Not quite computer recording, but about computers.

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pandamonk

pandamonk

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Hi guys. About 6 months ago I bought a new family pc, an Acer Aspire M1610, with a Pentium E2160 1.8GHz dual core cpu and running vista. It came with 1GB of ram, which I quickly upgraded to 4GB. Anyway, we don't use this pc for much, just for the internet, mainly YouTube, but manage to max out the cpu very very easily. I do regular Defrags, disk cleanups, etc. and have as little programs open on startup as possible.

Now, the windows performance info shows:
CPU: 4.8
RAM: 4.1
Graphics: 3.1
Gaming graphics: 3.0
and Primary hard disk: 5.7

So it seems like the CPU is running well. Could it be the Graphics card that's slowing the whole pc?
 
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Here's info about my graphics:

Display adapter type - SiS Mirage 3 Graphics
Total available graphics memory - 320 MB
Dedicated graphics memory - 256
Dedicated system memory - 0
Shared system memory - 64
Primary monitor resolution - 1440x900
DirectX version - DirectX 9.0 or better
 
Bearing in mind you have a slow CPU, combined with an integrated graphics chip, it could be a combination. If you have itunes, a virus scanner and YouTube running, without considering any of the other background apps, it won't run especially fast.

What do you mean by max the CPU out? I can't imagine it would be that slow, it should be useable? Maybe you are expecting too much?

Go to start > run > "msconfig"

This will bring up a window. Go to the "Startup" tab. This is a list of applications that run on startup. Remove anything you don't need.

I am unsure whether you can replace the graphics card on an acer laptop? I have never tried it. :)
 
Waffleness said:
Bearing in mind you have a slow CPU, combined with an integrated graphics chip, it could be a combination. If you have itunes, a virus scanner and YouTube running, without considering any of the other background apps, it won't run especially fast.

What do you mean by max the CPU out? I can't imagine it would be that slow, it should be useable? Maybe you are expecting too much?

Go to start > run > "msconfig"

This will bring up a window. Go to the "Startup" tab. This is a list of applications that run on startup. Remove anything you don't need.

I am unsure whether you can replace the graphics card on an acer laptop? I have never tried it. :)
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By maxing out I mean it jumps to, and even holds at, 100% quite often(on the cpu meter). It still runs, but gets quite slow, especially when videos are loading. Maybe I am expecting too much...

I wouldn't have thought 1.8GHz DUAL CORE would be that slow. Before I bought the pc I did a bit of research on the cpu and it seemed like a decent budget cpu. I don't even use itunes and it maxes out even without a virus scan although the virus scan does usually make it a lot worse. It sometimes maxes out even with just a few windows open, especially if they contain videos.

Like I said, I don't have many programs running on startup, ie. I check msconfig regularly.

Another problem I had with this pc is that after a while internet explorer seemed to slow down or even stop working (acting like I was offline even though I could still chat on msn) and the only way to solve it was to restart the pc. I've more or less solved this by now using Google Chrome, but it's still not quite perfect.

Thank you for your response.
 
My first point of call in sorting out your slowness would be to check that there are no viruses and other gremlims hijacking your system. You've probably checked this, but it does sound very much like it to me.
 
pandamonk said:
By maxing out I mean it jumps to, and even holds at, 100% quite often(on the cpu meter). It still runs, but gets quite slow, especially when videos are loading. Maybe I am expecting too much...

I wouldn't have thought 1.8GHz DUAL CORE would be that slow. Before I bought the pc I did a bit of research on the cpu and it seemed like a decent budget cpu. I don't even use itunes and it maxes out even without a virus scan although the virus scan does usually make it a lot worse. It sometimes maxes out even with just a few windows open, especially if they contain videos.

Like I said, I don't have many programs running on startup, ie. I check msconfig regularly.

Another problem I had with this pc is that after a while internet explorer seemed to slow down or even stop working (acting like I was offline even though I could still chat on msn) and the only way to solve it was to restart the pc. I've more or less solved this by now using Google Chrome, but it's still not quite perfect.

Thank you for your response.
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Ok - just because your CPU is at 100%, doesn't mean its maxed out. It will run at 100% for a very short period of time. Its not like a car where you run up through the gears getting faster and faster. Its either 100% working on the task you asked it, or its doing something else.

Also a dual core CPU isnt 'twice' as fast as a single core CPU of the same spec. Applications are written to take special advantage of 2 cores. Its not like a second CPU, its more subtle then that.

I would ignore the CPU meter. Just judge performance purely on how fast applications are responding.

When you say, its slow when videos are loading, could this be your internet connection?
 
gecko zzed said:
My first point of call in sorting out your slowness would be to check that there are no viruses and other gremlims hijacking your system. You've probably checked this, but it does sound very much like it to me.
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Yup, I run regular virus checks.
 
The best way to check if it's the CPU and if so whats causing it is to go into task manager>processes, sort descending by CPU and see what's using the CPU. If your getting 99% for 'system idle process' most of the time, then it's not the CPU. If anything else is caning the CPU, check what the process does (you can google the process if you're not sure).
 
Waffleness said:
Ok - just because your CPU is at 100%, doesn't mean its maxed out. It will run at 100% for a very short period of time. Its not like a car where you run up through the gears getting faster and faster. Its either 100% working on the task you asked it, or its doing something else.

Also a dual core CPU isnt 'twice' as fast as a single core CPU of the same spec. Applications are written to take special advantage of 2 cores. Its not like a second CPU, its more subtle then that.

I would ignore the CPU meter. Just judge performance purely on how fast applications are responding.

When you say, its slow when videos are loading, could this be your internet connection?
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Well it can run at 100% for a long time if I have a few things running.

I know it isn't twice as fast.

Applications do respond quite slow sometimes, usually when the cpu meter is up at 75-100% (quite often).

I thought it could be the internet connection, but I do have 8MB broadband(the most you can get in my area), and it's usually when the pc's been on a while that the videos slow it down and jitter etc.

If I watch the cpu meter, it does tend to lie around 75-100% when videos are loading if the pc has been on a while. If I just turn it on, it's a lot better, but I don't want to have to restart every hour or so.
 
FWIW, I just looked up which video card slot you have. If you had AGP i would have mailed you my old AGP video card to see if that would help at all :rolleyes:.

I'm no expert on the case but if you're really only using it for youtube and trusted internet websites, I don't think you need to have the anti-virus running all the time. I would just use it for periodic checks if anything. You can also run Spybot Search and Destroy if you havent, to remove spyware. Turn off windows firewall and the anti virus if youre browing trusted sites and not surfing unknown caverns of the net.

You can also keep your desktop blank and run windows classic toolbar styles to take a load off of the memory.

I had an amd 1.8 single core on my last comp and browsing the net without anti virus or firewalls was a breeze. Keep in mind I did have a nice video card which may have taken some of that load once things got a little heavier. But I'd think your processor would not be the culprit, especially on just web browsing.

Now, when I was editing audio, that 1.8 single core WAS suffocating...:o
 
I just read more specs and maybe I missed it in your posts, but Windows Vista is a hog in all sorts of ways. If you have the option to run windows xp of some sort, I think you'd see a fair performance increase.

In any circumstance, I hope you can get your comp running to your liking again. Sorry if I've been more of a nuisance than assistance. Good luck. Eric:)
 
legionserial said:
The best way to check if it's the CPU and if so whats causing it is to go into task manager>processes, sort descending by CPU and see what's using the CPU. If your getting 99% for 'system idle process' most of the time, then it's not the CPU. If anything else is caning the CPU, check what the process does (you can google the process if you're not sure).
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Strangely, I don't have 'system idle process'.

When I'm running a ONE YouTube video, chrome is at the top and shows around 40-60% with the second being dwm with 10%. If I open a second tab to allow another video to load, chrome jumps to over 70%(IE used to be worse!) and the first video jumps quite a lot. The cpu meter jumps around 90-100%.

All I have open is MSN, this homerecording window, and window with two YouTube tabs. in the task manager there isn't much else apart from zonealarm(firewall) and AVG(antivirus).
 
Erockrazor said:
FWIW, I just looked up which video card slot you have. If you had AGP i would have mailed you my old AGP video card to see if that would help at all :rolleyes:.

I'm no expert on the case but if you're really only using it for youtube and trusted internet websites, I don't think you need to have the anti-virus running all the time. I would just use it for periodic checks if anything. You can also run Spybot Search and Destroy if you havent, to remove spyware. Turn off windows firewall and the anti virus if youre browing trusted sites and not surfing unknown caverns of the net.

You can also keep your desktop blank and run windows classic toolbar styles to take a load off of the memory.

I had an amd 1.8 single core on my last comp and browsing the net without anti virus or firewalls was a breeze. Keep in mind I did have a nice video card which may have taken some of that load once things got a little heavier. But I'd think your processor would not be the culprit, especially on just web browsing.

Now, when I was editing audio, that 1.8 single core WAS suffocating...:o
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We use this pc for banking so i don't like to turn off the firewall and antivirus. I do only perform periodic checks with AVG though. It's not using much cpu.

I don't think it's the cpu either. I think it's probably the graphics card, but I wanted to get some opinions from people who know a lot more about pcs than myself.

Thank you so much for your offer. I really don't know what video card slot it has. I'm from the UK though :P
 
Erockrazor said:
I just read more specs and maybe I missed it in your posts, but Windows Vista is a hog in all sorts of ways. If you have the option to run windows xp of some sort, I think you'd see a fair performance increase.

In any circumstance, I hope you can get your comp running to your liking again. Sorry if I've been more of a nuisance than assistance. Good luck. Eric:)
Click to expand...
Thanks, yeah i kno that about Vista, but i thought I'd give it a go. See if there could be anything else which would help. More RAM certainly helped a bit, but I think there must be more I can do.
 
Another thing that makes me think it's the graphics card is that if I full-screen YouTube videos it goes all jittery. This even happens with window media player if I've had the pc on a while.
 
ocnor said:
The first step is to remove zonealarm which is a huge resource hog. Then run "CCleaner" to remove the crap that it leaves behind. You also might want to switch from AVG to AVAST which is a better virus scanner. Run "Superantispyware" which finds things that spybot doesn't. Then if you still have problems upgrade your video card.


http://majorgeeks.com/CCleaner_Slim_d4191.html

http://majorgeeks.com/Avast_Home_Edition_d1968.html

http://majorgeeks.com/SUPERAntiSpyware_d5116.html
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What should I use as a firewall?
 
ocnor said:
If your computer is configured correctly with Firefox as your default browser and you don't use crap like remote desktop you really don't need a firewall.
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I used to use Firefox but went off it. I use Google Chrome just now.
 
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