Will dual core make 2d apps "feel" faster?

[grit621]

I'm debating upgrading from a single core AMD 2.4 GHz CPU to an equivalent dual core CPU. What I'm trying to fix is the sluggishness of my 2d applications. When I open Outlook and Internet Explorer at the same time, I have to wait for several seconds before I can use either program. If I click on a website that loads slowly the whole system seems to slow down, preventing me from doing anything. When one of my auto-update programs launch, Outlook lags and I can't Alt-Tab over for a few seconds.

Granted, I'm only talking about seconds at a time, but I don't like waiting. If one application needs time to run, I should be able to alt-tab and get something else done while it's working. I dont want to walk away from my CPU because I'm scanning for viruses.

It's been a while, but I seem to remember my old Intel system (with hyper-threading) working faster than my Athlon 64 does. Or maybe programs have just gotten more bloated and take longer now to load?

Either way, what can I do to fix this? I've already got 1GB ram. And if a dual core CPU is the answer, will the Core 2 Duo chips fix this problem "better" than an AMD 64 X2 CPU?

 

[Ika]

Yes, a dual-core will be faster when you're loading two applications at a time. They're designed to.

Conroe chips WILL be faster than X2 CPUs, but that performance comes at a price. If you're not looking to get every last drop out of your system, an X2 is a great way to go, especially since you already have a (I'm assuming) 939 motherboard. If you got a Conroe, you would have to get a new motherboard, CPU, and memory.

How much money are you looking to spend, and do you game?

 

[0roo0roo]

it lets you be more abusive. for instance you'd never think to virus scan or defrag while doing other things...but with dual core its almost like nothing is happening. course faster harddrive is always good too. stuff like burning dvd at 16x + doing something stressful becomes much easier. i guess u gotta retrain yourself with dual core from what i've seen from my friends system we are too used to being cautious thanks to compensating for single cores limitations all these years. two hands are better than one, and dual core does make normal computing much snappier. takes a lot more to bog it down. and thats good. damn firefox and 50 tabs open

 

[Auric]

Yeah, HT or DC would make a big difference however the other thing, given 'nuff RAM, is HDD performance. Could it be heavily fragmented? There could be something else going on 'cause your symptoms seem worse than just from being SC which is otherwise relatively peppy.

 

[LiekOMG]

Yeah something sound wrong with your computer. I'm running an "ancient" AthlonXP, and even my apps switch and load up without issue. Are you sure your hard drive is running in DMA mode and not PIO? Sometimes it switched to PIO (no idea why or what triggers it) and you need to let windows re-detect the IDE controller to fix it.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

HT is not that effective. DC is insane. The way I switch between apps is insanely fast now. I just love alt tabbing between 5 programs at a time. Now I DVD shrink and play Warcraft 3 at the same tiem =)

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Auric
Yeah, HT or DC would make a big difference however the other thing, given 'nuff RAM, is HDD performance. Could it be heavily fragmented? There could be something else going on 'cause your symptoms seem worse than just from being SC which is otherwise relatively peppy.

i too was thinking of the hdd.

 

[grit621]

Sorry all, I was on my way to work and running out of time when I put this post up.

I've been building my own systems since my 8088 CPU. Presently, I have an AMD FX-55 (2.6 GHz single-core CPU) with 1GB (512x2) of Corsair Ballistix DDR. MoBo is the trusty Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe.

I'm a "casual" gamer, and I don't overwork my desktop 2d apps. I'm just terribly impatient. My 74GB Raptor HDD is defragged regularly via System Mechanic Pro (I know it's not the best defragger, but it's what I'm using for now). My OS and apps are installed on that drive. I have my data on a second drive and my backups on a 3rd (all SATA internal).

My GPU is a nVidia 7800GTX. To give my impatience some further form, you need to understand I'm not entirely happy with my video card. nVidia has a texture shimmering problem on some games (WoW is the most bothersome for now), so ATI is getting my attention. Yes, I'd sell my 7800GTX to get a Radeon X1900XT just to fix the texture problem.

Let me give another example of frustration I have. I get advertisements in my e-mail (who'd belive it). I'm only running two apps (asside from drivers & such)... Internet Explorer (v7, beta 2) and Outlook. So, I click a link to an add in an e-mail I received. Then the system goes into hourglass (waiting) mode for about 5-8 seconds while a new tab opens. I can't switch apps, etc, while the graphics & such load. Now, I understand I gotta wait for the graphics to load from the internet, but I can OPEN a fresh browswer quicker than this. And what really bothers me is that I can't read a different e-mail while the browser is loading. I have to wait.

Another example is booting up. I have so much crap that loads drivers now, I have to wait almost 2 minutes for Windows XP SP2 to load and run all the crap. Video drivers, sound drivers, Zone Alarm, System Mechanic Pro, etc. I've trimmed out as much crap as I can (no Quicktime, Real Audio, etc crap loading). But it still takes forever. And if I try to run an app before it's all done... LAG.

I seem to remember my old Intel Hyperthreading chip being more friendly than this. In the same breath of air, let me tell you that I KNOW I'm due for a fresh re-install of windows xp. I just think the system has gotten "gunked up" from installs, uninstalls, reinstalls, and swapped/changed hardware. Suspend to RAM no longer works, and I get occasional oddities.

So, looking for a new motherboard/CPU because I'm gonna go with 2GB ram, and I don't want to spend my money on DDR, since it's life is about over as far as future upgradeability is concerned. I figure since I need a fresh re-install, I may as well get the board that'll support the DDR-2 (which I can hopefully use in my next upgrade after this), spend a bit more to get 2 GB of DDR-2, and I was gonna buy the CPU anyway (assuming it'll help my problem). Also, I plan for this system to run Windows Vista SMOOTHLY, and for it to need/want nothing the day I instal it.

Thanks for everyone's input (past & future).

 

[PeterJun21]

Try sizing down on applications/multimedia you dont need as well. Some applications automatically launch and hog up resources. Also invest in some faster hardrives, especially the drive where windows is installed. From my personal expierences the Raptors or SATA 3.0 drives are much faster than the standard IDEs.

 

[bigboxes]

Originally posted by: PeterJun21From my personal expierences the Raptors or SATA 3.0 drives are much faster than the standard IDEs.

Read the post before yours. He says he's using a 74gb raptor. To the OP, I "feel your pain!" That's the way it goes. As our machines improve we adapt and before long we want to go fast yet again. I remember when I built my first box and ditched my Comcrap pc and watched as webpages would literally "pop" open what seemed to be instantly. Nowadays, things just seem to take forever... and with newer equipment! It's because of that always wanting faster response rate and my neverending need to multitask that I am too upgrading this coming week to an X2 cpu. Of course I also had to upgrade my vid card, ram to 2gb, new case and Zalman coolers for both the cpu & gpu. It's madness I tell ya... and yeah, I know things will be much zippier. For awhile...

 

[Auric]

I would try to solve the apparent software/config problems first rather than trying to over power 'em with an upgrade. Sure, you may eliminate them with a fresh setup but then they could just as easily creep back as you install the same ol' crap and still degrade performance although it might be less noticeable.

Did you confirm the HDD's are running in UDMA Mode 5 or whatever under the storage controller channels in Device Manager or applicable manufacturer utility?

Is the pagefile continuous (defragged)? Setting to the same min/max is helpful as is putting it on a seperate drive than the OS.

Is prefetch active and is the defrag optimized based upon its layout?

A two minute load is madness... have you checked all startup items via msconfig or such (including services). What is the Commit Charge from Task Manager Performance tab just to get an idea of how much schtuff is running? Does the Peak frequently exceed Physical capacity?

Try cutting ZA out of the loop (totally prevent from loading or maybe even backup config and uninstall) then likewise SMP and other such schtuff.

If there is significant improvement without them then consider less demanding alternatives.

You could also try a registry cleaner. One good freebee is RegCleaner by jv16.org, prolly available from various "last free version" sites. Or try their PowerTools trial unless someone can recommend another good freebee.

 

[vanvock]

I use RegSeeker from Hooverdesk.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

you really need to minimize what gets loaded during startup. I'd bet you have some proggy running in the background that's just making your system run like ass.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: PeterJun21
From my personal expierences the Raptors or SATA 3.0 drives are much faster than the standard IDEs.

you are correct about the raptor because it is a 10K drive, but the 3.0Gbs speed doesn't have anything to do with it. that is a theoretical max that a single hdd can not attain, even 15K scsi.

 

[grit621]

Originally posted by: Auric
Did you confirm the HDD's are running in UDMA Mode 5 or whatever under the storage controller channels in Device Manager or applicable manufacturer utility?

Is the pagefile continuous (defragged)? Setting to the same min/max is helpful as is putting it on a seperate drive than the OS.

Is prefetch active and is the defrag optimized based upon its layout?

A two minute load is madness... have you checked all startup items via msconfig or such (including services). What is the Commit Charge from Task Manager Performance tab just to get an idea of how much schtuff is running? Does the Peak frequently exceed Physical capacity?

The HDDs are in "Serial ATA transfer mode". Apparently, nVidia's chipset automatically selects this and won't let you change it. PIO/UMDA only shows under PATA.

Yes, the pagefile is set for 1536 MB (min/max) on the d: drive (separate controller to speed things up) and is defragged. Prefetch is set to 3 (prefetch everything), but I dont know what you mean by asking if defrag is optimized based on that.

My 2 minute load time starts at power on, thus including a quick BIOS check. I have used MSCONFIG to eliminate some programs from starting up (such as Real Audio, Quicktime, etc.), but I need and should go through the services. Those bastard software programmers have all decided THEIR application should launch some crap at start-up and be running in the background. I miss the DOS days where *I* decided what TSR's would run.

Commit Charge is maxed at 639692, averaged at 467400, and has a limit of 2524280.

The more I look at this, the more I think the two things that bog down my system are loading crap at startup and trying to run 2 programs at the same time. Seems one I can do with some handywork in the services area, and the other will still require a dual cpu.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: grit621

Originally posted by: Auric
Did you confirm the HDD's are running in UDMA Mode 5 or whatever under the storage controller channels in Device Manager or applicable manufacturer utility?

Is the pagefile continuous (defragged)? Setting to the same min/max is helpful as is putting it on a seperate drive than the OS.

Is prefetch active and is the defrag optimized based upon its layout?

A two minute load is madness... have you checked all startup items via msconfig or such (including services). What is the Commit Charge from Task Manager Performance tab just to get an idea of how much schtuff is running? Does the Peak frequently exceed Physical capacity?

The HDDs are in "Serial ATA transfer mode". Apparently, nVidia's chipset automatically selects this and won't let you change it. PIO/UMDA only shows under PATA.

Yes, the pagefile is set for 1536 MB (min/max) on the d: drive (separate controller to speed things up) and is defragged. Prefetch is set to 3 (prefetch everything), but I dont know what you mean by asking if defrag is optimized based on that.

My 2 minute load time starts at power on, thus including a quick BIOS check. I have used MSCONFIG to eliminate some programs from starting up (such as Real Audio, Quicktime, etc.), but I need and should go through the services. Those bastard software programmers have all decided THEIR application should launch some crap at start-up and be running in the background. I miss the DOS days where *I* decided what TSR's would run.

Commit Charge is maxed at 639692, averaged at 467400, and has a limit of 2524280.

The more I look at this, the more I think the two things that bog down my system are loading crap at startup and trying to run 2 programs at the same time. Seems one I can do with some handywork in the services area, and the other will still require a dual cpu.

i have found that running a pagefile on all hdds works the best. i think you are hitting the hdd max and not a cpu max. regardless of how fast your hdd does things, it is still much slower than every other part of the machine.

as far as startup - does your m/b have the ability to start the machine every day at a predetermined time? my current and last m/bs do/have and i set them to start up at 0900, so by the time i want to get on the machine it is just waiting for me.

your issue about the 5-8 seonds of it freezing is a little bizarre, do you think it could be related to ie7 being a beta?

 

[Auric]

I suppose the HDD mode/performance could be verified with a benchmark like HDTach.

A good defragger will also do the pagefile, system files, directories, registry and MFT. Some of those may need to be done "offline" before loading the OS. The file degrag can be optimized based upon the prefetch data to further speed up program launching. I'm thinking of O&O Defrag particularly. Executive Diskeeper may rely upon its own usage algo. I have no experience with System Mechanic.

Yeah, I hate how so many proggies try to take over the machine. I fanatically disable most automatic schtuff and always disable auto updates and version checks when possible and otherwise block 'em with a firewall.

Your average and peak memory useage are prolly a couple hundred thousand more than what's typical for mine and I do not consider it particularly svelte as the essential OS schtuff is closer to 150000. Google "XP services guide" for help disabling some o' the bloat. One big performance killer is the indexing service. XP-AntiSpy is useful to disable crap too.

Don't make the mistake of disabling the task scheduler service else prefetch will be disabled.

Good luck.