2-year old laptop CPU, not fast enough for Skype?

[VirtualLarry]

You all know about my Foxconn NanoPCs, and how I could no longer Skype and browse at the same time on their 1.0Ghz C-70 APUs, right?

Well Skype claims another victim.

My Acer V5-131 laptop, with a 1.5Ghz IB Celeron 1007U, is now also not good enough for Skype and browsing. My CPU usage is topping 95% while on Skype, and I'm sounding robotic to the other end of the call.

Is there no end to the CPU cycle voraciousness of Skype?

This laptop is barely two years old. I paid around $350, with Win7 64-bit. It is by far my favorite laptop.

I'm sure some of you "PC Master Race'rs" are saying right now, "What do you expect, should have bought a laptop with an i7, huur huur".

But realistically, this was not that slow a laptop when I purchased it. I think Skype took up 40-50% CPU on it initially. Actually, that was true up until like a few weeks ago.

Edit: I can Skype ok on my Winbook tablet though.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=1847&cmp[]=2326

 

[jhu]

What do you expect, should have bought a laptop with an i7.

 

[jhu]

But really, the increased CPU usage is for the NSA.

 

[VirtualLarry]

But really, the increased CPU usage is for the NSA.

Funny you should say that... hmm.

 

[XavierMace]

But realistically, this was not that slow a laptop when I purchased it. I think Skype took up 40-50% CPU on it initially. Actually, that was true up until like a few weeks ago.

Realistically, yes it was. It just took you this long to realize it. How many threads do you need of people telling you the same thing before you either figure out they are right or just stop asking? System requirements for software continually goes up. You keep buying computers that are old and/or under powered, then act surprised when they stop performing like you want. I can't say I recall what the market was like 2 years ago, but I know $350 right will get you a laptop with an i3 or i5.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Have you tried going back to an older version of Skype?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Realistically, yes it was. It just took you this long to realize it. How many threads do you need of people telling you the same thing before you either figure out they are right or just stop asking? System requirements for software continually goes up. You keep buying computers that are old and/or under powered, then act surprised when they stop performing like you want. I can't say I recall what the market was like 2 years ago, but I know $350 right will get you a laptop with an i3 or i5.

Look at my cpubenchmark.net link edited into my OP. My tablet, which has far less of a passmark score, still Skypes just fine.

And two years ago, $500 would get you an i3, new.

And like I mentioned, Skype was fine two weeks ago.

Edit: I just tried Skyping the same person again, with my Winbook TW700 tablet. It has a quad-core Atom Z3735F (G?), 1.33Ghz. It's using 33% for Skype, 40% total CPU usage (with Firefox and Task Manager running), on Win8.1.

On my 1007U 1.5Ghz IB dual-core laptop, Skype is taking 70% (half of that is "kernel time"), and overall CPU usage is 95-100%. Win7 64-bit HP SP1 + updates.

Edit: It should be mentioned, that on the tablet, the video is not entirely smooth. It pauses for a split-second, fairly often. Unsure if that's because of my wifi or not.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Skype is crap anyway. It lags on my i5.

 

[ninaholic37]

Skype is crap anyway. It lags on my i5.

They should resurrect MSN Messenger! It still had a small 96x96 video thingy (I think).

 

[AnandThenMan]

The latest version was pushed onto my system via auto update. Update failed and crippled the program would not start anymore. Took deleting files and reg entries to get it working again.

Way to go Microsoft you took a perfectly working program and ruined it. D:

 

[beginner99]

Maybe uninstall spyware, viruses and other malware...

 

[richierich1212]

Maybe uninstall spyware, viruses and other malware...

This.

 

[escrow4]

Laptops and tablets and phones are frisbees. They are obsolete when you buy them and age even quicker as time marches on. What was barely acceptable 2yrs ago is fit for the bin now. Actually I have a Lumia 635 and mobile IE crashes on comment heavy websites. I'd bet $100 now that in 2yrs the same thing will happen to a Note 4. Stupid mobile tech.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Maybe uninstall spyware, viruses and other malware...

I run a very tight ship, I don't have any malware on there, unless it was specifically planted there.

Edit: I take that back. That laptop did ship with Lo-Jack malware on there, from the factory, which installed some spyware into my Windows 7 64-bit during installation. (Pretty damn clever BIOS-based malware, that can piggy-back on OS installs to implant malware.) But I was pretty certain I had take care of that before.

 

[tcsenter]

You should have bought a laptop with a Core i3, or at least a higher clocked Pentium dual core.

 

[AnandThenMan]

I sometimes run Skype on an Athlon 64 X2 and it works fine, granted I'm running an old version of the software. But heck the CPU is going on 10 years old I can't see your CPU not being able to handle Skype. If the new version is no good just run an older one don't see the problem here.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I sometimes run Skype on an Athlon 64 X2 and it works fine, granted I'm running an old version of the software. But heck the CPU is going on 10 years old I can't see your CPU not being able to handle Skype. If the new version is no good just run an older one don't see the problem here.

I haven't updated to the one with the newest UI yet on that laptop. Anyways, after a while, Skype won't let you login to the network with an outdated version. As of now, 5.x versions won't even let you connect.

Edit: And no, it didn't auto-update on me and start using more CPU. In fact, I can't auto-update, because I'm using Windows 7's parental controls, with an .exe whitelist.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Anyways, after a while, Skype won't let you login to the network with an outdated version. As of now, 5.x versions won't even let you connect.

That sucks. I've tried to find a good alternative to Skype but came up empty.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You should have bought a laptop with a Core i3, or at least a higher clocked Pentium dual core.

A "U" i3 CPU in that era laptop would have cost me $500 or so, and it didn't have much higher clock speeds. The only real benefit of an i3 would have been HyperThreading, and in IB, it didn't have nearly as much impact as with Haswell.

Granted, these days, you can get an i3 "U" Haswell laptop, for $300-350 if you watch for sales.

I'll consider it, but I suspect I may have been initially wrong, I may have a software problem, since my tablet with a passmark under 1000, runs Skype just fine with 33% CPU usage. My 1007U has a passmark of nearly 1500, and it takes 70% CPU time. Something doesn't add up there.

 

[deanx0r]

My 2010 MacBook Air runs Skype/Facetime fine. It is a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo. Same with the iPad 2 which came out around the same time I think.

I used to buy cheap computer/laptop in the past until I got tired of the poor experience with them. You usually get what you pay for. If you don't game, just buy a Mac.

 

[Puppies04]

Just a thought but have you tried setting skype to a higher priority in task manager. My thought being that is isn't skype what is causing most of the problem but the fact you have the OS or other programs that aren't as suscept suscetible to waiting.

Perhaps if you find out what is causing the problem you could also try setting core affinity to see if that helps.

Also have you ruled out lack of RAM as an issue, last thing you want is skype using a slow HDD as a page file.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Well my 3 year old alienware i7 laptop doesn't have any trouble with programs and it only rates a 7.2 on the wei. The op went cheap when he bought his pc and this is what happens. Next time don't skimp on your pc and it will serve you longer. Asus has some killer laptops these days that are much cheaper than their alienware counterparts.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well my 3 year old alienware i7 laptop doesn't have any trouble with programs and it only rates a 7.2 on the wei. The op went cheap when he bought his pc and this is what happens. Next time don't skimp on your pc and it will serve you longer. Asus has some killer laptops these days that are much cheaper than their alienware counterparts.

So... what you're saying is... I need an AlienWare... for Skype?

 

[scannall]

One of my laptops has an AMD A8-4500m. Skypes just fine. 1.9GHz quad core.

 

[Puffnstuff]

No VL I'm not saying that you need an alienware. I'm saying that you need to pay attention to the specs so you get something that has enough processing power for whatever applications you might want to run on it now and in the future. Next time I buy a laptop I will take a look at whatever is available with the capabilities I need. I'll be the first to admit that my alienware was overpriced but it does do what I was looking for at the time of purchase. I try to future proof my purchases so that means spending a little more now so I don't have to come back and spend again in the near future. With that said you can get a reasonable i7 laptop these days for around $800. You can't even think about a price like that with my alienware M17xR3 which is billed as a desktop replacement laptop. This is also why it scores 7.2 on the wei which most peoples desktops can't even get close to. My desktop scores 7.8 with my core i7 4790k being the slowest component in the mix.