Shouldn't my computer be faster?

I built my first computr a few years ago. I used a Chaintech motherboard with an AMD 3500 processor. I installed 2 GB of PC 3200 400 Mhz ram. I wanted to upgrade the other day so I put a MSI motherboard and a Phenom9500 with 4 GB of 800Mhz ram. I installed everything and all the drivers and updates. Now my computer is slower than it was. I have a 200 Gig sata harddrive and a GeForce 6600 video card. I am using Windows XP pro. It is slower on the internet and burning a dvd and just about everything. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thank.

 

PSU ? Sounds like the same PC with an upgraded processor, upgraded RAM, and a new motherboard. You could try cutting back to 2GB of RAM and see if there is a difference, or upgrade to a 64 bit operating system. I've never tried over 2 GB of RAM on an XP installation, and that is on a duo core, the Phenom is quad core. Sounds like your hardware is getting way ahead of your software....

 

Have you ran virus or spyware scans to see if that might be slowing you down?

 

Yeah a good hard drive sweep is great for speeding up a PC, try downloading CCleaner & Smart Defrag along with Spybot Search & Destroy if you don't already have it :-D

You can find the first two here: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=106650

After all those have run on your hard drive you should be fine & maybe get rid of any un-necasary files & programs, FYI with Smart defrag I suggest a "Deep Optimise" it takes a while but it's worth it. After that the only conclusion is that the quad core Phenom is crap much like my 9750, they really are nothing incomparison with the K8 dual cores :confused

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

You didn't mention if you performed a clean install of Windows or not. Did you keep the previous install that was running with the old hardware? and you just did a repair installation? If so, repair installs with totally different hardware commonly run much slower than the original system. If you haven't done a clean install, I strongly recommend that back up anything you don't want to lose, and format the hard drive and reload your Windows clean. If you did the clean install, then I would recommend that you run a full diagnostic on all your hardware: the RAM, the hard drive, etc.

 

It should be a bit faster, but computers rarely do what they should be doing. In my back-up PC the hard drive is the bottleneck in speed... it is disgustingly slow when it comes to access data. No amount of beastly over-clocking can change the rpm...

 

Ahhhh... yes... too true. The hard drive is the only actual mechanical part, and we are slaves to the RPM.... unless you go with a solid state drive :-D From power-on to desktop in under 2 seconds!

 

Thanks for all the replies. I have ccleaner installed and also spybot s&d. I did not do a clean install of Windows because I didn't want to lose everything. I think I read somewhere that a 32 bit OS would us about 3.5 GB of memory. Do you think I should get a 64 bit OS or try a clean install of Windows XP Pro? I will try the disc defrag also. Thanks.

 

The architecture of 32bit operating systems limits the addressable amount of memory to approx 3.5gb. If you do perform a clean install (which is strongly recommended, and not doing one before is the reason the PC is slow) then I recommend that you do use a 64bit operating system, but that choice is entirely up to you. Many programs have different versions for 32bit and 64bit, so check your software before committing to an OS to determine if it will be compatible with the OS of your choice.
Good luck! :-D

[dlb]

 

*kicks dlb* now you've got me looking at ssd's!!

if it were me, i'd back up all your data (pics, music, bookmarks, etc), then do a clean install (as mentioned) of xp pro (as you already have it). then, if your not satisfied, you might consider 64 bit?? - g/l, sos

 

The cache is the reason some drives are faster 10,000 RPM drives are nothing without a good size cache, some of the fastest drives i've seen have 10K RPM 32MB Cache and are tiny space wise. And for the ultimate speed bost get 2 and RAID them together, that does come with risks though but anything that increases performance nowadays it seems comes with risks, RAID, Overclocking the list goes on :-D

I have a Samsung 320GB SATAII 7200RPM with 32MB Cache and it is very fast, a huge jump from my old Seagate 160GB IDE 7200RPM with 2MB Cache it's just in a differant legue. Startup has alot to do with all of the hardware put together but on a similar system to mine I saw my old HDD take 3-5mins from power to internet use, where as my newest HDD does the same in about 1min max.

And my Samsung drive was only £50 a year ago, top bargain :clap

But I must confess I know nothing about solid state drives, i've heard of them but not had any experiance of them.

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

I just ordered a 750 Gig hard drive with 7200 rpm and 32 MB cache. My old one was 8 MB cache. I think I will wait until I get it and install it with the XP Pro that I have and try that. I have read that some 64 bit drivers are hard to find. Can I install the new drive and get everything going and then put in the old hard drive and transfer all my pictures and music to the new one? What's the best way to do this?

 

Yes, this can be true. It really depends on the manufacturer. Most (if not all) are offering 64bit Vista drivers, and many are also hosting 64bit XP drivers, but these may be a bit more difficult to find.

Yes.

Install the new drive in the PC without the old one being hooked up; this avoids any possible confusion. Install Windows, drivers, software, etc. Power down, unplug the power cord from the PC, and hook up the old drive. When Windows loads up, give it a minute to recognize the old drive. When you open "My Computer" you'll see that it has been assigned a new drive letter, probably E: or F: depending on the number of CD/DVD drives in your PC; if you have a built-in media reader, the old drive may get a higher drive letter like J: or K:. It really doesn't matter. Then just start browsing through the old drive and drag-n-drop or copy-n-paste your data from the old drive to the desired location on the new drive. You might want to create a folder on the hard drive first, maybe create one named "Music" and one named "Pictures" and so on. Then simply put the appropriate files in their folders. Moving large quantities of data this way can be tedious, so I usually use a great little free program called Unstoppable Copier. It's easy to use, copies faster than Windows Explorer does (or it just seems faster), and will not abort the copy process if any type of error pops up, which really is great. If you've ever tried copying 45gb of data across 2 drives using Windows Explorer, and two-thirds of the way through you get a corrupt file and the whole copy process stops, and you are forced to start over because you're not sure of what copied and what didn't unless you manually dig through the copied folders, then you'll realize what a great little app "UnstopCop" really is. Good luck!

:-D

 

32MB cache very good like my Samsung drive

Is it SATA2? They are faster still, 3GB transfer rate. I cannot remember the IDE tranfer rate but i'm sure it's like 100MB :-D

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

No it is not SATA2. Would have liked to try a solid state hard drive but was a little too expensive still. I hope that with a new install of XP it will be fast enough for me.

 

You can only go so far with IDE, if you have SATA2 ports they are the next step if you want a fast computer. But 8MB - 32MB cache will count for something

:major2-Bit-Geek:major

 

The old and new hard drives are both SATA. I don't know about the SATA2. Thanks.

 

The differance is SATA transferrs data @ 1.5GB and SATA2 is 3GB faster still :-D

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