System Slowdown with AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+

[Guest]

Hi all,
I have just upgraded my PC from an Athlon 64 3800+, Radeon 9600 128mb AGPx8
and an ASUS K8V-SE Deluxe Mb and 1.5gb of DDR 400 Memory

to; AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, Radeon X1550 256-DDR2 PCI-E and an ASUS M2N4-SLI
Mb with 1gb DDR2 Memory.

But as I was expecting a moderate speeding up I was dismayed to find that
the PC was actually running at a slower speed that with my previous setup.

Can anybody let me know what has happened and if there is any solution to it?

I would be very grateful if somebody can come back to me with an answer

Regards
Gerryw

 

[Paul]

Hi all,
I have just upgraded my PC from an Athlon 64 3800+, Radeon 9600 128mb AGPx8
and an ASUS K8V-SE Deluxe Mb and 1.5gb of DDR 400 Memory

to; AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, Radeon X1550 256-DDR2 PCI-E and an ASUS M2N4-SLI
Mb with 1gb DDR2 Memory.

But as I was expecting a moderate speeding up I was dismayed to find that
the PC was actually running at a slower speed that with my previous setup.

Can anybody let me know what has happened and if there is any solution to it?

I would be very grateful if somebody can come back to me with an answer

Regards
Gerryw

Well, what aspect of its operation is slower ? Are you talking about
running some benchmark ? Are you talking about latency from a
mouse click, until the computer responds ? Were you using
CPUZ, and saw a wrong core clock frequency ?

Paul

 

[Guest]

Hi Paul, Thanks for replying.

I am describing a general slowdown of the whole system, from bootup to close
down. OFFICE applications take ages to load up, connecting to the internet,
opening Windows Explorer, the list goes on.

My previous setup seemed so much faster than this setup. Could it be that i
am using Win XP Pro 32bit and should be using the 64bit version or is it the
fact that the dual core CPU is not utilising its full potential on my system?

Regards
Gerryw

 

[DL]

I assume following the upgrade you installed drivers from manu sites and not
winxp default drivers

Dual Core will make very little if any at all, difference to Office apps
Office apps are both 32 bit and 2D so the graphics also wont show much
change

When you use Crt+Alt+Del in task manager>Performance Tab do you see 2 CPU
usage windows?

 

[Guest]

Hi,
Thanks DL for replying
I will make sure that all the drivers for the system are from the relevant
manu's as I think there may be some I've missed.

Also I do see 2 CPUs in the Task manager's usage window so thats OK.

I have a feeling that some of my problems are some that some programs maybe
running in the background such as Antivirus, spyware etc, but I cannot see
any 'action' when I use Task manager to view what progs are running and also
checking the 'Processes' CPU and MEM usage which is normal?

I have noticed that the HD led is active for long periods and I would guess
that this is a factor causing the slowdown of my system?

Do you have any idea what could be running 'invisibly' in the background on
my PC?

Regards
Gerryw

 

[DL]

msconfig.exe will show what is in the startup & what services are running, I
believe its in Accessories>System Tools.
Personally speaking I run F-Secure IS 2006, I dont run any background
spyware apps, but manually scan my pc about every month with SpyBot &
Adaware and rarely find anything contentious, I'm also behind a NAT router.
Both McAfee & Symantec have been known to be resource hogs

 

[Guest]

I use process explorer myself to find out how my CPU resources are used.. you
can get it here

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/ProcessExplorer.mspx

I has a 'System Information' Window that allows you to hover the mouse over
(CPU, IO, Memory) that will tell you which process is using the resource.
Not a debugging tool in itself, but very usefull in finding out what might be
hogging your CPU cycles or HD Io.

Good luck

P.S. ProcessExplorer has *tons* of other features as well... I actually
replaced my Task manager with this utility (it has an option under Options
menu to do so).