I can't believe it.

A family member was complaining that I had pinched his computer to run Mach.

It was running it adequately.  Celeron 1.6 Ghz 512 mb ram. Start ups disabled. Driver test was passable. Could have been better

My Main desktop, Petium 4,  2.8 Ghz driver test as solid as a rock. No optimization, network running, everything.

So I decided to get a new one for CNC. Capable of doing CAD CAM whatever. (not at the same time as Mach)

Core 2 Duo,  1 gig ram, nothing installed.  Should be the ducks nuts.

Run the driver test and OHH NO !!!

What's going on ??

Just out of curiosity what make/model  mobol?

Hood

Gigabyte 945GMF-DS2,   Core2 DuoE6400,  1 Gig DDR2 ram, XP home  SP2

Why do you ask?  Is Motherboard type an issue?  If so I didn't know that.

Greg

Only reason I asked was because last time I saw a drive test that bad (actually it wasnt that bad   ) was when I tried a cheapo crappy brand mobo with onboard graphics.
Hood

This  is not a cheapo crappy mobo I hope.   

It does have on board graphics. Has also a Nvidea PCIe graphics card,

Went through the bios with a fine tooth comb and there is nowhere to disable on board graphics.

Could this be it?

Greg

Nope, Gigas are good mobos, well except for the ones that had bad caps (VRXP era) 
Onboard Graphics may be the cause but I doubt it. Not had any experience with Intels for a long time so cant help but have heard that the duos can be a real bitch.
Hood

The following is a paraphrase of my post on the Yahoo group.



The saga of the driver test.   Doesn't matter that my hair is grey,   I've ripped it all out 

Spent a lot of frustrating hours trying Arts suggestions for fixing this.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

So I went and got another MOBO. Different brand, different chip.

Fitted it all up........ Exactly the same driver test result !!!!!!

#%^*#,   (^#!%,    %$+@#$    Kicked it across the room !!!!!

All that for nothing, how much for sixpence ??

What the #%&@ am I going to do now ??

Anyhow I hooked it up to my machine and it actually seems to be running it OK.

The previous MOBO setup, the one in the first post,  was mising steps. You could hear it.

This one sounds OK.

Driver test is still appalling. Worse than appalling.  Exactly the same as in the first post.  But what do you do?

This new MOBO actually has a bit better specs.

So maybe it is quick enough to cope with the timing problems?

Anyhow the upshot is I don't know what else to do.

So I will just have to see how it goes.

I would love to hear from others running the Core2 Duo 6400 CPU and see how there driver test compares.


Greg

The following is again a copy of a post I made on the Yahoo group.

This is something that may come up again for someone.

Hopefully with a search they will find this post.

Sure would have saved me a lot of time and frustration if I had searched and found it right at the start.   

Greg




Art

After hours and many restarts after BIOS changes I found a setting
that made a difference.

As you alluded to earlier a setting called "C1E enable" is the one.

I disabled it and "How About That" a solid stable line on the driver test.

Pulse frequency is rock solid on the diagnostics page. YIPEEE!!!!

A lot of time wasted chasing video settings. Oh Well !!!

Did some searching on it and it is something to do with a power saving
feature on the Core2 Duo.

It slows down the clock speed when idle, or something like that !!!

That's one for the memory banks.

This is bound to come up again as more users move to these CPUs.

Thanks again for your patience, Greg

Further to this "C1E" or "Enhanced Halt State" setting.

Here is a link that talks about it.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2353&p=4

Greg