2.4GHz Celeron running slow like a 400MHz box - how to diagnose?

[zoubidoo]

Hello,

I have an Intel Celeron 2.4GHz running nearly as slow as my 400Mhz laptop. Another machine, a Sempron 2600+ is lightning fast in comparison. I have put up with it for over a year, but now I've had enough. Could someone suggest how to go about troubleshooting?

I have an ultimate boot cd to hand, so plenty of tests possible, but where should I start?

ECS P4S8AG v1.3, bios up to date
Intel Celeron 2.4GHz, freq 2400.188Mhz, L2 Cache 128Kb
2 x 1GB Buffalo PC3200 400Mhz CL3 Non-ECC Unbuffered
CPU/DRAM ratio 1:1
Linux Ubuntu 8.04

Cheers,
Zoubidoo

 

[royalcrown]

It's slow because it IS a celeron and nothing you can do about it, literally.

 

[cal8949]

have you tried a reformat

 

[rubix_1011]

^^ Format/reinstall OS. If you still have the problem, you know its hardware.

 

[KyleSTL]

It's slow because it IS a celeron and nothing you can do about it, literally.

What a stupid comment. Yes a Celeron 420 is slower than a Pentium E2140, and a Celeron D is slower than a Pentium 4, but seriously, his comparison is legit and can not be blaimed on hardware, he's comparing apples-to-apples, and you think oranges (more modern tech) are better, well DUH!

Agreed with everyone else that's answered so far, reformat and install OS again. If the problem persists, post again for more advice.

 

[royalcrown]

kyle, a sempron is based on the athlon xp design and my 1700 plus (1.4 ghz machine destroyed the 1.6 celerons we used at work, by double at least, so it is not as stupid as you think !

Plus you're not taking into account that it isn't even a "d" model and it's a northwood or worse...need a link ? ok :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Celeron_microprocessors#.22Willamette-128.22_.28180_nm.29

so yeah, nothing he can do to get any real speed out of it, reformatting might make it faster, but it will still be slow and the sempron will still keep up with it !

 

[rubix_1011]

The biggest uncertainty here is software. If the OS has been installed for a while or there are viruses, malware, tons of services, etc running...then you are having a problem due to excess processing going on. That's why we all recommend a format and OS install and see what the performance is like. A 2.4 celeron isn't really all that bad for web browsing, docs, mild games, etc, but it shouldn't run like a 400mhz PC either.

 

[KyleSTL]

Yes, the Sempron 2600+ should be a little faster than a Northwood-based Celeron, but if it's crawling like an old P2 machine (the title implies a likeness to a 400mhz processor), something is wrong.

And 'real speed' is in the eye of the user. If he's comparing technology from a few generations ago from different companies (Intel and AMD) and similar model lines (Sempron and Celeron), they should be within ~20% of each other speed-wise. If he expects the Celeron to run somewhat comparably to the Sempron (which is precisely what he's stating), that's not unreasonable.

 

[zoubidoo]

Many thanks for all the suggestions.

I didn't think it was related to the OS, but I re-installed it anyway just to rule out the possibility. The slowness persisted.

However, I noticed that graphics card acceleration isn't being used by the OS. Could this be putting an extra load on the CPU? If so, it would explain why the system appears sluggish compared to the other machine which has accelerated graphics support.

I ran some number-crunching (just cpu and ram) on both machines and it turns out both perform (approximately) equally well. Now I wasn't expected that. So the impression of slowness appears to be related to graphics card acceleration (or lack of). It is amazing how much 2D graphics slows down a CPU!

Should I have found this quicker? Perhaps if I had profiled the machine by running benchmarks that tested cpu, ram, disk, graphics, it would have shown up immediately. Live and learn.

Now, off to look for a driver for the graphics card...

Thanks to you all again,
Z.

 

[KyleSTL]

That'll do it. Not having a graphics driver can have the feeling of a computer with very little power since it takes a while to render websites when scrolling or moving windows around the desktop. A proper driver should solve the persieved slowness. I assume you're using the integrated graphics (SiS Xabre 200).

This may help:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/showproduct.php/product/2245/cat/192

 

[zoubidoo]

That'll do it. Not having a graphics driver can have the feeling of a computer with very little power since it takes a while to render websites when scrolling or moving windows around the desktop. A proper driver should solve the persieved slowness. I assume you're using the integrated graphics (SiS Xabre 200).

This may help:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/showproduct.php/product/2245/cat/192

Thanks for the link Kyle. Very close guess, it's an integrated SiS Xabre 330. From what I can make out, there is no linux driver that allows hardware acceleration (DRI) and the company (now called XGI) hasn't released specs for any Xabre models.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=860449

As a desktop machine it's almost unusable. Unless I make progress on the driver front, this box will just have to become a number-crunching box.

Cheers,
Z.

 

[KyleSTL]

Bummer, one (-) about Linux distros - driver support for some attached equipment.

 

[falconzfan007]

Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86 GHZ ($150)