XP runs slow - is a P3 450 mhz too little CPU?

[steve2003]

P3 cpu with 512mb memory - installed xp-home and systems runs slower - especially web access. I wonder if I should look into a cpu upgrade - perhaps to 1 ghz??

 

[wolluf]

Upgrading cpu should obviously help - but XP should run fine on your spec. You say 'runs slower' - than what (win98/ME?). It quite possibly would run a little slower on this speed processor - but not excessively (and you've got good amount of RAM - which XP can take advantage of, win9x can't really). Did you do a clean install of XP, or upgrade former operating system (because if upgrade, that could be contributing to it being slower - backup, clean install and reinstall apps is best way to go with XP).

 

[Jesuspower]

Yes, 450 mhz is too slow. Turn off System Restore. It hits the processor too much. If you had 600 Mhz, You would not know the difference. -God Bless

 

[wolluf]

Jesuspower - 450mhz runs XP absolutely fine (we've got one cyrix 333 machine with 128MB RAM running it fine & a 450 with 192MB - again no problems. Not lightning fast, but no complaints (obviously not serious gaming machines, but are serious users of Office Apps). Very usable.

 

[Jesuspower]

If you turn off system restore, It should run substaintially faster. Expeecially if it was upgraded.

PS: this thing needs a spell check. -God Bless

 

[ceh4702]

XP has a lot of extra image quality enhancements so set the performance settings on the advance tab of system properties to ADJUST FOR BEST PERFORMANCE.

I think you really need about a 1 Gig Processor and 256-512 Meg of RAM to run XP Properly. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[Jesuspower]

"I think you really need about a 1 Gig Processor and 256-512 Meg of RAM to run XP Properly." - ceh4702

Sooo true. But not all of us are that privileged. -God Bless

 

[steve2003]

thanks to all who responded. I just heard from someone that pc speed is largely dependent upon hard disk speed - i.e. 133 ata drive 7200 rpm is preferred. your thoughts?

 

[Jesuspower]

That is also true. I dont think the speed is that much dependant on the Hard Drive. -God Bless

 

[wolluf]

Steve,

PC speed is down to all its elements - and also depends on what you are doing. So, obviously if you spend a lot of time move large amounts of data a fast hard drive is good (and as windows is continually reading/writing to hard drive its always a good idea to have fastest available).

So, if you're rich enough, just keep your machine at the cutting edge in all respects.

Most of us can't afford this - so some sort of trade-off (upgrade one or two components, and hope they have best impact). I don't know what your criteria are, what you use most etc (eg, if you were a gamer, fast, high memory graphics card would probably be priorty). I'm not a gamer - and one thing I've noticed since memory prices dropped and I can afford what I think machine needs - faster processors don't make a lot of difference to apps I run. But that's my use. Your original post suggested a decrease in performance since XP installed - but now you just seem interested in performance generally.

 

[Jesuspower]

Try creating a new user, use that user and watch how fast it runs.

This is why, last week, I now have the following accounts.

Administrator: Maintainence
Install: Software (un)installation
Guest
My User account
-God Bless