Why is my CPU getting...slower?!?!?

[ArvinC]

Hello everyone.

Got a question: Why do you think my CPU seems to be running slower? I occasionally run Madonion's PCMark 2002 to check how an "upgrade" has afftected my system. Well, I recently put in a stick of 512 PC2100 DDR RAM, stock speeds and specs, Winbond-chipped, to give me 1.24 Gigs total memory. The rest of my vital system specs are: AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (not o/c'ed); Soyo DRAGON Plus (stock settings); GeForce 3 Ti-200 (o/c'ed to 245 mHz core by 465 mHz RAM); Soundblaster Audigy oem, (2) Western Digital 40 Giggers running in RAID-0 array, Windows XP Pro.

So I ran PCMark and found that my scores, across the board, have fallen since I last ran the bench mark on 3/12/02. The hard drive score is now 1265 vs. 1375. The memory score is now 2849 vs. 2866. But the real kicker is that the cpu score is now 4765 vs. 4894! Wow...what could be happening that is causing my system to "slow" down like this? I have adequate cooling, am running all proven, reliable gear and haven't o/c'ed anything save for my vid card (3DMark 2001 score: 7613). The hard drive scores are not too worrisome since I have filled my h/d's a bit more and used defrag to keep 'em tidy.

I have 3 possible causes: I have too much Nortons running in the background (recently installed System Works 2002 Pro suite); the new stick of RAM is not happy with my set-up (My first stick is Nanya-chipped; according to Mushkin's site, Soyo boards run best with Nany-chipped DIMM's.); or something Windows related. I dunno'...grasping for straws, really.

It's not a fatal thing or anything, I know. But it bothers me that I am getting slower, especially after trying to get faster by doubling my memory! So, anyone with any ideas or suggestions please feel free...I would appreciate them!

ArvinC

 

[tboneuls]

you probably have some programs running in the background

 

[Fingers]

Just disable everything running in the backround and you will have your same old scores again, possible even better.

All that really matters is that you are happy with your PC. Could you tell it was going to score slower before you ran the test. I know I probably wouldn't be able to.

 

[iahk]

Interesting. Throwing it off a cliff comes before calling tech support.

Makes sense I guess. lol

 

[Richardito]

Download and run the program Ad-Aware from ZDNet.com. This utilities will wipe clean your HD of any active files or cookies left by malicious web sites, etc. My computer was so bad that it would just lock @ full load every time before I used this to clean all that crap off.

 

[Zim Hosein]

Originally posted by: iahk
Interesting. Throwing it off a cliff comes before calling tech support.

Makes sense I guess. lol

Have you dealt w/ tech support lately

 

[gsethi]

well.......take out the new chip and run the test again and see how they perform......if they perform as good as before, then its prolly your new memory chip.

if not, prolly background programs or windows is eating more resources. Try to clear your cookies, temp files folder and any other cached pages.

oh yeah, one more thing......more memory is not always merrier.........there is always a limit and after that your computer might actually slow down if you install more memory.
Reason: your OS has to manage more memory, so it may not be worth adding that much memory. i know i will get flamed here but from a computer engineers point of view, everything has a limit. If you install more memory, your OS has to manage it and do error checking on it and so it will eat more CPU cycles and resources, so your computer might perform slower.

but in this case, i dont think this is the problem (if your running Win 2k or XP)......its most probably that Norton program that is eating away all your resources........might want to take a look into that.