New processor and motherboard = hardly any performance increase 5

[Ciaran]

I used to have a 650mhz amd athalon, i upgraded to a amd athalon xp 1600+. I got a new motherboard with it because my old one only supported up to 1 gig processors. There seems to be no performance increase, appart from a slight fps increase on counter strike. Applications still load the same.

I have installed all the drivers for my motherboard and the bios recognises the processor (as well as other windows apps)

I have 256meg of PC133 SDRAM.
How can i increase the performance of my system?

 

[stoneman4]

You might consider replacing the SDRAM with DDR memory. I'm assuming that your new main board supports both SDRAM and DDR. Those I've seen so far deliver disappointing performance when used with SDRAM.

 

[jaeddy]

Well, two obvious questions are:

What are the spec's of the Hard Drive?

and

What video card are you running?


The reality is that increased CPU speed is unlikely to lead to dramatic performance increses in average applications (even a nearly 3x increase in CPU speed). The drive for ever faster cpu's ignores the fact that for the average home user, the system they bought last year is massively overpowered in relation to the uses they put it to.

Your Hard Drive is hands down the biggest system performance bottleneck in any computer. If you have a blazingly fast cpu, with a super-hot chipset, and bleeding-edge video coupled with a clunky old ATA66 hard drive, that drive will drag down your performance drastically. The system can proceess comands at an astounding speed, but can only drag data off the drive (or write data to the drive) at a very limited rate.

Assuming this is your problem, look in to a new ATA133 controller and drive (or even ATA166), or go with whatever the latest Ultra-Uber-80X-QuintupleWide SCSI that is now available. And don't get cheap and go for a low-rpm drive, get 7200rpm, minimum.

 

[Ciaran]

Before i got my new motherboard and processor i had a tnt2 16 meg agp graphics card. I upgraded to a G Force 2 MX 200 64 meg card and i still had no performance increase.

I think it is probably the hard drive that is slowing everything down because everytime you try and load anything you get that terrible loading sound all the time.

I have a maxtor 31536U2 drive
"

http://www.maxtor.com/Maxtorhome.htm"

Supports ATA/5 for up to 66 MB/sec data transfers
512 KB SDRAM Cache Buffer
5,400 RPM Spin Speed
< 9.5 ms average seek time

What do you think i should upgrade - the ram or the harddrive? i can only afford one.

 

[Enigma666]

Ciaran,

I have always been soarly disappointed when using SDRAM with an Athlon, especially an XP. The nice thing about Athlons, especially the socket processors made as 1 Ghz and higher, is that they support a virtual 266 Mhz front side bus (&quot;virtual&quot; meaning that it will support ingoing and outgoing commands in unison at 133 Mhz a piece). If you use SDRAM, you are not getting anywhere near 266, sometimes, not even 133. So, your problem is probably due to your choice of RAM. Consider upgrading to PC2100.
Also, you may want to consider upgrading your video card, I'm not quite sure what you're running right now, but you can get a Geforce GTS 32 MB DDR for about $50 or the Pro version for about $80. If you can't afford that, go for an MX model (in-between $30-$50). That should make a difference in the video card. Also, if you know what you're doing (or you know someone who does) configure the CMOS to the optimum user settings, as your hardware seem that they would be able to handle them. Hope this helped.

- Enigma666
(Jonathan)

 

[Ciaran]

I have configured my bios settings to optimal settings. Is the hard drive ok? And does it really have much affect on games (eg turning antialising on, currently if i turn it on most games become unplayable even at 2x).

How much is it likley to cost for either ddram or a new hard drive (40 gigs hard drive or 256 meg ram). I live in the uk.

 

[ceh4702]

An ATA 100 Hard Drive that rotates at 7200 rpm might increase the speed.

Also try looking at the CDROM and activate the DMA on the CDROM in the BIOS.

Sometimes the motherboard has software to make it run better when windows doesn't recognize all of its hardware components.

I don't know how good the video card you are using is. I use a Visiontek Geforce2 GTS-V 32MB DDR OEM video-out-only video card. I like it better than my other computer with the Readon VE 32MB DDR video card.

I have 2 new computers One has an Asus A7V266-E motherboard with 128 Meg of RAM DDR with 1.2 Gig Athlon, and the other has a PIII/Celeron Asus TUSL2-C with 128 Meg of PC100 SDRAM and a 1.2 Gig Celeron. I can not tell much difference, if any between the two when I am playing games. I think the Visiontek video card on the Celeron is actually faster. It only cost me $50.00 at

http://www.newegg.com.

The Celeron board also has the latest PIII Intel chipset compared to the Via KT266a chipset. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[Ciaran]

But what should i get: ddram or a new hard drive? and how much will it cost?

 

[paparazi]

I am in the UK!!!!
256 PC2100 DDR ram currently about £60
Seagate Barracuda IV 7,200rpm 40gig around £88
Bit more than in the States (as usual us Brits get scewed on prices)
Go to Dabs.com, eclipse-computers.com, ram-direct.com.
What motherboard have you got?
The chipset really determines how fast it will go.
Martin Vote if you found this post helpful please!!

 

[ballistic]

I'd check to see what spec hard drive your motherboard will support (my guess ata100).7200RPM is necessary for lively performance.Your current hard drive would be my guess for your being the bottleneck.DDR2100 (PC266) did provide
better performance than PC133 when used on my ECS K7S5A
motherboard with an Athlon 1.4 noticeably.
I'd probably go for the new drive first,heck you were probably needing more space anyway.Save the DDR for your next present to self.

 

[Ciaran]

I also have a ECS K7S5A motherboard. I will take your advice and get a new hard drive.

 

[paparazi]

I have seen dozens of system builds around this motherboard and if there is a problem it is nearly always cured by swopping from SDram to DDram.
This board just don't like to be run on SDram, that is not to say that there arn't any out there running OK on SDram , but they tend to run alot more stabily, with fewer faults and quicker with DDR.
Note* early versions had a high returns rate (in certain configurations) they just wouldn't run properly, fixed with revision 1.3. Martin Just trying to help, sometimes falling short, I am only human after all.

 

[FatesWebb]

the harddrive is most likely gonna boost your speed the most for the buck. I have seen systems that can load winme in 10 seconds, and then you upgrade the hdd to ata 100 or better and WHAM you can load winme in like 2-4 seconds flying fast.

from your system specs it is either the HDD or you could get DDR RAM but Ill bet the HDD is gonna be the best for the buck

 

[Enigma666]

The Hard drive will only help in the startup, trust me, I've been an Admin\Tech for the past 4 years, five in September. DDR RAM will up the memory bandwidth from around a gigaflop (a gigabyte of information in transfer), to 2.1 gigaflops. The difference between ATA66 and ATA100 is only around 20 MB\sec, as the description is not true to the function. TRUST ME, I build multiple systems weekly and I build and configure networks for a living. If you want your computer to load up a few seconds faster, get a new hard drive, because I guarantee that's all that will happen, if you want to enhance EVERYTHING ELSE but the startup, buy new RAM (DDR), I promise, your frame rates will go up, along with your overall memory bandwidth.

- Enigma666
(Jonathan)

 

[Ciaran]

I bought some DDRam but still there is absoloutely no performance increase .
Maybe it is to do with a bios setting? Here are some of mine which may be significant...
CPU Speed = 133/133mhz (highest it goes)
DRAM Frequency = 133mhz (this can only be changed in cpu speed)
DRAM timing confuguration = fast (can be set to ultra)
SDR/DDR CAS Latency = SPD
SDR/DDR RAS active time = 6t
SDR/DDR RAS precharge time = 4t
Auto Detect DIMM/PCI Clk = Enabled
CLK GEN Spread Spectrum = Disabled

I dont understand how my computer can still have NO performance increase after changing;
TNT 2 16 meg --> G force 2 mx 200
older motherboard --> ECS K7S5A motherboard
256meg SDRAM 133mhz --> 256 megDDRAM, im not 2 sure on the speed

I would have thought that at least games would have run faster because they do not access the hard drive all the time.

 

[FatesWebb]

since he says applications still load the same, LOAD being the verbage AGAIN it will take a faster hard drive to help here. no matter how fast your ram is you still have to LOAD it off your slow disk, sure once loaded your system will be much faster, and counterstrike will get some more FPS from the DDR, provided virtual memory isnt being excessivly used.. but LOADING is slowed by the harddrive. and I could go &quot;trust me I have been doing this for 12 years, I build systems all the time and I am a networking specialist&quot; but I really dont wanna go into a contest just stating the facts.

The point is you want faster loading get a faster harddrive, you want faster performance otherwise get faster ram...

 

[Ciaran]

I have no fps increase at all on any game. What would the best virtual memory setting be on winxp pro with 256 meg ram? My current setting is 382meg ( i tried setting it to the minimum but windows xp just placed the recomended 382 meg back on my system partition. In the virtual memory settings it did not show up which is strange.)

 

[FatesWebb]

best setting is default, (suggested) never lower the maximum. win xp does a good job of managing this, really all you can do is make sure you have enough ram for what your doing on your pc so it doesnt have to use too much vmem.. these days you should be ok with 256 but best is like a gig...

 

[Ciaran]

I used sisoft Sandra 2002 to test my processor + ram, they all performed as they should, but that hard drive was unbelievably bad.
i managed to get £100
What is the best hard drive i can get with that money (including p+p)? (i live in the uk)
best meaning fastest, i need it to be about 30-40 gig

 

[ballistic]

I run Maxtor 7200 RPM drives on my k7s5a with 256 mg of PC2100 aka PC266 mostly due to local availability and support.I have had no problems and throughput is excellent.
I built almost the mate of yours 4 months ago and I found it to be smoother and stabler on DDR,but the difference in
responsiveness came when I replaced my 30 GB 5400 RPM Quantum with the Maxtor.Been there dude,A good gamebox is a continuos string of upgrades.