Is there a bottleneck in my system, and how can you tell?

[brimah87]

Hello! Trying to figure out if I should replace any of my parts.

CPU: AMD Phenom II x6
GPU: XFX Radeon R9 390
Motherboard: MSI Military Class 890fxa-gd70
RAM: Corsair 8GB DDR3
PSU: 750W bronze, don't know brand
OS: Windows 7 Home

Is there an obvious bottleneck? If so, how did you figure that out?

I'm thinking I might need more RAM, as programs take a pretty long time to open. I wanted the six core so I could run multiple programs at once, but it seems like it isn't really working too well.

I found a few tips from other threads about figuring out where your bottleneck is, such as lowering resolutions in a game and seeing if the FPS goes up. Any other suggestions? Thanks!

 

[Zerk2012]

Your using a 6 year old slow at todays standards processor.

 

[giantbucket]

so, no SSD there, just a plain hard drive? defrag that b**ch. clean the registry with CCleaner.

 

[brimah87]

@ Zerk2012: Thanks for the reply! If I understand you correctly, you are saying that my old CPU is slow by today's standards?

And does this slowness translate into reduced performance of my other components, or is it a standalone issue?

@ giantbucket: Thanks too for the reply! Yes sorry I forgot to mention I have a 500GB hard drive. I just did a clean install a few days ago, so I don't think that I need to clean my registry. I do have an un-opened 1TB SSD that I'm planning on returning to BestBuy, should I install it in my system?

 

[giantbucket]

electroincs don't just slow down with age - they work fine or they die. it's the software that causes things to be "slow". it's possible that the web sites you visit are trying to load so much crap that an older machine just processes it slower, while a new machine can process the "junk" faster and not seem that overwhelmed.

if these are NEW programs, or programs with updates - it's just the result of sloppy programming, or rather programmers assuming you have a lot more resources to use up so they don't care about fine-tuning the software for cleaner performance. they'll fix bugs, but won't worry if it causes things to run slower - since you're "expected" to have faster hardware year after year anyways.

 

[brimah87]

@ giantbucket: thanks for that review of hardware and software! I'm still looking for an answer to my topic question about bottlenecking with my specific component list, any more insight in this regard?