Motherboard replaced - now goes slower

[markr]

Thanks heaps for all the suggestions! Now I feel more prepared for when someone finally comes to look at it. I'll keep you posted! :)

Mark

[lycorn]

Originally Posted by markr

Device manager mentions Intel 845 chipset.

Check if it is 845G. Those have on-board video. But from the benchies you provided, I would look for a throttling problem. Don´t you have the means to measure the CPU temp?

[markr]

All fixed now!
The cause was improper re-installation of the heatsink - I think the tech was saying that there was a plate (would that be a heat spreader??) that should have been attached to the chip, but had stayed with the heatsink.

So there must have been substantial throttling. I suspected it, but everything that I could install (I haven't administrator rights...) showed the normal 1.8GHz. And I couldn't find anything I could install to show the temperature.

Then I read the x-bit labs article xyzzy gave a link to in another thread:

For example, we overclock a Pentium 4 2.2GHz to 2.8GHz, but don't improve the cooling. In this case the CPU temperature quickly gets above the critical value and Thermal Monitor unleashes Thermal Control Circuit: the CPU starts missing out clock cycles. As a result, the user will see during boot-up and in WCPUid-like programs that the CPU is at 2.8GHz, although the effective performance of the processor may be even lower than that of Pentium 4 2.2GHz.

Again, many thanks for your help!

[czolus]

Yeah, the nature of clock throttling is to oscillate the duty cycle so fast that the realtime clock monitors don't have a clue that a beat's been missed. The only way to really tell is to have a system driver read the msr's for the clock throttling trip flag and then do some calculations, etc, etc. Very irritating.