Again! Many thanks. I have deselected as many items as possible in the BIOS and selected 'disable multicore technology' so presumably it is now running on just 1 core. I also presume this will have the same effect as disabling core2 with the Isolcpus Parameter and that it will no longer be necessary to use that parameter?
The new stress test reading is 65738 a reduction of around 20000ns. The next stage is to install the Wheezy iso you advised. Just need to find out how I can have both Wheezy and Bookworm available in the GRUB start menu so I can select either OS.
Since Rodw's post I have done a lot of reading - I had not expected the learning curve to be so steep! But very interesting nevertheless, and if I am to get to grips with Linux and stop wasting your time, I will need to overcome my 'Windows induced fear' of changing system files and do much more reading.
If I may, I will report back once I have tried it with Wheezy. If this also makes a difference I will buy the new graphics card and maybe I will get the figure down to something useable. Finger Crossed!
I suspect that the future is hardware based stepping and so I will probably go down the Mesa card route in due course. Bu first, now I have started with this I will do my best to make this computer suitable for software pulse generation - it will be a useful learning tool
thank you again
Mitch
