Poor performance by a powerful PC

I have a system with the following specs that is performing quite poorly.
CPU: 3.4GHZ / Cache 4MBS
RAM: 1GB
VGA: 7600 GS 256mbs

I have various other PCs with a similar setup and they all seem to be functioning fine so I'm not sure what the problem is. I've run various tests & benchmarks in an attempt to narrow down the problem but I seem to be at a loss. I'm pretty sure the system is spyware/malware free and the number of applications installed is minimal since this is primarily a gaming PC.

Yet the system feels sluggish and gets low scores at various benchmarks, when I tried to play mohaa I was scoring under 30 FPS with low graphics confused !!! I tried updating the video drivers but had little or no improvement. The PC seems to have long loading times in games and other applications which suggests that there are other processes using up the system resources, but all processes in the task manager seem to be legit. However I did notice that the Commit Charge in the task manager keeps rising all the time, even when the PC is in "idle" status. I've checked over most of the demanding processes in the task manager and they all turned out to be related to legit programs like Symantic or .NET framework or such.

Any idea what I should try next ? Like I said I'm pretty sure the system is spyware/malware clean so I doubt there are any malicious processes running.

 

If it were me, I would run a hard drive and memory test!

 

By a harddrive test do you mean check for bad sectors or benchmarking of the HDD itself ?

Also I've already ran a memory test and no errors were found. I forgot to mention that I'm using Windows Xp Pro x64 SP 1 and that the normal commit charge after booting is around 500MBs which seems excessively with minimal applications running.

 

Sorry to take so long in replying! Yes, I meant a HDD benchmark and check for bad sectors. As you said "similar", but not identical, there could be a lot of things involved, different chipsets and motherboards, etc. Since this is a gaming rig, you might also check for root kits. If in doubt about whether this computer is malware free, please check this link - http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407, and follow the instructions thoroughly.

 

Which applications do you recommend I use ? The entire system is fairly new and I haven't had any reason to believe there is bad sectors.

One of the PCs I built is an exact copy of the this one and is not suffering from the same issue, however that PC seems to have a faulty motherboard as memory tests revealed many errors despite changing the RAM sticks several times. So I'm not sure if the motherboard of the underperforming PC is faulty too since they're both the same type or if this is all just a software problem.

 

I found no evidence of rootkits or malware/spyware, I've checked the system several times so I'm pretty sure its clean.

I tried using HD Tune for benchmarking & testing and I attached the results. I found that transfer rates & access times seem to be normal, however the burst rate was around 50-70'ish which seems somewhat slow for a sata drive. It seems I should be getting double these numbers according to benchmarks of similar drives on HD Tune's website. I couldn't find the exact drive though.

So now what ? No errors were found except the low burst rate and the somewhat higher CPU Usage.

 

Everything looks fine except the burst rate and cpu utilization as you noted. Transfer rates were pretty much in the ball park, and this is what matters in video and gaming.

As you mentioned Symantec, which products of theirs do you have on your system? Their products work ok but are known to be resource hogs! As a test you might delete the Symantec products ( provided you have the installation disk to reinstall with ) and try one of the free antivirus apps listed in here, http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads29.html. AVG and Avast seem to be the members favorites - to see if it makes a difference in cpu utilization.

Hope this helps!

 

I'm using Symantec Antivirus on this and several other PCs so I doubt its the cause, but I'll give it a shot anyways as I have run out of things to try.

 

Have you checked for the latest drivers for your components? I went back and reread all your posts. Might consider SP2 for XP 64 bit.

 

No difference with uninstalling symantec, and I did consider SP2 but it requires over 1.5 gigs free to install and I didn't have that much so I didn't bother. I had it installed on other PCs and didn't notice much of a difference anyways.

As for other drivers, I got all the latest drivers when the system was setup several months ago, The only driver I updated since was nvidia's.

I'm about to try formatting and installing a fresh windows installation, I'll grab the latest drivers then and see if it makes any difference. I'll probably install SP2 as well since the disk will be clean

 

Something it could be, check this setting. http://www.pcdoctor-guide.com/wordpress/?p=3156


Steve

 

I usually set virtual memory to double the RAM, hence 2 gigs. What exactly would system managed change anyways ?

 

OK. Just to make sure the No paging file is not selected.

Steve

 

well what a coincidence, the motherboard of this PC has just suddenly died. I'm not sure why but it now refuses to boot up, so I'll look into exchanging it. I would probably bet that a new motherboard will make this problem disappear.