Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

2 computers - inferior one is faster

Collapse
This topic is closed.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • 2 computers - inferior one is faster

    I have two computers - the first is an Emachines thingie, windows 7, AMD dual core 1.6 ghz processor, 4 gigs of ram, and some crappy Nvidia 256mb video. basically what seems to come in all cheap computers (Im guessing).

    Now on for second computer - Acer, windows 7, quad core 3.1 ghz processor, same ram and video.

    Why does the emachines run better? All my games run a little choppy on the acer, as if its not actually a brand new acer that I bought a week ago. it's running like an old crappy computer that still uses xp and a single core processor and might have a half gig of ram if you're lucky. Why does it do this to me?

    I hope wal-mart accepts returns on computers.

  • #2
    Do you have detailed specs for each one? I find it hard to believe that any new computer would have only 256MB of VRAM, so I suspect it isn't really the same graphics card.

    Comment


    • #3
      Sure thing, here we go:

      Good computer: Emachines, AMD Athlon II x2 250u 1.60 ghz processor. 4gigs of ram.

      video card - nvidia geforce 6150se nForce 430. 256 ram.

      That's what I got so far I dunno if you need more on that one.

      New Computer: Acer, AMD Athlon II X 4 645 processor, 3.1 ghz, 4 gigs of ram. video card: same as above.

      I realize these computers are Wal-mart specials and are never going to be top of the line. I just dont get why the supposedly better one runs crappier.

      Comment


      • #4
        Oho - the 6150SE is an "integrated" graphics chipset. It's part of the m/board and relies on the RAM attached to the CPU.

        Which means that it's performance depends a great deal on the quality of the RAM fitted. Are both of them using two identical 2GB modules?

        There's another wrinkle: the power management on the Athlon II and Phenom II can be confused by a single-threaded workload such as a game, which Windows inexplicably likes to switch between the available cores. Try setting the power configuration to "Always On" or "Maximum Performance" and see if it helps at all.

        Comment


        • #5
          I used SIW and couldn't find the actual name of my ram, however i found that the ram on the newer computer looks like its better, altho I'm no expert in that area. But it looks like it faster anyway, running at 667 mhz as opposed to the 400 mhz on the older computer.

          Also the older one says something about DDR2 and the other one is DDR3.

          I also changed the performance we'll hope that works.

          Comment


          • #6
            Okay, it's newer and faster RAM, but is it using both channels or only one? 2x400 is better than 1x667.

            Comment


            • #7
              Don't see anything about either of them with channels. I assume they're both just one?

              BTW Thank you for your help I appreciate it!

              Comment


              • #8
                An Athlon II should always be capable of running dual channels, as long as both are actually populated. A good place to start when checking for this is CPU-Z, which can at least tell you how many modules are fitted.

                (It is possible for two modules to be fitted on a single channel, but that would be astonishing incompetence on the part of the builder.)

                What you should see is either two 2GB modules or four 1GB ones. If there is a single 4GB module then that machine only has half the memory bandwidth available that it should.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Looks like they're running dual channels! What else should I look for?

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    You could check that the graphics drivers are up to date - easiest done by attempting to install the latest version anyway - and that nothing in the background is eating CPU time.

                    Since both machines are running Windows 7, try looking at the Windows Experience Index scores to see if anything obvious is shown up by that.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Yep I checked the windows score thing, they were all the same except for the processor. Been updating drivers too. CPU doesn't seem to be too overloaded either. Who knows...maybe I just got a lemon.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        I highly doubt it, but is the e-machines using an SSD (Solid State Drive)? Those will help a machine really fly.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          An SSD would show up on the WEI score too. A mechanical disk will show a maximum score of 5.9, while most SSDs will be 7+.

                          Worth asking what anti-virus is in use. Some antivirus systems (especially the ones commonly bundled with a machine) are much less efficient than, say, Avast.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            I got malwarebytes onboard. Only did one scan though and that was a few days ago. And with the extensive downloading I'm doing to get all my stuff on this machine i suppose i could've caught something.

                            I dunno if this is a good thing but typically when i get a new computer the first thing I do is remove all the extraneous crap that comes with it. I want my OS, a word processor, don't want your crappy browser or your SuperAwesomeExtreme Toolbar that comes free!!!!!

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              MBAM is NOT a virus checker! It checks for spy/mal/crapware.

                              If you haven't installed a true virus checker, and you're not getting MS Security warnings, then most likely Win7 has defaulted you to using MS Security Essentials. Which, surprisingly, does a pretty good job and uses few resources (compared to McAfee or Norton).

                              If you had Norton/Symantec, then be sure to also download and run the Norton Removal Tool (NRT) to make sure you get everything out of there. Yes, Norton is so badly written that you need an extra tool to uninstall it.

                              For free AV programs, my favorite is Avira. It has always placed in the top 5 among ALL checkers, and recently took top honors from a Brazilian 'zine for finding foreign (non-English) viruses. Since the majority of nasties seem to be coming out of .ru, .ch, .tw, etc., this is an important factor to consider.

                              Also, after you've got everything set up, software-wise, the way you like it, download and install "CCleaner" (the first "C" stands for "Crap"). This will clean out your registry, get rid of temp files and buffers, and just get rid of the... crap... that accumulates. You only need to run this about once or twice a year, as Win7 does a pretty good job of keeping things tidy.

                              You can also use the tried-and-true "msconfig" to check to see what's running at startup. On Win95-XP, click "Start --> Run... --> {type}msconfig {enter}". On Vista/W7, "Start --> Search --> {type}msconfig {enter}". Once launched, the tabs you want to look at are "Startup" and "Services". Under Startup, you'll see a list of all the programs and utils that load up. Uncheck those you don't want - if it's something you need, then go back and re-check it. Then click on Services, check the box below labeled "Hide all Microsoft Services" (as those are usually needed), and you can Google any entries to see what they are/do. Disable those you don't need, and restart.

                              Hardware-wise, you may want to poke around in your BIOS and see how much memory you can re-assign to your video. The memory is pooled (shared) with main system RAM, so if the current setting is 256M, then you have 3.75GB left over for the system. If you're able to bump this up to 512M, then you're left with 3.5GB for the OS. Still a pretty good size to run things.

                              If you seem to be having problems with games, look at your DirectX (NOT ActiveX) settings/updates, and check for sound card driver updates. Most folks don't think that the sound would affect the video, but when running games, it can slow down things to where you think the problem is video, when it's actually the audio handling causing the video to "hiccup" (I ran into this very problem way back in the Win98 days with Nascar and a Soundblaster card.)

                              If you're not searching for files on your hard drive all the time, then turn OFF "indexing". Go to "Computer", right-click on the hard drive, select "Properties", and at the bottom of the window, you should see a check-box that says "Allow this drive to be Indexed for faster searching". Uncheck it, and you're good to go. Note that this does not deactivate searching, it only makes it take longer to actually search for files, since it doesn't have a pre-built index to work from (to build this index, it scans the drive while you're doing other things, and you'll notice that just sitting there twiddling your thumbs will have the drive periodically hammer away for a few minutes). The less work your hard drive is doing when indexing is more work it can do to run games/work.

                              Finally (at last!), if you need a good word processing program, I can recommend two good ones: Libre Office, an offshoot of OpenOffice.org (now owned by Oracle), and AbiWord. Libre is an entire suite, like MS Office, but it allows you to install just those components you're actually going to use. If you're not going to be using formulas, then skip the math/latex component. Also, it imports and exports to MS Office formats fairly well (some things are still a work in progress, as MS has been perpetual poopie-heads about making things compatible). Conversely, if all you need is a good word processor, then AbiWord fits the bill. It was one of the first to have bi-directional (Arabic, Hebrew) typing on the same page. It's small, full-featured, and awesome.

                              barcode

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X