i3 Processor - Slow Results, Which Should I Upgrade

A

Adam

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 9, 2003
Messages
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So my HT
PC (well its at work so my WTPC) is acting a bit slow. Going through mediabrowser and playing movies is a tad slow, not too bad (it used to be an atom machine) but still slower then my home pc (but then again my HTPC is a quad processor with 8GB ram)..

Now im not looking to match the speed at home, but right now im running 2GB of ram and an i3-530 processor.

Which would you do.

1) Add a 2nd 2GB stick of RAM
2) Upgrade the cpu, which one:

i5-650 = $139.99
i5-750 = $179.99
i7-860 = $199.99

Soo any thoughts on what to do first to get some faster speeds?
 
I cant imagine its the CPU.

Even 2 gb of ram shouldnt be the issue, although 4GB might be better. I would look at drivers and hard drives as the culprit.
 
Well its not like E X T R E M E L Y slow... its just from what im used to (a quad core with 8GB ram and a gaming class video card) its slower.

I want to be able to go through my menus quicker and what not like i do at home, and not break the bank (just dropped 1400 on new computer gear)

Will upgrading to an i5/i7 processor give me a big leap?

Whats it equiv to... like is going from an i3 to an i5 the same equiv of going from a duo 2 to a core2 duo? and an i3 to an i7 like going from a duo2 to a core2 quad???
 
lordsegan said:
I cant imagine its the CPU.

Even 2 gb of ram shouldnt be the issue, although 4GB might be better. I would look at drivers and hard drives as the culprit.
Click to expand...

It's not the CPU, for sure.

It might be the memory, especially if the decoding of movies through media browser needs a lot of memory. Also, with only a single 2GB stick, the memory controller is running only in single-channel mode. Plus, if that HTPC is running Windows Vista or Windows 7, it definitely works better with more than 2GB of RAM. An extra 2GB stick should improve performance noticeably (though still not up to the level of the OP's main rig).
 
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I think i'll go that route also. For $58 i can get a 2nd stick which should give me more performance... better then starting at the $170 range for more stuff. The box used to have an atom processor, i upgraded it to a bigger case and decided to use a better (duh) cpu.

Movies play fine, its going through the menu system thats a bit slow, and that part is always intensive.
 
Why don't you run resource monitor and see if the CPU or Memory is being fully utilized?

I would also consider hard drive to be the culprit, so don't rule that out...
 
Subbed this thread. Core i3 info seems lacking and I'm curious about it's performance versus a Core2Duo. On paper it seems to be the ideal HTPC processor, but I don't see many people talking about it.
 
As I said, I am 99% sure its not the CPU. The i3 is a very fast cpu, by any reasonable measure. It is at least as fast or faster than core2duo and as fast or faster than most core2quads.

It is likely the RAM, Hard drive, or a bad software install/config. Check those.
 
either you are running too many things at once and eating up your ram or the slowness is due to hdd. slowness in playback of movies shouldn't have any noticeable difference between i3 and i7. something else is going on. What type of movies are you trying to play and what codecs/software are you using?
 
lordsegan said:
As I said, I am 99% sure its not the CPU. The i3 is a very fast cpu, by any reasonable measure. It is at least as fast or faster than core2duo and as fast or faster than most core2quads.

It is likely the RAM, Hard drive, or a bad software install/config. Check those.
Click to expand...

i3 is quicker then a core2quad?? let me look that one up..

edit: wow yea, the i3 overclocked is beating the c2q stock. i bet they're even stock for stock, depending on which model you have of course
 
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ryken said:
either you are running too many things at once and eating up your ram or the slowness is due to hdd. slowness in playback of movies shouldn't have any noticeable difference between i3 and i7. something else is going on. What type of movies are you trying to play and what codecs/software are you using?
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Exactly. As far as we know you don't need any new hardware, if this is an actual dedicated HTPC then you certainly don't need new hardware. :rolleyes:

More details are needed before you go out and blow money uselessly.
 
Its not like "omg i cant use it" its just a bit slower then id have expected it to be....

now when i built it i noticed that maybe some pins were bent but the system seems to run just fine. It boots up just fine and all and plays movies fine.

It could be my remote, as im not using a good remote yet, so let me rule that out as the culprit... but even still, waiting for menus to load in WMC and then media browser seems to take a bit, i'll take a video to show u guys what im talking about
 
Sounds like storage bottleneck. Like something else is working on the drive(s) at the same time. I've used systems alot less gutsy than that for that job without lag. Something isn't working right.

Dustin
 
I'm just going to assume you're overclocking right? a 4ghz oc is easy for the i3 with a slight voltage bump.
 
No i don't OC. I build my machines as they are...

Im thinking maybe its the drive itself... today it had issues where i had to restart the media center becausse it froze up while trying to load a movie... actually thinking now, i wonder if the OS is putting the drive to sleep which would cause an issue for me, i'll have to look into that actually
 
If I remember right, Media Browser still stores all the image thumbnails, etc. on the HDD.

One suggestion to make everything move super fast was to create a RAMDisk and set it up to hold all the thumbnails and backgrounds for MediaBrowser and then menu's and everything are super fast.

I run my HTPC on a 30GB SSD so I don't notice slow-down too much, and haven't had a chance to try out the RAMDisk option but it's still there...

But I'm pretty sure it's related to that, not processor speed.
 
Blazestorm said:
If I remember right, Media Browser still stores all the image thumbnails, etc. on the HDD.
Click to expand...
If he's using just media browser then media browser is constantly going online and searching for it's meta data via its metadata scraper. It's not permanently storing any of it's meta data locally. That's why it's taking a longer time to load, this is processor "intensive" in that it needs to process all the media in that folder which can slow down on large collections.

The east solution is to use meta browser to store all meta data locally. My 2Ghz BE-2400+ loads near instantly since all my meta data is stored locally.
 
Im sorry i should have said the mymovies plugin... i dont actually use mediabrowser on this HTPC, i take the hd and put it in my home pc (docking bay) and copy my folders over...

sayyyyyyyyyy

i wonder if THATS my prob... no maybe it wouldnt be... well heres what i do.. i put my work HTPC drive in my system at home, then i copy the folders (movies) i want over. In those folders are the meta info and the images/etc... now i wonder if theres a file in here thats looking at a specific path (from the main HTPC) and it cant find it so its causing some delays...

hmmmm
 
Yeah no just took a look. MediaBrowser isnt doing anything weird... the mymovies meta file doesnt point to any other sources... so thats not the issue... and im not talking a lot of movies, its a 1TB hd with maybe 30-40 movies.
 
Adam said:
Yeah no just took a look. MediaBrowser isnt doing anything weird... the mymovies meta file doesnt point to any other sources... so thats not the issue... and im not talking a lot of movies, its a 1TB hd with maybe 30-40 movies.
Click to expand...

No idea, you have such a weird setup that I'm sure something is getting screwed up/just isn't configured correctly.

For my HTPC I have 210 DVDs (and some Blu ray rips, something like 40ish) on a WHS over a gigabyte network to my HTPC (all hardwired). It takes roughly 2 seconds for movies to pop up in media browser. No SSDs (totally not needed in an HTPC), no RAID, no special hardware of any kind. It's all slow dual cores and modest hardware.

Oh, and mine is setup to use both a mymovies XML file and a DVDid XML file.
 
No it does cache it after the first time it grabs it from the internet. If you ever clear the cache then it has to grab it again from the internet.

I also use metabrowser for all of that info and save it on my server, and then my HTPC grabs it from the server and stores it locally in a cache.
 
The most likely culprits are:

1. Video. The on-board video of the i3 is not great - you'd be better off getting a discrete nVidia GT220. If you can, find a recentish discrete card to test with first.

2. Storage could be an issue - I always turn off thumbnails, so I'm not sure what kind of impact they have.
 
magao said:
The most likely culprits are:

1. Video. The on-board video of the i3 is not great - you'd be better off getting a discrete nVidia GT220. If you can, find a recentish discrete card to test with first.

2. Storage could be an issue - I always turn off thumbnails, so I'm not sure what kind of impact they have.
Click to expand...

The video of an i3 is fine. This isn't a gaming rig. Not sure exactly what GPU is integrated with an i3, but it's supposedly comparable to a GMA 4500HD which my Elitebook laptop has and it plays HD video just fine with no loading time.

It's probably something running in the background that's taking a hit. I'd check your task manager or download and run process manager from the Microsoft support site and find out what's hitting your system.
 
Here are my specs... so maybe someone can tell me what'll give me a performance jump. Its almost as if im still using an Atom system sometimes when i want to play movies. The movies play just fine but its waiting for mediabrowser to load the movie page that seems to take a while. And like i said, i have maybe 30 movies or so as its a small HD.

GIGABYTE GA-H55M-S2H (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128420)
Intel Core i3-530
Kingston HyperX 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104136)

Two HD's. Main one is like an 80GB and the other one is i think a 1TB Green drive.

Power settings are to never turn HD off or go to sleep.

Sooo should i do more memory, a video card or processor?
 
It's your 80GB hard drive that's at least partly to blame. Most 80GB hard drives are very old designs, unable to reach even 50 MB/s on the outer tracks - and that some of your videos are written on the inner tracks of that hard drive, where a typical hard drive of that design often dropped below 30 MB/s sequentially.

As for the Green drive, the heads always move to a parked position and the platters completely spin down after only eight minutes of idle. And it is always active regardless of the Windows hard drive power-down settings! And once spun down, the Green drives almost always take much too long to spin back up to speed.

Thus, some of that access slowdown is due to your drives: Either they're old or are the wrong ones for entertainment use.
 
Adam said:
So my HT
PC (well its at work so my WTPC) is acting a bit slow. Going through mediabrowser and playing movies is a tad slow, not too bad (it used to be an atom machine) but still slower then my home pc (but then again my HTPC is a quad processor with 8GB ram)..

Now im not looking to match the speed at home, but right now im running 2GB of ram and an i3-530 processor.

Which would you do.

1) Add a 2nd 2GB stick of RAM
2) Upgrade the cpu, which one:

i5-650 = $139.99
i5-750 = $179.99
i7-860 = $199.99

Soo any thoughts on what to do first to get some faster speeds?
Click to expand...
A core i3 is plenty to run as a media PC. Something else is wrong.
 
Hmmm maybe... i have green drives at home in my HTPC they are fine... i'll make a video today so you guys know what im talking bout as it works its just... well you'll see what i mean
 
Well you said the main one is an 80GB... typically 80GB are older/slower and if your operating system is running on that along with the image-cache being stored there, then it would be pretty slow trying to read all that information off the HDD
 
Blazestorm said:
Well you said the main one is an 80GB... typically 80GB are older/slower and if your operating system is running on that along with the image-cache being stored there, then it would be pretty slow trying to read all that information off the HDD
Click to expand...

Exactly.

I wouldn't be surprised if turns out that the WD Green drives outperform your 80GB 7200RPM drives. The WD Greens are based on a newer design and technology. Unless you have a 80GB Velociraptor or SSD, more than likely you have a 80GB HDD that's just plain slow.

In fact, do a screenshot of HDTune after it finishes. Upload it and post it here in this thread. That'll confirm or deny whether or not you have a slow 80GB HDD.

EDIT: SO in other words: Upgrade the hard drive, nothing else.
 
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Danny Bui said:
Exactly.

I wouldn't be surprised if turns out that the WD Green drives outperform your 80GB 7200RPM drives. The WD Greens are based on a newer design and technology. Unless you have a 80GB Velociraptor or SSD, more than likely you have a 80GB HDD that's just plain slow.

In fact, do a screenshot of HDTune after it finishes. Upload it and post it here in this thread. That'll confirm or deny whether or not you have a slow 80GB HDD.

EDIT: SO in other words: Upgrade the hard drive, nothing else.
Click to expand...

(To the OP: )

Let me clarify this statement:

Upgrade the 80GB hard drive to something newer and faster (such as the 500GB WD Blue or a Samsung F3). Your existing 1TB Green is perfectly fine as a media-storage drive.
 
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SinShiva said:
add 2gb of ram, pl0x. windows 7 likes memory in a good way.
Click to expand...

He's trying to solve a problem with his computer being bogged down for seemingly no reason. Throwing 2gb of RAM isn't going to make it go away, especially if he already has a Core i3 and 2GB of ram. That's far more than enough to run Win7 without any hiccup.
 
Azhar said:
He's trying to solve a problem with his computer being bogged down for seemingly no reason. Throwing 2gb of RAM isn't going to make it go away, especially if he already has a Core i3 and 2GB of ram. That's far more than enough to run Win7 without any hiccup.
Click to expand...

QFT. Danny and I have finally pinpointed the real cause: An old main (system) hard drive that's being overly cluttered with the system's swap file and working video files. And that's not to mention that the maximum sequential transfer speed of such an old, small-capacity hard drive being only one-third as fast as those of most of the newer hard drives on the market. What's more, any hard drive that's more than two-thirds full will slow down substantially in overall performance (in this case, a typical Windows 7 install with a sufficiently large swap file, all of the components' necessary drivers and typical HTPC software plus a few videos would have eaten up more than 50GiB of the drive's 74.5GiB actual capacity). Thus, even if that 80GB hard drive were 7200 RPM, it might as well have spun at only 2400 RPM.
 
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Tonight i went to make a video... and it seemed to work fine. Sooo the video is no help...

All my movies are stored on the 1TB drive.

58.3GB free of 74.4GB hd... thats my main OS hard drive.

I originally had this system (both drives) in an Atom pc i built... i upgraded the motherboard/memory/cpu and thats when i started noticing things... see i never really used the system when i had it, as i only used it for a few days then the system went into storage for 2 months while our new office was under way. in that time i upgraded it to an i3/motherboard/memory and this is really the first time since that im using it.

the machine seems to work fine, as i said, its only in media center... even when i load media center, the logo doesnt have the nice transitions, the music plays and the logo is on the screen, then its in media center...

maybe i really need a video card? since media center is kinda video intensive and what not? im usin the onboard micro atx video card, and i dont even know what kinda chipset it is, it doesnt say on the newegg site at all... so who knows what it is.



Not that this is a place to look at performance, but the windows score shows the following:

6.9 (processor)
5.5 (ram)
4.3 (graphics)
5.2 (gaming graphics)
5.8 (hard disk)

so im reallly low on graphics... my other boxes are above 7
 
dude, WMC is not that intense. The onboard video chip is directly integrated to the CPU. Did u not know that about the Core i3 series?

Seriously man, why are u so dead set against the HDD being the issue? A new HDD is cheap: $50.
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Cause i dont wanna reintall everything :)

Actually its a gigabyte motherboard, i'll just ghost the system and replace the hard drive with a 250GB blue drive. I have them laying around the office as a matter of fact (that and AVGP drives). I say ghost it with gigabyte because i build dvr's and they all use gigabyte motherboards, so i have a bootable flash drive already setup for network drivers.

I shall replace the hard drive tomorrow and i'll let you guys know the results.
 
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