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PC SPEED |
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COWFOOT 
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Joined: 26 September 2005 Status: Offline Points: 1088 |
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 Topic: PC SPEEDPosted: 03 January 2009 at 2:32am |
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What spec tells how fast a pc works?
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norty303
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Joined: 18 August 2004 Location: Eastbourne Status: Offline Points: 8806 |
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Posted: 03 January 2009 at 3:19am |
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Lots of them unfortunately.
Processor clock speed, number of cores, Level 1 and 2 cache on the die
Amount of RAM and the speed it runs at (as this dictates the overall clock speed of the board and processor)
Hard disk spin speed and access (and onboard cache again)
Graphics card processor speed, graphics RAM (and the speed more than the amount mainly once you get over 512mb)
It can only be as fast as its smallest bottle neck
I have a quad core 6600 intel processor, 3 GB of fast RAM and an 8600GTS graphics card. At the moment my thing limiting the speed when multitasking is the fact it has only a single disk, which means the speed of the read/write heads over the platters is what slows it down. When i add another physical disk and spread my common tasks between them it'll speed up significantly as it can pull data twice as fast (theoretically, it won't be like that in practise)
My old PC had 4 physical disks and it was quicker doing some tasks despite being older.
The quad core is overkill at the moment and not enough applications support it, so it sits quite idle a lot of the time. Edited by norty303 - 03 January 2009 at 3:21am |
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My laser stuff: Frikkin Lasers
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COWFOOT
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Posted: 03 January 2009 at 4:08am |
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Hi Norty:I was looking at an advert for a HP Pavillion Desktop PC system featuring Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600 with 6GB memory & 640 GB Hard Drive
Super Multi DVD burner with Lightscribe Intel GMA 3100 Graphics 15-in-1 memory card reader Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with SP1 Someone said this is a real mother of a pc. |
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nickyburnell
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Posted: 03 January 2009 at 10:03am |
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The HP you list is indeed a very high spec. HOWEVER, as it has 6gb of ram it is on a 64bit version of Windows. 32bit Windows can only see 3.2 gb of ram, (Vista cheats and says 4gb). 64bit is fine if you don't want to run a lot of older apps or have older hardware (printers etc) that 64bit drivers are not available for. Theoretically 32bit stuff will run but check it out first. Also HP customer support is dire. They also tend to use noisy Seagate hard drives for some reason. The above PC isn't really a gaming box either, if that bothers you?
Personally I would stick with 32bit and buy a Dell with Vista Business, choosing the downgrade to XP, thats if if I was to buy from a mfr rather than build. It's easy online, choose Inspiron, customise & buy, add service, change to Vista Busineess/XP, ....
Unless you want Vista?
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It's everything, not everythink!
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COWFOOT
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Posted: 03 January 2009 at 5:47pm |
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Hi Nicky:Much thanks.Food for thought from you and Norty.
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norty303
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Posted: 03 January 2009 at 6:09pm |
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I was going to reccommend the Acer I got from Comet back in November as it represented exceptional value for money (I've always built my own machines but this one was just 'too' cheap to pass up') but it appears they're no longer doing them.
Dell I think still has their 'outlet' website where you can pick up cheap machines that people have ordered and then changed their mind, refurbs, etc and still comes with all their warranty stuff. Used to be better value before everyone knew about it (like ebay) but still a good place to look.
Their processor codes are a bit funny, basically DCP is Dual Core Processor, ICQ is Intel Core 2 Quad and ICR2 is the Intel Core2Duo
I've always sworn by the Barracuda drives, and have always put them in machines I've built for other people. Never had a bad one and never felt they were overly noisy either. Failure rates reported on technical websites seem to indicate they're more reliable than WD Edited by norty303 - 03 January 2009 at 6:12pm |
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My laser stuff: Frikkin Lasers
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nickyburnell
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Posted: 03 January 2009 at 8:35pm |
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Oooh gotta disagree there. Seagate 7200/7's had no noise suppression due to Seagate getting caught out using the software without licence (allegedly), horrible graunchy things, most of them. There are four dead ones (controller failure) in my workshop.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/07/14/compaq_and_seagate_sued/ was the start of it
I've had six 7200/10 with bad sectors in their first year in 2008, the 7200/10 (thinner one) has now been badged as a Maxtor DiamondMax21. It is noisy, I have one here just installed, doesn't give that smooth feeling of the WD's. I used to swear by Seagate around the U6 period but no more. Used upwards of 100 WD SE since the black cased ones started in 2004, had maybe two or three fail, the older silver cased Caviars were bad though. Hitachi seem to have carried on IBM's click of death but interestingly Exelstor (who manufacture for Hitachi) dont? Never had a Samsung fail, not one out of loads. Bit clunky compared to WD though.
Interestingly different experiences
 PS, 1984 WD Caviar an the bench for a DOS model aeroplane machine, dodgy AT power supply, drive perfect. 24 years of 200mb service
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Bespoke
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Posted: 03 January 2009 at 9:08pm |
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WOW i wish i knew about PCs: Someone said to me that i can ''clock'' my pc to run faster ?? is this true ?
They also said it will burn the pc out quicker ......... !!
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nickyburnell
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Posted: 03 January 2009 at 9:48pm |
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Best way to make a pc run faster: Maintain it properly. Defrag lots, NEVER take any notice of the, "You don't need to defrag" nonsence in XP or Vista, just force it. Download CCleaner and run it weekly. Download Malwarebytes and run it weekly. Run chkdsk /r monthly (not if raid 5) and get lots of memory (RAM). 2gb on XP 3+ on Vista. Never have Norton or McAffee or similar. IMHO NOD32 or Kaspersky are best. For a free one then Avast.
Overclocking, don't bother Tim, you'll never notice the difference for emai & web.
If it's still crap, format & start again, some are never gonna be good though.
PC's are just like any other subject, ask Google ;) I'm a Windows/Network/Domain person. Lev can help with Linux I believe (this may be the future, Microsoft shedding lots of jobs). Norty obviously has lots of experience...maybe a section where we can help members, mods?
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toastyghost
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Posted: 04 January 2009 at 1:47am |
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Cowfoot: The one poor spec on that machine is the integrated graphics - will be fine for basic usage but you'll be wasting the quad core processor and that much RAM on that kind of thing anyway. If you wanted to do something like CAD, video editing or other intensive applications you may find the graphics chipset is a major limiting factor, particularly if you plan to not turn off all the visual bells and whistles in the computer's interface.
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tb_mike
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Posted: 04 January 2009 at 2:17am |
Yes its true. Its just like boyracers increasing the boost on the turbocharger. It can be done, but it entirely depends on the vehicle and how long you want it to last |
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tb_mike
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Posted: 04 January 2009 at 2:21am |
I format about 3-6x a year and dualboot with Xubuntu.Gets rid of any malware I accumulate,plus keeps it fresh and fast. Most of the PCs I come across that are slow have had kids filesharing, or silly adults clicking everything in IE5/6. Normally these ones have never been formatted since buying them also. |
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They also tend to use noisy Seagate hard drives for some reason.