Tips for faster processing

C

cu2cool

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 20, 2005
Messages
141
Hey guys, sorry if I'm repeating any thread that's already out there but I just had a question to ask. After buying all these new and expensive computer parts I was expecting a very large increase in speed. For example, with my older AMD 64 rig (in my sig) it would take like 2 minutes to load up and 10 seconds for firefox to open up. What I'm basically saying is that it just wasn't instant for my programs to open. So with my new Intel Core 2 Quad rig (in my sig) I was expecting for load up times to be much faster. However, I was disappointed to see that there wasn't much difference in windows boot up time (may even be slower), firefox still doesn't load up instantly and just opening programs isn't much faster.

I'm thinking that it could just be because opening programs has to do with the speed of the hard drive, so processor speed wouldn't matter too much, or something like that. I have pretty much the same programs and settings installed on both rigs (adobe CS3, Kaspersky, etc.). Am I right that the difference in processing shouldn't matter much or is there some tweaking that could be done to speed things up a bit? Thanks in advance.
 
A faster hard drive will help, if you're willing to bear with the extra noise. It might shave a second or two off when opening a program. The biggest gain you'll see is in file transfering and Windows boot up. Also, does you're motherboard BIOS give you the option of doing a "quick boot" for windows, instead of the normal (longer) boot?

You have a pretty good PC, maybe there's some program running in the background lagging your speed. It never hurts to check the task manager.
 
It could have something to do with your RAM...what are the RAM timings and what speed are you running it at?

I remember on an older rig I had, some crappy ram was bottlenecking the GPU, but after upgrading to some extra low latency stuff, gaming smoothed out completely.
 
holli4pirating said:
It could have something to do with your RAM...what are the RAM timings and what speed are you running it at?

I remember on an older rig I had, some crappy ram was bottlenecking the GPU, but after upgrading to some extra low latency stuff, gaming smoothed out completely.
Click to expand...


My timings are 5-5-5-18. I think I just have the regular RAM, not the low latency overclocking type.

Is it even possible to have a computer that starts up programs in like a second? That's ultimately what I expect out of a high end computer. I basically want to double click on any program and have it load up instantly. But it's prolly impossible because it needs to retrieve the data from the HD first. Then if I close and reopen the program, then it becomes instantly because of the memory.

Maybe I should just work on the msconfig settings, running apps, and startup programs. How fast should my rig be able to startup and finish loading? Like from the time I press the power button to the time I can open up a program without sumthing else still loading.
 
Still on the RAM, 5-5-5-18 aren't exactly tight timings, but you'll also want to check the speed it's running at. What FSB and RAM strap are you using? If you have your processor running at 3.01 like your sig says and the RAM is running 1:1, that would leave the RAM rumming at 334 (assuming a 9x multi on the CPU), which is slower than it's rated. If so, you could either tighten up the timings to below rated, or change the strap to run them closer to 400.

With regards to opening programs instantly, that really depends on what you're opening. For example, Firefox will always load way faster than Photoshop. Granted, that's an extreme example, but each program has different amounts of stuff to load before running.

With regards to tweaking your OS, there are a lot of guides out there that give tips. I like the guides at http://www.tweakhound.com. I usually look through and pick and choose which tweaks I want to try out and see how it affects my system. I have definately cut down my system overheads and reduced boot and load times.
 
I know this may be weird to say for some people, but use vista. Its super fetch program does exactly what you want, it stores common used programs like firefox into your ram so when you want to open it the program loads up very quick.

I find vista also loads up very quickly when you start up your computer, I'd suggest just trying out vista if you can borrow it form someone and seeing how you like it, use it for a few weeks and it will start to store your common programs and before you know it everything you use lots will load almost instantly.
 
A misconception people have is that a quad core automatically means faster processing and that's not necessarily the case.

A dual core 3.6 ghz is going to 'feel' faster than a 2.4ghz quad core any day. The difference will be in how much load you can handle between a dual core and a quad core. Think of this like a fast corvette vs a dodge ram pickup with a hemi.

Anything in today's standards of computing should not take more than a few seconds to load. Firefox should load instantaneously on most if not all machines.

4gb of ram is well more than enough and even at relaxed timings it should go fairly fast.

Instead of looking into ram timings, hard drives, or anything 'hardware' related.. first look at your software. If you're running windows xp, see if there's any bloatware that's running. How many processes are you running in windows.

once you've ruled out the fact that it's anything in software. then you can look at your hardware more closely. Unless you have a 5400 RPM drive, you should not notice any significant slowdowns coming from your drive. See if your ram is stable. Try running 2GB of ram and see if having 4gb is actually stressing your memory controller and thus screwing with how fast the computer is going.
 
Firefox also has a turbo load feature - can't remember the exact name they call it, but it leaves part of the program in memory so the next time you load it it opens much faster. Search google for firefox turbo load or something, I'm sure you'll find it.

Actually, I'll save you the time:

Type about:config into the address bar and hit return.

set "browser.turbo.enabled" to "True"
 
How many processes do you have that load at windows startup... You can shave it down to about 20-30 depending on what you want to load. You can really get it down to like 15 if you want.

Check out this guide HERE
Also programs such as TweakXP allow you to do things that speed up boot times (such as defrag boot files)
 
Another thing to think about is RAM throughput. You said when you moved from an Athlon 64 (on-die memory controller) to an Intel Quad core (memory controller is in the chipset), it didn't speed up load times.. and that it may actually be slower.

This is for the simple fact that the AMD chip has WAY higher memory througput than the Intel setup will have.

My AMD Opteron 175 at 2.8Ghz was getting right at 8GB/sec on memory throughput. (DDR1-516-ish - 258Mhz)

My Q6600 at 3Ghz only gets 6.9GB/sec memory throughput (DDR2-1000 - 500Mhz)

So at the current point in time.. you can either have a way faster processor (Intel), or way higher memory throughput (AMD).
 
Option 3) DDR3. Hight throughput and high processor speed. 8-10GB/sec on my machine.
 
DDR3 = expensive right now.

Also.. once Intel actually catches up to AMD in the memory controller area (on-die), that will help a ton and let you not have to buy uber expensive RAM.
 
Just throwing out that there are more than your two options. Sure, you gotta pay to play, but I'm happy with the best of both worlds.
 
I see, I have tried cutting down on the startup programs through msconfig. I don't really think tweaking any other setting will make any more of a huge difference. So I guess I'll just settle with what I've got. Maybe convert to Vista once it becomes more popular.
 
Tweaking actually makes a huge difference, check the guide on tweakguides.com. When I was using XP on my laptop I could boot into windows from pushing the power button to desktop in <20 seconds flat.
 
firefox should load within 2-3 seconds

one more thing to consider is the placement of your OS + favorite programs on your drives. the last half of the drive is about 2-3x as slow as the first few gigs. my advice is to do a format and reinstall on one of your drives and possibly switch to vista.
 
Forceman said:
Firefox also has a turbo load feature - can't remember the exact name they call it, but it leaves part of the program in memory so the next time you load it it opens much faster. Search google for firefox turbo load or something, I'm sure you'll find it.

Actually, I'll save you the time:

Type about:config into the address bar and hit return.

set "browser.turbo.enabled" to "True"
Click to expand...


thats a neat trick, it wasnt even listed in my about:config but i added it anyway and it speeded up so firefox loads instantly now.
 
A raptor or other very fast hd does actually make a noticeable difference. Getting a few and putting them in raid helps even more (though not as noticeable, except on windows load time).
Even faster than that would be a 15k rpm SCSI drive (or a few in raid). Those require an addin card and some extra setup though. They are also more expensive per gigabyte and you have to pick the right one to actually be faster (one with a desktop usage mode).
Top rung would be something like an IRam drive or two, but I dont think that is very feasible for day to day usage. Its more of an epeen benchmark thing .
 
As several folks have pointed out, how long it takes a program to load is mainly a hard drive issue. Have you defragged your drive lately? That might help.
 
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