Where's the bottleneck?

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wee_ag1

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Jan 13, 2006
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(Sorry if this is in the wrong forum... couldn't find where it might fit - feel free to move it!)

Ok, first let me say that I know I have an older system and I have limited income right now to make it better - so, taking the specs below I need some suggestions on what would help boost performance in the system...

The system is used for a digital photography and graphic design business, no gaming, but very intensive graphically for work and lots of multi-tasking (photoshop, illustrator, indesign, dreamweaver). The main lag I've come accross is viewing thubnails of photos in XP - I'm sure there are issues elsewhere. I've tried ending all background apps and taking XP to it's minimum graphic settings, it's still unbearably slow (a minute or two to load a screen full of thumbnails).

Don't know if it helps, but I downloaded the free version of 3dMark05 and got a score of 1406.

System:

P4 2.6GHZ
1GB Ram 133Mhz SDRAM
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB - AGP
20 GB IDE HD
30 GB IDE HD
Windows XP Home

Not sure what else might be useful. I've built computers before, it's been a few years though so I'm a bit out of the technology loop (got this one from Gateway years ago and added the P4 chip and ram). It seems the system should perform better than it does though...

Looking to spend a couple of hundred ($200-$300) to get me through until the spring when I hope to have saved up enough to buy something newer.

Thanks a ton for any help!

Brian
 
The bottleneck is probably your hard drive. A good example is what you stated: it takes forever for thumbnails to display.

Those 20GB/30GB drives are old and probably spin at 5400 rpm on an ATA 66 or 100 bus and have 2MB caches.

New systems have at least 7200rpm drives, large 8 or 16MB caches, and SATA150. You could theoretically speed things up with a new fast hard drive. Anything above 7200rpm w/ a 8mb cache will do.

-mpjesse
 
Another massive bottleneck is your memory if that really is single-rate SDRAM and not DDR SDRAM. If your processor is socket 478, then I'd say look at getting a 'new' (to you, you'll probably get it used/refurb) motherboard that supports DDR and dual-channel memory. Then get two sticks of DDR for dual-channel operation. Look into a motherboard with the 865 chipset.
 
I would agree.
1)New HD (these are cheap).
2)As fast RAM as possible for the MOBO (look up the specs).
3) Spyware/ adware? (perhaps time for a new OS install with the new HD install?)
 
Yes, reinstalling Windows on the new HDD would definitely help things.

Beware that your motherboard probably can't handle memory higher than PC133. The only possible thing u can do w/ ur memory (without upgrading ur mobo) is finding some CAS 2 PC133 RAM. (if you have a gateway the memory is likely clocked at CAS 3). You can check what the latency is using CPU-Z, which can be downloaded here: http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-131.zip

Like Silver said, if ur P4 is a Socket 478 (this is unlikely since ur mobo does SDRAM), you can get a new motherboard and better DDR SDRAM.

At any rate, run CPU-Z and it'll tell you everything you need to know.

-mpjesse
 
I'm pretty sure that it would be socket 478 because I don't think that socket 423 went up to 2.6GHz. I don't even know if it went over 2 GHz. Still, I could be wrong.

Either way it seems really odd to put a 2.6GHz CPU onto a motherboard with PC133 RAM, and especially a gig of it. :?

Not that it's impossible mind you, but it does make me question whether some spec hasn't been mistaken somewhere. I think I'd sooner believe that it's a 1.6GHz Willy.
 
Thanks for all the replies... I forgot to give the mobo specs, realized that as soon as I left the house after posting.

mobo is an Intel D845HV. Here's the specs for it: http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d845hv/sb/cs-008815.htm
It is Socket 478 and it is indeed a P4 2.6 - which is the max I could go on the board. Hyperthreading is not an option as the board doesn't support it, and I don't think the cpu can be enabled anyway (I looked into this a while back).

I've tried updating the BIOS for it and it fails every time so not sure what is up there.

I recently did a format and re-install, maybe 2 months ago and had the problems then.

As for the hard drives, not sure of the formats that is says I can get - are any of them better than what I got? ATA 100/66, Ultra ATA 33, and PIO supported.

I'll check out CPU-Z in when I get back to the house (I'm at work now).

Thanks again for the help!!
 
As for the hard drives, not sure of the formats that is says I can get - are any of them better than what I got?
Click to expand...
Yes.

Um... great! What would that be?

Oh and I did fail to mention that these are high quality photos, 4-5MB each and there could be 10 - 100 photos in a folder, though only 20 or so on the screen at one time. But no matter the number in the folder, if the screen is full of pics, it takes a good minute or two to load the thumbnails.
 
Check whether the Primary IDE Channel is running in Ultra DMA mode or PIO mode. Right Click on My Computer, Properties, Device Manager, IDE/ATAPI Controllers.

If Windows sees 6 or more CRC errors on your hard drive it automatically switches off DMA access and all disk I/O goes via the CPU in PIO mode, slowing everthing down considerably.

To reset this flag follow Microsofts guide found in: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472/
 
Hard drives are 7200 RPM (master) and 5400 RPM (slave)

The slave has the photos on it.
Click to expand...

Most modern drive are 7200, but logic and mechanism make them faster than your old 7200 HDD anyway. But, the choice you did, by placing your picture on the 5400 is great. They run cooler and are way more reliable than the 7200 one, and this is good for storage. But don't remember to keep a backup on something else anyway.

When I look at your system, i would say that the whole thing is a bottle neck to modern apps..

The rather slow CPU (yes, Willamette P4 were that slow) coupled with SDRAM just make the thing slow.

Simply putting a nice 939 3000+, with the Asrock DUAL SATA2 (to keep your existing video card) and 1 gigs RAM of generic Samsung RAM(really cheap now) will make you a 3 time almost faster system, with your current HDD
 
Simply putting a nice 939 3000+, with the Asrock DUAL SATA2 (to keep your existing video card) and 1 gigs RAM of generic Samsung RAM(really cheap now) will make you a 3 time almost faster system, with your current HDD
Click to expand...

So I'm looking at:
AMD 939 3000+ - $115
Asrock Dual SATA2 - $75
1GB DDR400 RAM - $50

spending $250 and keeping everything else will get me a significant performace improvement?

Also note, I've got a Sound Blaster Live Value and USB 2.0 PCI cards - will these go in the PCI-Express slots (This whole PCI-Express and PCI-x change has lost me)?
 
When you load up that folder, check your task manager and see what the CPU and PF usage is. If the CPU is in the low and your harddrive buzzing away, then your harddrive is the bottleneck...

For the 939 set-up, you will see a great improvement in everything, but if you reuse those HD's you have, then more than likely you will still have slow-loading folders and apps.

Edit: PCI-Express and PCI-x are very very different.
 
Yeah I know PCI-e and PCI-x are very different... I found the answer to the backward compatibility.

I'll check the cpu and pf usage tonight when I get home and post the results.

Ya'll are great - thanks for the help!
 
That's about the same as I have here but I have 2x512 megs to have the CPU running dual channel. If you get 1 memory stick, you'll loose 6-9% performance in some benchmark, but unlikely to see a difference in real life usage.

As for HDD, they will not be as fast as new one, but the loss would be maybe less than 5%, depending of the age of it. Don,t care for the Slave 5400.. for storage, it is enough.

You'll likely not need the USB2.0 card, as the board has some but both card should work in PCI slot (not the PCI-e ones).

Just make sure that the PSU is up to the task with new component. With your current config, I'm confident a good quality 350w will be up to the task, but if you later want to upgrade the video card to a new PCI-e one, get something more like 450w good quality. I just put a nice thermaltake quiet PSU that output 430w and it is more than enough. They are not the best, but are good anyway and quiet.
 
Then, later, you could just put a nice big and fast SATA hdd in, and your 5400 in an USB2.0 enclosure that you may keep for storage and backup.

I did not see the part where you talked about the picture before, but it is sure that the 5400 don't help for the time, but the CPU should be able to transform the thumbnails faster for display which would help.

Bt this basic system should be a good base for building a nice one later when needed.
 
...(got this one from Gateway years ago and added the P4 chip and ram). It seems the system should perform better than it does though...
Click to expand...
Dumb question: Will a new ATX mobo fit in the Gateway or does it use a proprietary size?
 
...(got this one from Gateway years ago and added the P4 chip and ram). It seems the system should perform better than it does though...
Click to expand...
Dumb question: Will a new ATX mobo fit in the Gateway or does it use a proprietary size?

Actually I just looked at the mobo and it is a micro-ATX - 9.6"x9.6"


Hmm... so back to the drawing board :?


Also...
You can check what the latency is using CPU-Z, which can be downloaded here: http://www.cpuid.com/download/cpu-z-131.zip
Click to expand...
Latency is 3.0 Clocks under 133Mhz, 2.0 Clocks under 100Mhz

I have no idea if this is what you need to judge the speed and have no idea what it means...

Thanks again for the help, and I'm all ears on a cheap good Micro-ATX mobo!
 
Yeah, i reckon. That old, small hard drives you have are really slow. Your PC133 SDRAM is crap too. No matter how much slow RAM you have it's always going to be slow. That stuff isn't even DDR!! (double data rate).

It'll run a treat when you buy it a nice 8MB cache hard drive (at least a UltraATA 80gig) and get faster memory.
 
since a new mobo wont fit in the case have you thought of adding anoter $50 ish to the total and going for a new case with PS (i know the included powersupplys arnt great but im sure it will manage) as well to give you something to work from as you get around to fully upgrading the system :)
 
Possible explanations:-

1)
Windows XP can save its own thumbnail data in the directory (hidden file Thumbs.db).

Explorer window ->Tools menu -> Folder Options -> 'View' tab
unselect 'Do not cache thumbnails'

2)
Defrag hard drive. Better with a defragger that will arrange folders by name then files by name because that's typically the order you and windows will try to read them. eg. O&O.

3)
faster hard disk because it may be reading 100 times 4MB (400MB) with 8MB of thumbnails (especially the first time). That can be a lot of random reads depending on file structure (fragmentations, read order). It's probably 10% CPU/RAM and 90% disk IO limited at the moment. Windows may also be reading/writing metadata (eg. last access time, security info).
Old HD may be ATA33 or limited by other device connected to channel (eg. old optical drive is PIO ie. 16MB/s, no DMA). DMA allows the CPU to process JPEG's etc. while waiting for next IO. Newer HD's can read more in a single spin, more data per second sequentially, cache more from current track for future use(I assume), cache more writes before interrupting read (I assume), more random seeks per second (7200 vs 5400rpm drives, 10Krpm even better).

4)
MB limitations. south bridge (ICH2) connected to northbridge (MCH) using 266MB/s link. Uses 1.06GB/s max data rate system RAM, typical 600-800MB/s bandwidth. 3.2GB/s link to CPU (from MCH) under utilised. I doubt that the MS explorer and picture viewer are threaded enough to make use of HyperThreading. USB is v1.1 ie ~1MB/s so ext. HD is worse for this and USB2.0 isn't ideal either. Move newer ATA HD purchased above to new system when you have the money. A 250GB 7200rpm drive with 32GB of data will be faster (eg. upto double) than a 40GB drive of the same HD family filled with the same 32GB of data.
 
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