Who’s affected, and who can see the performance increase?

• Everyone with a B2 Stepping Quad Core AMD Processor (Phenom 9500, 9600, 9700 & B2 Stepping Opterons) who runs Windows Vista SP1+, or Windows Server 2008 (Even if you have the TLB fix DISABLED in your BIOS).

General Info:

When AMD released the 9500, 9600, & 9700 series processors they missed a huge error.  The L3 cache is shared across the 4 cores… there is a bug in processor that can cause a deadlock under certain nested & recursive L3 cache writes.
AMD released a BIOS “fix” for this but as consumers quickly found out the “fix” came at a high price… about a 30% performance hit.  Most people have not applied this patch… and why should they?  They aren’t using virtualization, and they haven’t suffered any lockups.  Not to mention it requires the user to flash his or her BIOS which isn’t something most people are keen on doing.  Honestly… they probably don’t even know about it.

The deadlock is mostly seen when the host OS is running visualization (VM Ware, etc) and under a steady load.  I’ve yet to deadlock while playing Warhammer.

It’s not just AMD’s fault…

You purchased it and Microsoft FORCED the TLB onto your system with SP1.  Yup, you heard me you can’t even disable it via the BIOS.  There is no setting you can change inside windows… you’re supposed to live with it.

How do I disable the TLB fix?

1. Download the files: [Link]
2. Run TLB_Disable.exe
3. Enjoy the boost…

sam2008 wrote the TLB_Disable GUI… you can view his thread here: [Link]

Great Instructions for getting this to run automagically at every boot:  [Link]

I went from 24 FPS to 40.

If you have any questions feel free to post a comment. I won’t be checking the warhammer alliance post very often.

Wow, what a weekend!  Overall I would give this weekend a 6.5 out of 10…

Things started off bad when I hooked up to the trailer and found that I had no lights.  It turns out that the module that I put on the van burned up so nothing worked except for the trailer brakes.  Our neighbor was helping me troubleshoot the issue and when we figured out there was nothing we could do to fix it he gratiously offered to let us use his truck for the weekend.

We wanted to be on the road by noon so we could be at the hotel and settled in by 4pm but we didn’t get out until 1:45, and even had to skip our trip to walmart for snacks, drinks, ice, locks, etc.  All in all it wasn’t a big deal, but I had hurt my back a few days prior (pain tends to put me “in a mood”) and this just fueled the fire.

The Holiday Inn website made the hotel we had booked look great but in reality it stunk.  Brittany and I didn’t have any problems with the staff, but witnessed numerous things that raised our eyebrows…

I snuck out of the hotel early Saturday morning and headed to the track to meet my buddy Ben.  Once we got the trailer unloaded and our pit area setup we worked on getting the bikes ready for tech inspection.  By 9am the fog was starting to lift but was still so thick that we weren’t able to get out onto the track.  We finally got onto the track at about 9:40 but after 3 laps I had to come back into the pits.  My visor had fogged up so bad I couldn’t see my own hand if I held it up.  I cleaned it off and went back out but after another 2 laps I couldn’t see again.   The first session was a bust.

The second session started out a lot better… the fog had lifted, I got my tire pressure and teperature set where I wanted them, and the suspension was dialed in.  The first lap was great, but I lowsided just after the first apex in the carousel.  I was carrying too much corner speed and as I hit the first apex and got back on the gas I dialed in a little bit more lean angle and washed the front wheel out.  I broke a clipon (handle bar), banged up my exhaust can, bent a rearset bracket (foot peg), and scratched up the side of the bike.

The only thing that needed to be replaced was the clipon and I had that done in about an hour (thanks Ben & PJ)!

The rest of the day was alright, but I wasn’t riding as well as I would have liked.  I finally worked things out the last session of the day and was looking forward to Sunday.
Sunday finally came and I was feeling a lot better for the first 3 sessions but after lunch I was just TIRED, and sore.  I was tempted to pack it in and go home, but Brittany and Ben giving me grief to stay.  The next session was red flagged when the rider infront of me highsided in the carousel.  He tightened his line up too much after the first apex and would have run off the inside of the track - he tried to save it by standing it up a bit and braking.  I’m not sure if he ended up locking the rear wheel in the turn, or got on the gas too hard but he spun the rear out from underneath him and that’s all she wrote.  He spilled 5 quarts of oil on the race line, so that took a while to get cleaned up.  The next session I went out and was excited again… I wanted to beat my old track record (1:10:xx).  The first lap I warmed up, the second lap I got on it and ran another 1:10, I started to pick it up and braked late into T1, came out and found my bike was quickly slowing down.  I tried giving it more throttle but it just kept on slowing… I ended up stopped before T3 and had a hell of a time getting the bike off of the track.  I’m still not entirely sure what happened (haven’t got the front end pulled off the bike just yet) but it looks like a rock got wedged between the caliper and the rotor or a piston in the caliper got stuck.  The heat built up and caused my front brakes to lock up completely, then 30 seconds later I had no brakes at all.  The rotor is completely warped and will need to be replaced (luckily I already have 2 “in stock”).

A big THANK YOU to my amazing wife Brittany who came out to the track with me.  She even found the time to snap a few pictures:

I finally (and I can’t believe it was almost a year) made it back out to the track!!

I should start by reminding everyone that I’ve spent the last 9 months rebuilding and modifying the 2006 R6 I bought wrecked.  The rebuild was loads of fun and kept me busy for a good amount of time, but I couldn’t wait to get it out there and see how she would run. By the time I was done tinkering and modifying the bike, she put out a mind blowing 120 HP at the rear wheel… on pump gas!

The 2006+ R6 is one of the most popular track weapons because it’s geometry is ideal, the handling is superb, and the power (above 10,000 RPM) is quite significant for 600cc.

The first session was very slow… I was refamiliarizing myself with the Summit Point raceway, getting used to the bike, and getting back into the zone (I’ve only ridden dirtbikes for the last year).  By the second session, speeds were creeping up but I really felt like I was just fighting the bike.  The handling was quite different than I was used to, the corner speeds were significantly faster, and it felt as though there just wasn’t any power.  Every time I would start to feel a little power, I would hit the rev-limiter (17,500 RPM) and have to up shift again.  I was frustrated, and as a result, I wasn’t handling the bike like the lady she is.
On the racetrack, all your movements need to be smooth, deliberate, and slow… upset the suspension too much, and you loose traction; input too much throttle or brake too quickly, and you loose traction.

The third session I slowed down and concentrated on reading my girl… I was paying close attention to noise and vibration from the engine, watching the tachometer whenever I could, and shifting at the rev-limiter instead of bouncing off of it for a second or two.   After a few laps of concentrating on her (as well as throttle control, brake application & release, body position, etc), things started to click.  Speeds began to pick up as the smoothness of my actions increased and before I knew it, I was screaming along trying to concentrate on other things like passing, getting off the bike while downshifting and braking (HARD!) into the corners, and the oh-so-important lines.

As the day progressed, I got smoother and smoother (faster & faster) and started working on other things, like setting people up for passes.  Riding the R1 spoiled me… there was so much power, and so much torque that there was really nothing to think about… go through the corner like normal then open her up and hold on.  The R6 is completely different.  If I want to pass a 1000cc bike going down a straight, I really shouldn’t stand a chance. But if you back off the throttle going into the turn and really pick it up and get a drive on them through the turn, you can slingshot past them into the straight and they really can’t do anything but try to catch you.   I have a (bad) habit of saying the R6 has no power, but with 120 ponies at the rear wheel there’s plenty of power there… you’ve just got to know how to use it.  I spoke with several Control Riders who couldn’t pass me coming out of corners or down the entire straight - everyone was raving about the power my R6 had.  I had 3 people say something to the effect of “Oh, you’re that guy on the wicked fast 600″.

By the end of the day, I was the fastest guy out in my class and was bumped up to the next class by the organization.  The family and I are headed up to Beaverun Raceway in early September — I’m nervous to be with these new (faster) guys.

Enjoy the pics!

She’s come a long way since I got her!

There have been lots of “Poppa Projects” over the last few months but this has been the most time consuming by far. I picked up this Amish Built 12×24 garage back in Feburary or March and have been giving it a little attention every weekend since. I started off with electrical work because I’d need power to do most everything else — Dug a trench, burried conduit, pulled wire, installed the sub panel, and ran all my circuits. One thing I always hated working in home garages is the lack of power… most people are lucky if they’ve got 4 outlets in a 2 car garage and chances are they’re all on the same circuit. Maybe I went a little overboard but I’ve got 21 outlets split across 10 circuts — I even ran 2 240v outlets; one up high for heat and one low for a welder, plasma cutter… or whatever.

Since this is to be the stable for all the Clarke Family toys as well as a place to work I wanted to pay close attention to insulation. If I would have built a real garage I could have put R-19 in the walls but since it was built with 2×4s I was stuck with R-13. I tried to fill the entire wall cavity with insulation without leaving any gaps at the top or the bottom. Before I put the drywall up I even added some more over the power runs and around the outlets.

The drywall went up fairly easily but I’m no pro — I always say I’ll never do that again but unfortunately I think I will. In the end I hired a friend of a friend to come and finish it for me - I didn’t have the time (or the patience?). Since I placed the shop so close to the house (about 15′) I wanted to keep things as quiet as possible so I used 5/8″ on the walls and 1/2″ on the ceiling. I rented one of the insulation blowers from Lowes and laid a 9″ base through the ceiling… I also installed a powered attic vent to help circulate some air up there.

Since these pictures were taken I’ve installed the wall base (black rubber) along the bottom of the walls and moved my toolbox, air compressor, etc in. I’ll get some new pictures taken and post them in the next few days.

Oh, I attempted to start hanging the ceiling (as you can see from the pics) and my drywall guy said they need to run the other way and be offset.  We tore it down and fixed it before I got any farther.

Rather than email a million people the same pics I figured I’d just throw them up here temporarily.

Excuse the mess… I’m in the process of building the shop. — The bike is covered in dust!!!  EEK

Every organization out there places limits on what general users are able to do with the information systems they are using. In most cases users are not able to install software because the organization responsible for the computer has determined that allowing users to interact with the registry and system directories opens the information system up to exploitation which could lead to the compromise of the entire network. This is a very real threat and isn’t taken lightly by most IT departments but what many people don’t realize is that there is no need to “install” many of the programs that we use on a daily basis. A treasure trove of “Portable Apps” for the Windows environment can be found @ http://www.portableapps.com/apps.

Lets start by downloading and extracting the portable Firefox app. You’ll find that it works just like the standard firefox app you download from the Mozilla website and install. You can still install plugins like Adblock Plus, Fasterfox, DownloadStatusBar and many others.

The Web 2.0 movement is all about user generated & interactive content and what better way to provide interactivity with an appealing interface than Flash? I don’t think a better front end has come along yet but when I went to install the flash plugin I hit a speedbump that set me back for a few minutes. The installer wants to interact with the registry and the system directories. After a few minutes thinking about the problem and reading about similar situations online I extracted the installer I downloaded from the flash website and copied 2 files (flashplayer.xpt, & NPSWF32.dll) to the \FirefoxPortable\App\firefox\plugins directory. To make life easy for everyone I have zipped them up.

Download the file linked below and extract to \FirefoxPortable\Apps\firefox\plugins If you have firefox installed already and just can’t install the flash plugin you can download the same file and extract the files into the plugins folder in your firefox profile

Flash Plugin files for Firefox.

As I touched on in my earlier post I recently purchased the race fairings for both of them and am working hard to have them both track ready by the beginning of April. Everything is progressing nicely but isn’t going as fast as I would really like it to go. I guess that happens when you’re trying to do things on a budget! lol

Anyway I’ve heard quite a lot about the 2006-2007 R6’s catching fire on the track and finally came across a video of it happening. The problem lies in the way Yamaha designed the tank; it sticks out farther than the frame and because it’s so think it only takes a second for the asphalt to grind right through it.

Most of the race organizations have (or will) release new rules for the ‘06-07 R6 and make it mandatory that the bikes have tank sliders to keep something like this from happening. Traxxion Dynamics has released what I consider the best tank slider for the R6… one more thing that I’ve got to buy.

Traxxion Dynamics R6 Tank Sliders

So I turned in my license plates and canceled my insurance… no more street riding for me. I suppose if I had more free time I would have kept at least one streetbike but as it is now I work and spend any free time with my girls. Priorities… ya know! It’s just easier (and loads more fun) to plan a weekend at the track once a month rather than trying to come home and pry myself away from the kids. Plus it’s just so much safer at the track. That’s an odd concept for most people… how is doing 170 MPH on a racetrack safer than riding down the road in your neighborhood?! There’s not animals, children, soccer moms, ditsy blondes, old people, or teenagers with cellphones stuck in their ears to worry about. There are emergency personnel standing by and you’re wearing a few thousand dollars worth of protective equipment. For me the choice is clear.

I sold all the street fairings for the R1 and the sale funded the track plastics for both the R1 & the R6. They should hit the post tomorrow so I really hope to have them by this weekend. For now the bikes are hanging out downstairs naked…

Once the new fairings come in I’ll snap some pics and maybe put an install guide together. There’s not much out there on the subject.

I’ve never been much of an apple fan boy but since the release of OSX I’ve always had at least one Mac sitting around somewhere… the linux junkie in me can’t resist the BSD backend.

Anyway… one of our good family friends got us a Mac Mini for Christmas and I’ve spent the last 2 days configuring it for family use in the livingroom. I was rather impressed Apple’s with configuration… after booting the mini, it found my bluetooth keyboard/mouse, wireless network, and I was online in a matter of minutes. I was able to mount the samba shares from my linux server with very little effort and even found an easy way to have them automatically mount on boot. woohoo!

Apple’s Frontrow is a nice little app for watching movies, listening to music, and looking at your iphoto albums on the TV, but has several limitations; the most noticeable is the ability to only play items in your itunes library. Falling back on my linux skills, I fired up the terminal and created a symlink to the movies stored on my fileserver… and I was in business.

Brittany was very skeptical of me putting another computer (this makes 8 ) in the house but I can’t help but smile when I see her sitting on the couch browsing all our movies, dvds, and music with a single remote.

Thanks Jerry!