful, I can't seem to be able to delete the other one

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I've downloaded & installed the driver but it didn't seem to have changed much. However you did narrow down the cause, I ran a HDD benchmark (HD Tune) and the average transfer rate was around 3.5 MB/s which is far below what the other PC's got (67MB/s), burst rate was also at 3.6MB/s far below the 110.7 MB/s the others experienced. All 3 PCs have the same Western Digital 500GB HDD. If the driver isn't the problem, what else could it be ?

Edit:
Ok it appears that the other drives are operating at UDMA Mode 6 where as this one is at 5, so how do I fix that ?

 

That reads like Windows has reset the speeds for data transfer because of previous, recurring errors (sometimes because a bad CD or DVD has been inserted and left for a few days). In Device Manager, check under the Advanced tab for each of your ATA channels, your HDD should be on channel 0 and have at least UDMA mode 5 (probably 6).

EDIT: Just saw your edit - umm, try unchecking "use DMA", apply and close; go back in and see if it has changed.

 

HD tune reports UDMA 5, however the device manager reports PIO mode. I don't recall running into any CRC errors since its been built. Is there a way to return that to UDMA 6 or is that not recommended ? The other 2 PC's are on UDMA 6

 

I don't know where I can uncheck use DMA, however i tried changing the transfer mode from "DMA if available" to "PIO Only" and then back to DMA but the Current Transfer mode didn't change. I tried uninstalling it and rebooting but it booted up in PIO only.

 

I think you need to check the system logs to find why the transfer speeds have been reduced so much - right-click My Computer > Manage > Event viewer > highlight System then click on Action > Filter and check only Critical, Error and Warning. Scan through the log looking for errors related to drives/ATA/IDE etc.

I'll go take a quick look for a regfix for you

EDIT: Winhlp.com, Quick solution, number 1 resetdma.vbs - run it, agree to the changes, reboot and test.

EDIT 2:

 

Tried that and after reboot was greeted with the lovely BSOD and

I rebooted once more to find UDMA mode 5 now, which I suppose is a big step up from PIO mode. Its still not working at UDMA 6 though but there is a definite improvement in transfer speeds. Not to be greedy but I'd like to see if I can get it all the way back to 6 :-D

I found a bunch of Atapi errors (event ID 9) .

 

LOL - a BSOD that fixed something ^^

Ok, UDMA 5 is pretty good, maybe look to Intel for later drivers for the chipset now.

Re the ATAPI erros, reads like the CD/DVD has been playing up at some time; switch it for one in another PC and test for a few days?

 

I don't have any CD/DVD drives, however I do have some virtual CD/DVD drives running which could possibly account for such errors. Thanks again for the help, I'll try browsing around and see if I can bump it all the way back to 6. I'd also like to run a hard disk scan to make sure that the drive is actually safe and this mess was just a false alarm, do you know of any reliable applications I could download & let them run overnight ? I'm gonna try HD Tune's error scan but that doesn't really mark badsectors if it did find them.

 

Visit Intel's website for later chipset drivers and WD's to download the diagnostic CD for the hdd - it'll need a CD drive to boot it from though.