Intel G33 performance problems
Author: Paweł RutkowskiForeword
I’m thinking about switch blog language to english. I think all audience interested in topics mentioned on my blog already is “english-enabled” and maybe there is even more who doesn’t speak polish. This entry is first try to switch, since there is only little information about Intel G33 boards performance stuff - and i want to warn everyone who may want to buy that board.
Long story short…
With a little retrospect - Intel motherboard G33 (DG33BU) is not able to handle 4GB or more in real world - specification says it’s handling 8GB.
Hardware i’ve used:
- Motherboard Intel G33 (DG33BU)
- 4GB RAM 667
- Intel Core2Duo CPU 4400 @ 2.00GHz BUS: 1333MHz
- 2 x WD Caviar 320GB SATA (WDC WD3200YS)
Why i’ve choosen Intel G33
I was looking for nice motherboard that can handle 8GB of ram, with Gigabit LAN and VGA on board for my own very entry-level project. Operating system of my choice was FreeBSD so i’ve tried to get something supported by it. FreeBSD 6.2 is not able to get working all stuff natively. Things not working by default:
- SATA in AHCI/Legacy mode (is ATA emulation works)
- On board Gigabit LAN
Ok, so why not any other board ? I didn’t want to land with poor realtek, nvidia or marvel network chips. Especially Gigabit. Intel is known for great Intel EtherExpress Pro/100 (fxp in FreeBSD) and have already earned some nice feedback on PRO/1000 Gigabit interfaces.
Getting things work (almost)
I’ve putted only 2GB ram for installation since i was waiting for new RAM delivery. I had to switch to ATA emulation and put old RealTek 8169C PCI card to completed network installation. Things went pretty good.
Next thing was to download newest intel driver for freebsd, compile that and install. It worked. I was pretty happy so far - sure i would be much more if everything would be working natively but it wasn’t so hard so far.
Next was to get SATA in AHCI mode working (i’m not sure if there are any benefits for that under freebsd for now - ata manual page says Native Command Queuing (NCQ) on SATA drives is not yet supported
- and thats main feature of AHCI). It’s based on ICH9 and it’s not supported by default. So i’ve found patch which adds PCI IDs for that hardware. After recompiling kernel, it worked.
Ok, so till now everything seams worked ok. I left machine alone until memory will arrive…
Memory arrived, and problems started…
Yeah, memory arrived. Two 2GB modules CL 5-5-5-15, just like motherboard vendor specified. I’ve putted 4GB RAM, booted machine and everything went slow. Logging on console took around 1-2 sec and man pf.conf
took around 17 seconds before man page appeared !
That’s surprise i didn’t like. I’ve tried to profile system but i found nothing suspicious. So i went back to 2 x 1GB modules. Whow that was like moving from Fiat 126p to Ferrari ! Wired. Anyway, i’ve tried 4 x 1GB modules - slow again. So it looks like problem with >= 4GB. I’ve got newest BIOS - it didn’t helped. I’ve switched all possible BIOS settings - nothing. I’ve tried all possible memory and channel combinations:
- 2 x 2GB Dual Channel
- 2 x 2GB Single Channel
- 4 x 1GB Single Channel
- 2 x 2GB Dual Channel + 2 x 1GB Dual channel
- 2 x 2GB Single Channel + 2 x 1GB Single Channel
- 2 x 1GB Dual Channel + 1 x 1GB Single Channel
- 1 x 2GB Single Channel
- 1 x 1GB Single Channel
Every time i was getting >= 4GB, system was getting slow. Ok, i was about contact Intel support, but it just recall they are not supporting officialy any other OS than microsoft windows on that platform. I thought that would be total shit if that motherboard would be working only on windows. But i’ve give a shot and install Microsoft Windows XP S2. Installation went pretty normal. Apparently Windows was working unusable slow for that kind of machine. I’ve installed all software i’ve found on CD delivered with motherboard. Still slow. Now i have enough information to contact Intel Support.
Contact with Intel Support
My first mail to Intel support was 20/09/2007.
That was tougher than i though. I’ve describe whole stuff very cerfuly including all details (i even putted Power Suply Unit (in polish - zasilacz) spec - as intel suggested). Then there was long joggling with emails when i had to provide more and more details. Then came most suprising part ! Intel said i have to call them. Ok I’ve called and what happend ? I was asked for answers i’ve put in first mail. I don’t know if Intel have problem with information flow or they were buying some time.
It took almost 1 month to get to this point, and there was still constructive answer. On one of phone conversations i’ve heard they were able to reproduce problem, but in the mail they denied that. They have sugested many solutions but no worked or was not rational (like get another board and see if problem exists !). On 19/11/2007 i had enough of playing whole evenings with that motherboard and i’ve closed case but without resolution.
G33 chipset fault ?
Is that G33 design fault ? Is that chipset badly designed ? Well answer is no… After new year i’ve decide to give one more shot and i’ve bought GIGABYTE GA-G33M-S2 IG33 S775. The main difference is LAN interface - it’s Realtek based - but it’s working properly even with 6GB of RAM. I’ve tested my reference FreeBSD-6.2 installation and FreeBSD 7.0-RC2. Both failed on Intel G33 motherboard but both worked ok on Gigabyte. So it’s not chipset fault.
Epilogue
After that i’ve stopped thinking about damn Intel G33 motherboard. It’s still on my workbench waiting to do something with it, but i’m simply afraid. I won’t put that in any machine which will be used for something more than playing solitaire. You never know what more problem you may expect with that motherboard. So it’s waiting and probably will stay as quick spare part with a lot of dust on it.
What i should have to check out more ?
One thing that came to my mind lately is that i should try to disable on-board lan and see if that problem still exists. Maybe it’s related to LAN ROM stuff (one of other motherboards based on AMD690 + Realtek LAN have hanged if >=4GB where installed). But that is task for one, late, sleepless night - i have enough of fighting with that motherboard.
Maybe i should check linux on that, but after FreeBSD and “supported” Windows XP SP2 failed i found it useless.
luty 16th, 2008 at 11:51
regarding slow g33 with more than 4g of ram.
i just solved this in linux.
the bios is not reporting the memory configuration properly.
it has to do with the mtrr’s
linux has a patch which worked for me.
I have 8gb of ram
check out these threads
http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/6/7/453
http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/1/18/170
hopefully intel will eventually get the bios right
luty 16th, 2008 at 13:02
@Randy: Now i just recall i’ve hit on those patches, but i’ve never tried it. Thanks for pointing that out. But i still belive operating system patches are not solution for that if it’s BIOS cause. Especialy if it doesn’t work with Windows XP
luty 23rd, 2008 at 1:30
A new bios is out for the g33.
it addresses the slow boot and worked for me in linux.
my patched kernel still says the mtrrr’s are wrong, but it does boot normally on a generic kernel.
i havent tested it in windows,as i dont have windows loaded at the current time. I am running my OS on a CF card
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Filter_Results.aspx?strOSs=All&strTypes=All&ProductID=2806&lang=eng&OSFullName=All%20Operating%20Systems
luty 23rd, 2008 at 12:30
@randy: yeah, i’ve also seen that patch recently but after so much fight with that motherboard i’m so tired that i haven’t play with it yet. Everytime they released new BIOS i was full of faith but always i’ve got only disappointment. I’m wonder if your patch still detects problem with mtrrs that problem have been solved or just worked around ? Maybe it’s not visible on the first sight :/ Anyway maybe i will get motivated and try to update it today
marzec 19th, 2008 at 9:55
I have run into similiar problems with FreeBSD-6.3/7.0 and Gigabyte P35-DS3L with 4×2GB ram sticks(8GB), Core2-E6400 - things were getting weird if I utilized over 3.5GB of RAM. E.g. NIC failed to work (device re onboard and external rl) and things were slowing down as well. Pulling out 2×2GB has partially solved the problem - though I still get VERY bad peerformance in SMP - things work sometimes as fast as they are supposed to and sometimes even slower than when I disable SMP. Probably because 4GB RAM is more than 4GB of address space (part is remapped too over 4GB). I see “thread tasq” as the most cpu-time consuming process when things go bad.
I’ve already tried hacking the task queue subsystem squeezing all I could out of it (and running into multiple issues on the way - like ZFS not coming up, device em going nuts under load, system deadlocks and slowdowns under load (thousands of processes running at once).
marzec 19th, 2008 at 10:03
@Paul: Hm, i’ve got similar problem with re interfaces on AMD690G chipset and FreeBSD-7.0. It looked like re have firmware which is not compatible with >=4GB of RAM. I’ve used external em and fxp interfaces and that helped in my case.
Hacking kernel is not a good option i think, since it looks like problem with intel chipsets not FreeBSD it self. BTW: have you tried linux ? How about upgrading bios to newest version ?
maj 21st, 2008 at 14:26
Here the same problem with DG33BU. I bought this board to upgrade an old server and Intel has very good boards (well, had in tha past). I installed Freebsd 7, but started to get hangups right away. I found out that the ICH chip was going way over 100 degrees Celsius. I did some research and it seems to be a known problem of this board. I then screwed a small 4cm fan on the ICH and the temperature dropped to a nice 60 to 70 degrees C. After that I tried to build a new kernel, but the the system hang again during building.
This board is going back to the shop, and I am going to find another one.
czerwiec 3rd, 2008 at 13:15
I have a DG33FB motherboard on this computer (2.6 ghz duo 1333mhz, 2 gigs 800 mhz ddr2 mem, 80gig sata, dvd/cd/rw rom, 450w xion power supply and I’m running around
(with air conditioner on)
Processor: 88 F
Motherboard: 90 F
ICH: 147 F
MCH: 153 F
Steady Temps.
ICH/MCH Seems high, but the old style fans do not fit these, and also I have 3 case fans (2 120mm, 1 80mm) on top of cpu fan and the power supply fan. I never hear my computer pushing itself, and never really seen much temp change.
Going to be adding a 512 128 bit vid card (with 675mhz core)
All and all it’s a great machine, had no issues with my OS (Windows XP Pro 64-bit) Runs all the older directx9 games on high settings. Oh and if your not into gamming, the onboard vid is more then enough for you.
listopad 12th, 2009 at 0:37
Intel solved the memory >4GB problem with latest bios release… (check changelog)
good luck!
listopad 12th, 2009 at 11:53
@xxintel: Thanks for information ! I will check it - i hope it will solve those issues ! I don’t like throw money away and i didn’t find any useful for this MoBo.
grudzień 11th, 2009 at 11:39
Interesujące , dzięki