Maximus vii Hero upgrade

[Oksana Ekjord]

I am wandering if its worth it to upgrade my 4 years old Maximus vii Hero with new components or wait for a couple of years to buy a new computer. For last year computer started to be more slowly than before. I use computer for multitasking and online gaming and for a year now I god
experience that its much slower than before. Tried to run all kind of windows (7,8,10), but each is slow. Tried to use Advanced system care in order to speed up performance, but that doesnt help. Called to microsoft customer service in attemt to change settings, but everything was fine. Tried to change internett provider and god up to 80 mb speed, but that didnt helped at all. So now Im wondering if som uppgraiding can speed up performance or should I just wait and try to save som cash for a new pc? HELP

UserBenchmarks: Game 61%, Desk 75%, Work 56%
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 - 87.5%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 780 - 61.8%
SSD: Samsung 840 Evo 250GB - 79.7%
RAM: Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 C10 2x8GB - 63%
MBD: Asus MAXIMUS VII HERO


Internettest
PING
2
ms
DOWNLOAD
76.04
Mbps
UPLOAD
81.38
Mbps

 

[Aeacus]

Care to give a link to your UserBenchmark results?

As far as looking at the hardware, it's solid and you should not have any slowness unless your PC is filled with bloatware or infected by malware.
Also, where exactly is your PC slow? At the desktop (opening/closing folders)? Playing offline games (that doesn't require internet connection)? Playing online games (that does require internet connection)?

 

[Oksana Ekjord]

Care to give a link to your UserBenchmark results?

As far as looking at the hardware, it's solid and you should not have any slowness unless your PC is filled with bloatware or infected by malware.
Also, where exactly is your PC slow? At the desktop (opening/closing folders)? Playing offline games (that doesn't require internet connection)? Playing online games (that does require internet connection)?

 

[Oksana Ekjord]

It is slow at online games (flash games). I tried a lot of different browsers but it didnt helped. I was thinking that maybe I should do some changes in bios or chrome setting for developers (flags or something like that) , but it was to difficult to understand everything there. And some times freezing at desktop. But I can live with that))) Online flash games are place where I need pc to run a little faster, page loading for the most. Just for one year ago I could beat in competition gamers that used accelerating engine. But now Im so slow like gamers hwo have 8-10 years old hardware. And its bothering me that I cant get any solution to make my pc performe faster than others. This is benchmark results
UserBenchmarks: Game 61%, Desk 75%, Work 56%
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790 - 87.5%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 780 - 61.8%
SSD: Samsung 840 Evo 250GB - 79.7%
RAM: Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 C10 2x8GB - 63%
MBD: Asus MAXIMUS VII HERO

 

[Aeacus]

Well, i can see your results as a text, what i asked was as a link. Since then i can look from userbenchmark.com your RAM usage, CPU usage, driver info and other important info your copy/paste results doesn't show.
E.g like so: http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/8752874
(above link is from my Skylake build)

Optimizing browser based gaming isn't quite my ball park but i know thing or two about it.
Some further questions:
1. If you start your PC and the first thing you do is loading your Flash game, is performance fine but then performance degrades over time?
2. Is there anything else using that Flash plugin? (e.g Youtube or another tab open with music/video/etc)
3. Is Flash updated to the latest version?
4. Does clearing the Flash temp files help? (guide how to do it: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/977699)
5. Does toggling Hardware Acceleration for Flash make a difference? (guide how to do it: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/891337)
6. What's the system specs and process resource use when the slow performance is noticed? (Open Task Manager, go to the Performance tab and note the entries under the Physical Memory (MB) section, then into Processes tab and list the Memory and CPU use for both browser and Flash processes, flash will usually be FlashPlayerPlugin_something_something and there may be multiple processes for each of these).

 

[Oksana Ekjord]

Well, i can see your results as a text, what i asked was as a link. Since then i can look from userbenchmark.com your RAM usage, CPU usage, driver info and other important info your copy/paste results doesn't show.
E.g like so: http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/8752874
(above link is from my Skylake build)

Optimizing browser based gaming isn't quite my ball park but i know thing or two about it.
Some further questions:
1. If you start your PC and the first thing you do is loading your Flash game, is performance fine but then performance degrades over time?
2. Is there anything else using that Flash plugin? (e.g Youtube or another tab open with music/video/etc)
3. Is Flash updated to the latest version?
4. Does clearing the Flash temp files help? (guide how to do it: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/977699)
5. Does toggling Hardware Acceleration for Flash make a difference? (guide how to do it: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/891337)
6. What's the system specs and process resource use when the slow performance is noticed? (Open Task Manager, go to the Performance tab and note the entries under the Physical Memory (MB) section, then into Processes tab and list the Memory and CPU use for both browser and Flash processes, flash will usually be FlashPlayerPlugin_something_something and there may be multiple processes for each of these).

No, performance not good from the start. Nothing is using flash that I know. In Chrome are flash integrated, so you dont need to think about it. With other browser I tried to do that doest make a differents. Max performanse on CPU are around 20% , Phys Mem around 40%, at loadonf and CPU 3% Phys Mem 13 % while using. Couldnt find any FPplugins.


Here is the link http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/9040148

 

[Aeacus]

While Flash is default add-on in browsers (e.g Chrome, Firefox), you still need to update it. And when Adobe Flash updates, it does that system wide, including all web browsers. From here you can check what Flash version you have and what is the latest version (system wide),
link: https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/about/

Looking at your hardware, including info from userbenchmark.com site, hardware wise, there's no issue and system performs as it should. So, it's most likely that you have software issues.
Win 8.1 is one of the worst OSes ever released and OS as a whole could be an issue. You said that you also tested Win 7 and Win 10. I'd like to know how you tested those? Via virtual machine?

While the system you have is somewhat old, it's still competitive even at today's standards and your components are well balanced. For example, my Haswell build (full specs with pics in my sig) is very similar to your PC while weaker performance wise (i5-4590 + GTX 760), still, my wife can play all her browser and Steam games on it just fine without any slowness whatsoever.

If you don't have patience to troubleshoot software issues, it's easier going with newer PC. Also, there's not much you can upgrade within your PC. Best CPU would be i7-4790K which performance increase over i7-4790 is so little there's no point to waste time and money on it,
comparison: http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-4790-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4790K/2293vs2384

While you could also upgrade your GPU up to GTX 1070 without any bottlenecks within system itself, better GPU won't boost Flash performance.

Let me know if you're willing to troubleshoot software issues since i have few ideas left what to try. If not, start saving money for a new PC.

 

[Oksana Ekjord]

I have updated browsers, have to try from adobe. I used win10 for a while, and decided to go back to try win7 for better performance. That didnt work and I couldnt get back win10. Computer came with win 8, thats why I stopped with it. But you have right , its worth of all. I have reinstalled each time, and tried to use computer with each windows for couple of months , tried different seetings to speed up performance, tried everything i could find on websites and tested it, but nothing helped. Tried to change bios settings, but it can get difficult sometimes , when you try så many things that iyou dont remember anymore what you have done))) så again need to reinstall everything. Im using now advanced system care and wandering if I should stop to use programes like that? We can troubleshoot software issues. Would be nice to havethis computer for a couple more years) I builded it by myselv and it was pretty good for four years ago)

 

[Aeacus]

Are all those OSes you tried: 7, 8.1 and 10 legal?

Also, what are the specific games in question where you experience slowness?

As far as Advanced System Care goes, i can't tell if it helps or hurts the PC's performance since i have never used one. Also, i prefer to keep my system free of bloatware and i even don't use antivirus program. Since there's just no need for them for me.

To rule out OS issues, try booting into GNU/Linux and try via GNU/Linux how your system behaves. Easiest way to do it is to create live bootable GNU/Linux USB drive. Here's link to the tool to create it,
link: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/

It isn't hard to set it up. Though, you'd need at least 4GB USB flash drive. Oh, you can use almost any GNU/Linux distro you like. I too have live bootable GNU/Linux on a USB drive just in case my Win decides to crap out and i can't access my storage drives. Here's full list of supported distros,
link: http://www.pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/#Supported-Distros

If you don't know which GNU/Linux distro to use then you can go for Lubuntu Desktop (uses very little system resources and i also have it on my laptop) or Linux Mint (i have it installed on my USB flash drive and i prefer it over other GNU/Linux distros i've tried).
Lubuntu Desktop distro download: https://lubuntu.net/downloads/
Linux Mint distro download: https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

Just download GNU/Linux distro, plug in your USB flash drive, start the Universal USB Installer and follow on-screen instructions. Once the installation is complete, reboot your system and after POST, select you USB drive as bootable drive. So that your PC boots into GNU/Linux. Once in GNU/Linux, open web browser and look how your games behave. Though, do note that GNU/Linux has long boot-up time since entire OS is on USB flash drive which read speed is much slower than that of a SSD.