Just installed a 512 stick in my friends comp

[magomago]

They hae an emachines and it comes with 256 megs of ram, and they complained of stuttering so blackfriday I got them a present and got them a 512 stick which was nicely priced (hell a 256 would've worked, but 39 for 512 is too good of a deal to pass up) and popped that sucker in, and it still feels slightly laggy. mainly when i click the start bar there is still a delay. i know as she loads up on programs and hits 350-400 megs that difference will start to be seen, but I was hoping for just a tad more snappiness since she loads up windows with about 210 megs or so....

Ya think maybe its the HDD? its a 80gig but for all i know it could be of the slower variety

but the main think i was thinking of was chipset: its a KM266...

i do remember though back in the days of KT266 that it was such a bad chipset that you saw upward 20% increase from jumping up toa KT266a...so you guys think its that? I mean if a noforce2 offers ~5% preformance increase over a KT600 (though i'd prefer kt600 because its much more feature rich) you think that its the chipset slowing her pc down? The processor is 2000+ by the way

Anyways any ideas are much appreciated

 

[Thegonagle]

Spyware, and plenty of it!

 

[magomago]

haha no no no...i make them run spyware and spybot religously. that and they just got a new emachines and they got a copy of spysweeper that is good till the end of 2005 so they will be popping it on soon.

 

[Sunbird]

Is that "fade or slide menus into view" tab enabled in their performance options in system properties?

Disable that and check again.

 

[Sonic587]

Originally posted by: Sunbird
Is that "fade or slide menus into view" tab enabled in their performance options in system properties?

Disable that and check again.

I'd like to expand on this a bit for the OP:

Right click My Computer>Advanced>Performance>Settings>Visual Effects> And uncheck everything except for "Use visual styles on windows and buttons".

This removes most of the visual bloat in windows, but keeps the look of the GUI intact. Makes for a much snappier environment.

 

[magomago]

mmm...but why should it be an issue? We are talking a 2000+ with 768 megs of ram (tho they are using the S3 onboard video..but i doubt that could be the case because its just 2d...) here

my 2200+ and 512 ram (and geforce4mx420 so we aren't talking leaps and bounds better here folks) does it 1000x snappier....but i'm a nforce2

any other ideas?

 

[muppet]

is it laggy doing anything else?
if its XP with its GUI then do what previous post suggested and turn of fancy stuff

to speed up the XP start menu you can modify the registry by searching for menushowdelay
you can then reduce this number to suit
i tend to use 50, but you can experiment to suit
it basically reduces the time XP takes to bring up the Start menus

 

[magomago]

ok i'll check that out, but my XP is more "themed out" and i'm wondering why its much faster. They are just using the default blue/green (eeeewww) theme.

 

[allanon1965]

its probably due to the fact that emachines use lower end items, things most of us would not use, slower hard drives, lower end chipsets, etc.....and yes the kt266 could be most of the cause, they were buggy and weird most of the time and alot of times it was from incompatablitiy between components....i have worked on many many emachines for buddies and never seen one yet that could hold a candle to my custom builds, for cost or performance.

 

[Gurck]

Probably has a 5400rpm hard drive, that'll make a PC feel sluggish without fail.

 

[live2game]

You probably bought some cheap ram. Get some crucial viking corsair or mushkin

 

[magomago]

wow think think the difference between 7200 and 5400 even really mattered to that extent...But you think it does Gurk, or is it picking at something that unless you run synthetic benchies you won't notice unless you are looking for? Because I know people who are like "OMGGGGGG!!!1 You run your ram at 6-3-3-2!?!?!?!?! I'd die as I have to have 5-2-2-2 elseI go insane and its sooo laggy!"

so i wanna know if HDD speed in real world situations are more akin to upgrading from g2mx420 to a G3ti500 or.....just messing with your ram latencies 😛

edit:

Cheap ram? Puh lease, see example above. It was kingston value from from fries for 39.99 which is a good deal. More ram is better than faster ram, and faster ram wo't make real world differences in 90% of situations. We are talking about a person who does office work, not gaming on Doom3 😉 And when I notice lag on a computer that does office work...that is what raises my eyebrow 😉


But thanks for letting me know. I'll see what to do about it...maybe a mATX KT600 this valentines day or something (it looks to be non propietory..i think 😛)

Btw, does anything know the difference between KM266 and KT266? I'm not sure what KM is, although I've ehard it a few times.

 

[live2game]

I am not saying that faster ram is better Kingston value sucks butt when it come to stablity and speed and in most computer i have tried it plain just dosen't work.