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what is bottlenecking my system?

S

scottatwittenberg

2[H]4U
Joined
Apr 10, 2002
Messages
3,306
what is making this computer so slow?

here is what i got.

pIII 750 from a dell
ecs motherboard
seagate st34313a 4 gig
wd caviar 4gig
128 mb simpletech pc133
generic 300watt psu

running XP pro with sp1 and all updates

i switched the ide cable from a 40 pin to 80 pin and that made no noticeable difference...
so now i upped the fsb to 114 or 112 or something and got it running at 840 mhz... no improvement..
the thing was running real cool before i o/c ed.. (75 degrees F i think) and i have yet to restart and check in the bios what it is at now.. but i am really pretty sure there are no heat issues..

anyways... this is not running like a 750.. it feels like a p200.. i use a 750 pIII at work with XP, a cheap ecs mobo.. and all that.. and it just runs so much better...

i have a celeron 800 on a gigabyte board that had 180mb of pc100 in it and 2 more of the wd caviar 4gig's and it way more stable and runs more smoothely.. it is running win2k pro though..

so anyways... what do you think? does xp just need that extra 64 mb of memory? (i do plan to get some more sdram, but i don't want too much since it is old) or is it my psu, or a slow hd??
 
Yep the RAM is the bottleneck. My dad had 128mb RAM on an XP machine and it was so slow just bringing my computer up, etc...
I put another 128mb in, it was a whole new computer!

PM me if you are interested in some cheap pc133 128mb RAM ($10 PayPal free shipping)
 
Your old hard drives are also a bottleneck, replace them with a modern 7200rpm HD.
 
hontestly?


everything...


in the short term, would have to be ammouant of ram, windows xp should use 256mb as the MIN. 512 is recomended, and 1 gig is "great"

after that, your Hard drives are as old as sin, I also imagine they are 5200 rpm (or less? :eek: ) put a good 40gb 7200rpm HD and you would notice a large diffrence, combine that with a ram upgrade and it would be huge.
 
Originally posted by Shapeshifter
hontestly?


everything...


in the short term, would have to be ammouant of ram, windows xp should use 256mb as the MIN. 512 is recomended, and 1 gig is "great"

after that, your Hard drives are as old as sin, I also imagine they are 5200 rpm (or less? :eek: ) put a good 40gb 7200rpm HD and you would notice a large diffrence, combine that with a ram upgrade and it would be huge.
Click to expand...

honestly... I run a PIII600@800 on Asus P3BF and 384 megs of ram as my secondary workstation and it's perfectly fine for everything besides gaming...
 
Originally posted by TheMostWantedPolishTwin
honestly... I run a PIII600@800 on Asus P3BF and 384 megs of ram as my secondary workstation and it's perfectly fine for everything besides gaming...
Click to expand...
yeah, all he needs is more RAM and a faster hard drive and it will be perfectly fine for web browsing/office/light desktop usage.
 
yeah, all he needs is more RAM and a faster hard drive and it will be perfectly fine for web browsing/office/light desktop usage.
Click to expand...
for sure. like everybody said. i would use at least 512mb of ram on XP system though. You could get away with 384, but for the price of PC133, just get 512, because you won't regret it. You'll beable to run WAY more programs at the same time with the extra ram. My mom and my grandparents both are using 256 on their XP systems and they are modest computer users when it comes to applications and such and they still run into problems with not having enough. I've monitored both of their systems with ram monitoring software and 256 just doesn't cut it. I can't believe for the life of me you are even up and running with 128. Unless you're using safe mode! lol jp. Put 512 in that sucker man. PC133 is very cheap!

That is step number one. Next you need a new hard drive. For modest usage do what dude said and get yourself a 40 gig 7200 rpm drive. Even if it doesn't sound like much, jumping from a 5400 to a 7200 rpm drive makes a HUGE difference is computer performance. Windows will load faster, ALL of your programs, data, and everything else will load faster. You WILL notice a difference with a new drive. You know, Givin you have these old 4 gig drives, I wouldn't doubt they spin at 3600rpm. Bottom line though, the ram is the first thing you need and the drive is second. The drive will not help you much if their is not enough ram for the hard drive to send data to and communicate with and 128 is most definitely NOT enough for an XP system. The two go hand and hand and they work together. Both are your bottlenecks, so I wouldn't skimp out and just get one or the other, I would get both and you will most definitely feel like you have a brand new computer. You can probably get your new ram and a 7200rpm drive brand new on ebay out the door at 75 bucks tops. Even less if you really look and you're lucky. Whatever size drive you get, just make sure it's at least 7200rpm's. If you do have a 3600 don't settle for a 5400 thinking that's good enough, cause 5400's are SLOW. Trust me!

Also, since you have two drives in your system, I'm guessing you have one for windows and programs and the other for data. If you want to keep that same setup with the new single drive you're going to buy, just partition it twice. That will give you two separate letter drives in windows to work with. Set 10 gigs for windows and apps, and 30 gigs for your data. Or half and half, whatever suites your needs. That is the way to go for sure, if you don't know how to do that, we'll help you out.
 
pc133 is cheap??? i think it costs too much..
also, the hard drives are 7,200 rpm... i know that a new 7,200 rpm would still be faster than an old one... but i don't think i need to go buying 40 gig drives and sticking them in obselete computers..

i will be happy when i get the computer in my sig back.. (that is a long story) and hopefully that will be soon...

maybe i will downgrade my pre 1ghz computers back to win2000
 
I agree with everything above.

Test your hard drive read/write speed. Even a 7200 rpm drive from the 4 gb era is going to slow any system down to a crawl.

You will need at least 384 mb of ram though, I have a pIII 500 on 256 running xp pro and its almost decent for most apps.
 
sdram is the damn problem there, but you cant use ddr ram can u. So I say upgrade the whole thing and make sure u get 512 ddr ram.
 
Originally posted by CleanSlate
sdram is the damn problem there, but you cant use ddr ram can u. So I say upgrade the whole thing and make sure u get 512 ddr ram.
Click to expand...

That's where you're wrong.

I'm using SDRAM in this system, it's not painful to use.
 
ok, can anyone reccomend a program that will test my hard drive speeds?

also, i had someone tell me that i should go to westerndigital's website, and download a program that runs in startup that will test my drive.. most likely then i can use the results of that test to RMA my hd and get a new one.. what do people think about taht? he said he has rma'ed a few wd drives and they were always good about it..
 
sisandra software

And uhh sdram is so sloooowww compared to ddr. (half as slow actually :D or mroe if yo uget newer ddr ram)

~Adam
 
Also diskspeed32, and HD Tach are nice. diskspeed32 is nice because it will test every cylinder on your drive and make sure the whole thing is up to par and not just part of the drive. it's also freeware.
 
Originally posted by scottatwittenberg
what is making this computer so slow?

here is what i got.

pIII 750 from a dell
ecs motherboard
seagate st34313a 4 gig
wd caviar 4gig
128 mb simpletech pc133
generic 300watt psu

running XP pro with sp1 and all updates

i switched the ide cable from a 40 pin to 80 pin and that made no noticeable difference...
so now i upped the fsb to 114 or 112 or something and got it running at 840 mhz... no improvement..
the thing was running real cool before i o/c ed.. (75 degrees F i think) and i have yet to restart and check in the bios what it is at now.. but i am really pretty sure there are no heat issues..

anyways... this is not running like a 750.. it feels like a p200.. i use a 750 pIII at work with XP, a cheap ecs mobo.. and all that.. and it just runs so much better...

i have a celeron 800 on a gigabyte board that had 180mb of pc100 in it and 2 more of the wd caviar 4gig's and it way more stable and runs more smoothely.. it is running win2k pro though..

so anyways... what do you think? does xp just need that extra 64 mb of memory? (i do plan to get some more sdram, but i don't want too much since it is old) or is it my psu, or a slow hd??
Click to expand...

Scott, Get more RAM. Go to at least 384 and you should be fine. Also, a cheap 20 gig 7200 RPM drive will do the trick as well. So for about $100 you should get a lot more life out of it. And when the time comes, make it into a Linux Box or something like that later down the line. Make sure it is 30 gig or UNDER as I am sure your bios will have issues reconginzing one bigger than that. Just my two cents...
 
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