Need to speed up wife's computer

[Hubb1e]

Just 6 months ago I installed windows 7 x64 from a x32 key. This is because Microcenter gave me the wrong disk. This was from a system builder key that had never been used. But, I have also been able to install windows 7 x64 from a OEM x32 bit key as well. I did this because I had an HP laptop that needed more RAM and 32 bit was holding me back. I have also been able to swap motherboards and re-activate a system builder win 7 x64 installation without even having to call microsoft. It just activated. I'm 99% sure whatever you want to do with your system builder license, you'll be able to do and if you're just replacing the motherboard, then I'll bet they don't even have you call the activation #. You'll just need to get a x64 disk and use the x32 key.

Here's my advice:
4GB sticks of DDR2 ram is expensive so you'll need to get a new motherboard. But, AM3+ is a perfectly acceptable platform to build on today. Not only will your current CPU be fast enough for her today, but in 5 years when she needs an upgrade you'll be able to drop in a steamroller CPU into that socket.

760G is a basic GPU that lacks video acceleration. With your X4 CPU, that isn't that big of a deal since the CPU is fast enough to render the video. The MSI board linked above is a solid choice and gets you video acceleration, but I think you will want to get a board with 4 memory slots especially considering your wife's usage patterns. This gigabyte is well rated on Newegg, is on sale, and has 4 slots. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128565

If you have enough RAM and windows x64 an SSD is not required but would be very nice.

Just getting an SSD wouldn't fix the problem which is the lack of ram.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

760G is a basic GPU that lacks video acceleration. With your X4 CPU, that isn't that big of a deal since the CPU is fast enough to render the video. The MSI board linked above is a solid choice and gets you video acceleration, but I think you will want to get a board with 4 memory slots especially considering your wife's usage patterns. This gigabyte is well rated on Newegg, is on sale, and has 4 slots. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128565

That Gigabyte board is still based on the 760G with the same outdated GPU. The MSI doesn't even HAVE an IGP as its 970 based, which means you have to add the cost of a cheap GFX card...

This is the board the OP should be looking at if he decides on changing the MB. Its 880G based, fully AM3+ compatible and can even run Vishera's (AMD FX-series) up to 95W:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130652

 

[Hubb1e]

The board you linked is the same one in the previous post. I said that was fine. It gets you video acceleration for youtube video, but it lacks 4 ram slots. And frankly, given the use case, I felt it was better to have 4 ram slots then accelerated video. I've found that 4 ram slots are extremely useful as the computer ages. You can often part out old computers and find enough ram to make a usable upgrade if you have 4 ram slots. And since this person is a RAM hog, it's an even better idea. Not only that, but being an AM3+ board there will be even one more generation of CPUs available for it, so this board may have a very long life with the OP. Plus, my board has USB3 which is a nice bonus.

The 760G graphics are the same as the 780G graphics and 880G graphics. The difference is that 760G has the video decode block disabled and lower clocks. It's still based on the same GPU which is the AMD 3450. For basic office use the 760G is perfectly adequate and while it's nice to have hardware video acceleration, it's not required when the CPU is fast.

Ideally you'd find a 880G board with 4 ram slots, but in my quick search I didn't find any that were reasonably priced. At some point you could just add a $20 5450 or even turn to eBay for a used $10 video card to get better GPU performance and that would be cheaper than finding a board with 880G and 4 ram slots.

 

[mfenn]

You could just try this instead.....
http://unclutterer.com/2010/11/03/u...to-limit-the-number-of-open-windows-and-tabs/

She might not find it amusing, but it would speed things up.

I am flabbergasted that (a) such a thing exists and (b) some people actually need it. Is it really that difficult to click the little X's? Are people not annoyed by having to click on really tiny little things when they want to switch tabs? Should we all just go back to tabless browsers like IE6?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

The board you linked is the same one in the previous post. I said that was fine. It gets you video acceleration for youtube video, but it lacks 4 ram slots. And frankly, given the use case, I felt it was better to have 4 ram slots then accelerated video. I've found that 4 ram slots are extremely useful as the computer ages. You can often part out old computers and find enough ram to make a usable upgrade if you have 4 ram slots. And since this person is a RAM hog, it's an even better idea. Not only that, but being an AM3+ board there will be even one more generation of CPUs available for it, so this board may have a very long life with the OP. Plus, my board has USB3 which is a nice bonus.

It is indeed, my mistake. Model numbering can be confusing sometimes. Also good point about the RAM slots, I agree with you that in this case more is properly better. Its always nice to have the option to upgrade to 16GB. I would not worry too much about USB3, as you can always add a cheap PCIe card if required.

The 760G graphics are the same as the 780G graphics and 880G graphics. The difference is that 760G has the video decode block disabled and lower clocks. It's still based on the same GPU which is the AMD 3450. For basic office use the 760G is perfectly adequate and while it's nice to have hardware video acceleration, it's not required when the CPU is fast.

No it isn't. The 760G/780V/780G/790GX (3xxx) uses the RV610. The 785G/880G/890GX (4xxx) uses the RV620 which has the UVD2 engine.

Ideally you'd find a 880G board with 4 ram slots, but in my quick search I didn't find any that were reasonably priced. At some point you could just add a $20 5450 or even turn to eBay for a used $10 video card to get better GPU performance and that would be cheaper than finding a board with 880G and 4 ram slots.

Yep, that sounds like a better idea.

 

[TheStu]

I am flabbergasted that (a) such a thing exists and (b) some people actually need it. Is it really that difficult to click the little X's? Are people not annoyed by having to click on really tiny little things when they want to switch tabs? Should we all just go back to tabless browsers like IE6?

I tend to leave tabs and windows open at home, either because i'm not done, or because (to be honest), I never got good at 'bookmarking', and then coming back to stuff.

 

[Replacement]

I spoke to her brother and told him the issues that she is having. I mentioned changing to w7 64bit to be able to add more RAM. He was saying that the RAM is not going to help because w7 only uses 4gb to begin with. This seems to contradict my research from the helpful people here and on other forums...

He said just adding a SSD would do it, but I feel like he may not know as much as he think he does about computer builds.

I can get access to w7 64bit via usb (from someone who has it already on a usb flash drive).

It is looking like I should be upgrading to a mobo that will use the current cpu (How good is the one I have?), more RAM and put the OS on a SSD.
Are there other components that I should be looking at as well? Is a Video card seperate from the mobo?

She uses this computer for work and personal, so whatever I do it can't be down for longer than a day and I would like it to be able to handle everyday usage without bogging down or having to upgrade in 2 yrs.

 

[Termie]

I spoke to her brother and told him the issues that she is having. I mentioned changing to w7 64bit to be able to add more RAM. He was saying that the RAM is not going to help because w7 only uses 4gb to begin with. This seems to contradict my research from the helpful people here and on other forums...

He said just adding a SSD would do it, but I feel like he may not know as much as he think he does about computer builds.

I can get access to w7 64bit via usb (from someone who has it already on a usb flash drive).

It is looking like I should be upgrading to a mobo that will use the current cpu (How good is the one I have?), more RAM and put the OS on a SSD.
Are there other components that I should be looking at as well? Is a Video card seperate from the mobo?

She uses this computer for work and personal, so whatever I do it can't be down for longer than a day and I would like it to be able to handle everyday usage without bogging down or having to upgrade in 2 yrs.

I realize that there's been a bewildering amount of advice provided to you in this thread. Welcome to the General Hardware forums!

Here's how I would personally recommend you proceed:

(1) Buy an SSD. Use the copy of W7 64-bit you already have along with your 32-bit key and reinstall the system. You really should not attempt to clone the hard drive - it can cause performance problems for the SSD, and it's probably too large to clone to a small SSD anyway.

(2) If the SSD resolves the performance issues to your wife's satisfaction, you are done.

(3) If the issue is not resolved, then you need to make an additional investment. You need a new motherboard and 8GB of new RAM. Many new AMD motherboards, however, do not come with on-board video, so you'll want to review the advice above carefully on which to purchase. The common wisdom appears to be that the 760G is not really an adequate long-term solution for watching videos, and you should go with an 880G. Unfortunately, these boards only have 2 DDR3 slots, but at least 4GB sticks of DDR3 is currently reasonably priced. Here are your two options: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...=1&srchInDesc=

(4) Because you will have already installed a 64-bit OS, you won't need to reformat the drive again if and when you make the second upgrade. You will, however, need to reactivate Windows 7, which may be as easy as clicking a button on screen, or may require a phone call. Either way, it should not be a problem.

Your CPU is definitely adequate for your wife's needs. It is not the issue. I also wouldn't recommend going the route of a motherboard without built-in video. Yes, you can buy a separate video card, but then your upgrade costs simply wouldn't make sense for your system, and she's not having video issues anyway.

 

[BrightCandle]

Can I take a different tac?

You have a particular performance problem so the first question is what is making it slow. You can answer that question by opening up start menu and typing in resmon or going to task manager and then performance tab and opening the resource manager. This will show you CPU utilisation, memory usage, hard disk usage and paging. As long as your aware the CPU has multiple cores and that a CPU graph showing 50% utilisation constantly means the program is CPU limited but limited because it only uses some of the cores you'll be fine at diagnosing the underlying problem by looking at the graphs that are showing a lot of activity.

Use task manager to see how much RAM is used when its in this poor performance state, does it exceed the physical RAM value? is the CPU spiking around is the hard drive going nuts on IO and what program is doing it? All of these questions can be answered in task manager and resource manager with a bit of investigation.

With such information in hand you will be able to come back and say "OK when my wife has a million tabs open in chrome and is reading 6 bazillion emails at once like an alien on crack her CPU is pegged at 50% when she presses send for like 10 seconds and switching or opening new ones results in a 500KB/s of disk access showing 100% utilisation and its about 4GB over the 4GB RAM limit." From that I assure you we can give you very targeted advice we can guarantee can make a big difference in the performance of that machine.

But at the moment I'll be honest it could be literally anything, it could be a software problem. I just don't know, I don't have enough information about the nature of the performance problem anything I said would be at best an educated guess which would likely be wrong. That is how I would approach this to begin with and I hope that helps.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I spoke to her brother and told him the issues that she is having. I mentioned changing to w7 64bit to be able to add more RAM. He was saying that the RAM is not going to help because w7 only uses 4gb to begin with. This seems to contradict my research from the helpful people here and on other forums...

He's right... so long as we're talking 32bit (x86) windows. Windows on x86 has a hard 4GB limit. Which in practice means 3GB, as the last 1GB is used for various hardware addressing. 64bit (x64) bit windows 7 has a limit of 16GB for the Home Premium edition and 192GB for the Pro edition.

He said just adding a SSD would do it, but I feel like he may not know as much as he think he does about computer builds.

I can get access to w7 64bit via usb (from someone who has it already on a usb flash drive).

It is looking like I should be upgrading to a mobo that will use the current cpu (How good is the one I have?), more RAM and put the OS on a SSD.
Are there other components that I should be looking at as well? Is a Video card seperate from the mobo?

As for a graphics card it can be both. All modern (Core ix, AMD A-xx) has an integrated GPU directly on the CPU die (chip). The EXCEPTION to this is the AMD FX-series, which due to backward compatibility with the AM3 socket requires the chipset to provide a GPU. Unfortunately AMD has stopped developing chipsets for AM3(+) with an integrated GPU, as that market niche has been filled by their socket FM2 and socket AM3+ has been relegated to the desktop performance segment that use a separate graphics card anyway.

She uses this computer for work and personal, so whatever I do it can't be down for longer than a day and I would like it to be able to handle everyday usage without bogging down or having to upgrade in 2 yrs.

Try with the SSD first. If that does not satisfy your performance requirement, we can discuss the best course of action.

Edit; Termie beat me to it. I agree with his post...

 

[Stone Rain]

Upgrade to an SSD, and if you don't think it's fast enough then, do what was suggested above and keep the shell of the machine but replace the insides with some more powerful hardware, such as an i5 to start with.

 

[sm625]

I have 8 GB of RAM and even with a game of LoL running, multiple youtube tabs, a flash heavy game, and many other tabs open in two browsers, Bandicam running, and many other programs running, RAM usage has never gone over 3GB. I jsut dont get why anyone would think that you need more RAM than that for a casual user. Even if you got 50 tabs open, if you never bring those tabs into focus they will not consume any RAM. Once they get swapped out to the pagefile, you wont get any lag from them as long as you never bring them back into focus. I would NOT scrap a motherboard or OS just so you can have a few extra GB of RAM that will barely ever get used. It would be much better just to have a SSD, which will make swapfile operations take milliseconds. That way there will only be a half second delay to reload a browser tab even if its been swapped out. It is no big deal.

 

[Hubb1e]

Look guys, the problem she's running into is because her brother didnt' build her a computer that was very forward looking. He bought the x32 version of windows when the 64 bit version was available and this limits her to 3GB of usable RAM. No matter what you guys say about the page file, 32bit windows limited to 3GB of usable space is not going to be enough for a multitasker in 2 years, or 5 years. She's also got a motherboard with only 2 RAM slots and no good way to upgrade RAM. Sure, installing windows 7 x64 would allow her to use all 4GB she's already installed, and that might help, but it's still not very forward looking because you just spent all that time upgrading to windows 7x64 and netted no real gain in future proofing the system. In a year or 2 he'll have to do it all over again, and swapping motherboards often requires another clean OS install.

Putting in an SSD will help with the problem but it won't be a long term fix for a lack of RAM. Look, the pagefile is a swap space on the harddrive that the operating system uses to store things it thinks it might need. When you run out of ram, or you've got 100 tabs open, it swaps that information to the pagefile. If you put the pagefile on on SSD then that pagefile will work much much faster (an order of magnitude faster) but it's still much slower than real RAM. If the OS has extra space in RAM that it isn't using, then it uses that extra space to put things it thinks it might need, so even if your OS says you're using 3GB of RAM and you've got 16GB available, there's probably 8GB of stuff in that RAM that the OS thinks it might need and that speeds up the system. An SSD is not a substitute for having RAM in the system. Sure it can help, but it's not a cure all. And advising him to take a not very future proof step now, will only cost him time later on.

I just did a rebuild for my wife and it was really hard. The hardest part is keeping your wife happy as you move her files off the old computer, and installing all her old programs and getting them to work and setting it up as she wants it. Doing that as rarely as possible is the way to go. So, you should take this opportunity to build her system correctly this time, and look to the future when you do. This is why I gave the advice that I did.

Her CPU is adequate today. It's still sold today and is quad core and fairly highly clocked.
Her motherboard is out of date. You should upgrade this today and motherboard swaps are the hardest things to do so do it now while you've got her machine down. Don't wait, a motherboard is $60 and let me tell you that will be well spent 2 years down the road when you want to add more RAM (hence the 4 slot recomendation) and when you want to add a new CPU. Because I'm recomending an AM3+ motherboard, AMD still sells that board with 8 core chips and is also planning another chip to launch on AM3+ so you're very future proofed with that motherboard. It will be backwards compatible with your Athlon II which is awesome.

Get 8GB of DDR3 ram for the new build. This will be enough for now, and you can add another 8GB later on because you thought ahead and got a board with 4 ram slots.

If you're concerned at all about that 760G chipset's video performance, the fix can't be easier. A video card upgrade is just $20 new or less used. I personally think the 760G is fine, but if she does a lot of video you could get that video card if you want.

Now you've fixed the fundamental problem with your brother in law's build for just $110, and you can add extras if you like. Adding an SSD now might be a good idea and it's amazingly fast, but your wife's already shown she's unorganized, so if you add an SSD like a 128GB drive, you will need to map her documents and desktop folders to the mechanical drive or else she will run out of space on that drive, and if she installs a lot of applications or doesn't keep files properly, you'll run into the problem of her running out of diskspace and having to manange that SSD space for her. I added an SSD to my wife's new computer build, and it's working out pretty well, but it does take some setup and maintence.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is there a point to sticking with AM3/AM3+, besides just re-using the existing CPU?

I was thinking that she might be much better off, with an FM2 rig. You would gain SATA6G, USB3.0, and a leading-edge IGP that is as good or better than many low-end discrete cards.

As far as sockets being a dead-end, I think it's a bit up in the air if AMD is going to re-use FM2 for newer CPUs, or whether they will actually release Steamroller on AM3+ at all. So I think that's sort of a wash.

my suggestion is to build a whole new rig around a decent FM2 board with 4 DDR3 slots.
An Asrock A85X micro-ATX would be my likely choice, although they also now have a nice ITX board for A85X too.

Get a case like the Rosewill Line-M, with front-panel USB3.0 too, to go with the motherboard.

I think that the convenience factor of having front-panel USB3.0 on a computer rebuild that is supposed to last another 2-5 years cannot be overstated.

 

[Hubb1e]

FM2 seemed kinda pointless when the CPU he already has is pretty much a match for a basic FM2 quad core. Plus, maybe she's a good candidate for an 8 core processor down the road. FM2 would be $100 more and would only gain him better onboard video over AM3+. The motherboard I linked had usb3.0

 

[VirtualLarry]

FM2 seemed kinda pointless when the CPU he already has is pretty much a match for a basic FM2 quad core. Plus, maybe she's a good candidate for an 8 core processor down the road. FM2 would be $100 more and would only gain him better onboard video over AM3+. The motherboard I linked had usb3.0

I guess you're right. It would be cheaper to stick with AM3+, get that mobo, and add a GT610/620 video card, than it would be to invest in FM2.

 

[Replacement]

I don't know if this is of any help or not

 

[Sleepingforest]

Well, it shows that we were right about RAM being the issue. You need a 64-bit version of Windows and more RAM. To do that, you're going to need a new motherboard as well, since your old motherboard's RAM type is prohibitively expensive.

 

[mfenn]

I don't know if this is of any help or not

<snip photos>

The Print Screen key is your friend.

Anyway, the two key numbers are in your second pic. Those being:

Physical Memory Total: 3327 MB
Commit: 7240 MB

"Physical Memory Total" is pretty self explanatory, but "Commit" is telling you how much memory is actually allocated by all programs. If it's greater than your physical memory, some memory is necessarily swapped to disk.

In this case, over half allocated memory is being swapped out to disk. I'm honestly surprised that the computer is usable at all. Sleepingforest's suggestion is right on: you need (at minimum) a new motherboard, 8GB of DDR3, and 64-bit Windows 7.

 

[Torn Mind]

I'd be tempted to stuff 16 GB in there right away. After she's "freed", she'll open up a bunch more Chrome tabs until the system starts choking again.

 

[Sleepingforest]

8GB seems to be the absolute minimum. I'd get a motherboard with extra room in case your wife takes the increased speed as a cue to go even crazier with the tabs.

Mobo: Foxconn A9DA AMD 890GX = $75
RAM: G.Skill 2x4GB RAM = $40

Edit: It looks like you and I have the same idea of what will happen with this upgrade...

 

[mfenn]

I'd be tempted to stuff 16 GB in there right away. After she's "freed", she'll open up a bunch more Chrome tabs until the system starts choking again.

Good point!

 

[Termie]

Ok, great suggestions above to get that screen shot before making purchases.

Wow, you are out of RAM, my friend.

Look, you know you need to reinstall the OS, you need a new motherboard, you need at least 8GB of RAM, and yes, you should probably have an SSD.

Now, since you're doing all of this, I suggest you just start over with an i3-3220. I just can't recommend you spend money on a new AMD motherboard simply to use your old, somewhat slow cpu again. Seems like a missed opportunity, given how much you're spending and the hassle of rebuilding the whole system from scratch.

Plus, this way, you might be able to repurpose or sell the old system.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If the commit charge on her machine is bumping the 8GB mark already, I would go ahead and get 16GB of DDR3 RAM right off, along with the new mobo (the one linked above looks good).

Chances are, she will just push the machine even harder once she gets more RAM into it. Better be prepared. Also, that board lists a max of 16GB of RAM, but chances are, it will take 32GB. The memory controller circuitry is on the CPU, and those CPUs do support 32GB (or more?)

Edit: Geeks.com has a new 880G MSI ATX board for $60.
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...0G-E45&amp;cat=MBB

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I don't know if this is of any help or not

Ouch. No question, you need more RAM...

I'd be tempted to stuff 16 GB in there right away. After she's "freed", she'll open up a bunch more Chrome tabs until the system starts choking again.

Better get 16GB right away. Its not that much more expensive, and definitely worth it.