My computer seems unusualy slow

[post726]

Hi all,

This is my first post at Toms Hardware. I am unsure if this is the right place to post my question but am sure someone will tell me soon enough if it doesn't belong here. Earlier this year I decided I need a computer upgrade to prepare for Starcraft 2's release. When I got it all set up I was disappointed with its speed in Windows XP professional but attributed it to buyers remorse. Later I did a fresh install with Windows 7, trying both 32 and 64 bit, only to be shocked at how poor it performed. I had to disable all the bells and whistles to get windows 7 to come even remotely close to running smoothly. When I installed Starcraft on my computer I was appalled at how slow it ran. I went back to XP and it ran slightly faster but still the game was super laggy. To make matters worse, I gave my old hardware to my little brother and he is able to run it with little to no lag. My computer's hardware out specs his in all dimensions but is running slower. If anyone notices anything that I should be concerned about or a potential bottle neck please let me know.

My computer's specs are:

OS: Windows XP Professional
Mother Board: ASROCK A780GMH/128M
Processor: AMD Phenom(tm) 9950 Quad-Core Processor 2.6 GHz
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT
Power Supply: Topower 500W XPT Titanium Series Power Supplies
Hard Drive 1: Western Digital WD800JB-00CRA1
Hard Drive 2: Western Digital WD2500AAJS-55B4A0
Memory: 4 GB (see below)
Corsair CM2X1024-6400C5DHX (2 1-GB sticks)
Crucial BL2KIT12864AA804 (2 1-GB sticks)

All Drivers are up to date.

Sorry for the lengthy post and any input is appreciated.

 

[post726]

Sorry that i have been away so long. My girlfriend came in town for a week and long story short my computer problems sat on the back burner. Ever since I ran the benchmark tests my computer has been running even slower. Firefox is laggy along with everything else now. Applications are taking a while to open now.

I noticed when looking at the HDTune results that I accidentally ran it on my SATA drive. here are the results for the 80 GB:

Transfer rate
Min: 1.6 MB/s
Max: 47.0 MB/s
Aver: 16.9 MB/s

Access Time: 17.6 ms
Burst Time: 10.3 MB/s
CPU Usage: 31.1%

These results are considerably worse but I am not familiar enough with them to know if that is the problem. Should my next step be installing the OS on a new HD?

 

[post726]

Well, it has been silent a while. I did a fresh install on a sata HD but there is no noticeable improvement. I am getting desperate. Please someone post some more ideas.

 

[Computerrock1]

Turn off hardrive cache

 

[post726]

do you mean disable write caching? From what I understood write caching improves performance at the slight risk of losing data at power loss.

 

[mirulkimi]

maybe the bestest way, u format ur windows...it should be fasteest....lol

 

[post726]

Thanks mirulkimi for the helpful reply.

I think that we have ruled out the bad memory. It has passed a memcheck and trying either brand by its self only degraded performance.

I doubt that it is the HD either. I ran perfmon while the game was running and HD disk queue was only full while loading. Later in the game while it was still running at around 2 fps the HD disk queue was near 0.

I bought a new PSU, but it showed no improvement so I returned it. PSU ruled out.

After contacting blizzards tech support I ran a trace route, which showed that the network connection to their sever was not the problem.

That leaves the proc, mb, and video card. Any ideas on how to narrow it down further, or if any of my above conclusions seem erroneous?

Thanks again for all of the help everyone. I know that we are close to getting this one solved.

 

[Guest]

I think it is a video card problem. Cards are cheap now. a 9600 is like 40-60 bucks. Why not go up to a 9800, or get an AMD 5770, 4870, or something like that. I don't think that Nvidia is the best for an AMD board. Also, be sure to use det destoryers to remove all the Nivida drivers if not reformat your HD, and put it on your fastest drive. Even a 5830 might do the trick. You have a quad core and the 790 chipset. If you have the G chipset you can crossfire with an AMD card, make sure you dont have crossfire set in the bios. Remember a 8800 = 9800 which is about equal to a 250 performance wise. Your 9600 is too old for starcraft 2. I am sure it is not your quad core unless your board doesn't see all four cores. If you use CPU-Z it shoud tell you how many cores you have. Also, with XP you have to reformat from time to time, and make sure to save to CD's Sp1, SP2, and fixes. I would not run Sp3, many people I know that run SP3 their computers are running slower and I think it is a bug MS put in to get you to upgrade to WIn 7 or Vista. Stick to XP, download the SP's if you don't have SP2 or 3, and download the security downloads to disk and save them as you will have to reformat XP about every 6 months. That has been my experience with XP. As far as your machine a new video card is needed, I saw this once I saw your specs. A new game requires you to run better hardware, and the 9600 which is a 8600 is way to old to play new games with. Good Luck. I hope you have the money to upgrade and send the PSU back that they suggested you buy. I would tell you to buy intel, but AMd performs well, and if you have a good video card you should be fine. Also if you have the G version of the MB see if you can crossfire your MB with a 5770 or a 5830 as this will give you better speed as AMD is made to work with AMD cards espeically if it is the G model.

 

[post726]

Thanks for the reply. I appreciated the level of detail and I will post back later with the results.

 

[Raidur]

Did you say intel's burn test didn't work? Maybe try a prime95? Sounds like a very unstable CPU.

A 9600GT isn't top notch but SC2 is a pretty CPU dependent game. Since your old PC ran it better with a single core and slower GPU... and software is ruled out, I'm thinking you have a hardware malfunction issue.

If your new GPU doesn't work out (if you go that route) you might want to look into a new CPU and/or mobo.

 

[post726]

Well I just ran prime95 and my computer blue screened shortly after. So something seems to be bad with the hardware...

I don't have any cooling other than a stock heat sink and fan on the CPU, but the case redirects the air from the fan outside of the case. I have read that my video card is bad about cooling because its fan blows the hot exhaust right into the case instead of outside. how do I find out if this is a heating issue vs faulty hardware?

 

[post726]

well I ran CoreTemp and found that my u is running idle right now at about 60 C. When I started to stress it it climbed into the low 70s, dropped back down and crashed shortly after. I just went to AMDs website and found that the max temp for my CPU is 61 C. http://products.amd.com/en-us/DesktopCPUDetail.aspx?id=447

I am going to get some decent cooling for my computer now. Would a hot CPU run slower? I was under the impression that it just crashed when it overheated.

 

[Haserath]

CPUs should throttle when they get too hot, or blue screen. This would cause it to be having the exact problems this shows. 64-bit software taxes the CPU more=hotter CPU thus a lower WEI score, since it would throttle more.
Maybe the stock cooling isn't on the CPU tight enough? I would check that out before you decide to change anything. Make sure that if you take the cooler off you reapply thermal paste.

 

[Raidur]

Yikes! There's your issue!

Like Haserath said try re-seating your current heatsink with new compound and see if it helps. That is definitely your culprit.

Gah can't believe we missed that, figured we knew the temps. :/

 

[post726]

Well, when I pulled off the heatsink I noticed that under the fan was a crapload of dust. The lack of air flow was the culprit. I cleaned it out, reseated it with new thermal compound and the thing is running like a champ. the temp was idling in the low 40s and capped out at 53 while playing SCII. Thanks for all of your help. I mean it. You saved me.

I Love You Guys!