M11X R1 Sluggish

Hello,

I have an Alienware M11x R1. It has always been sluggish...theyve changed my motherboard and hard drive (for other reasons though), and it is still the same. Ive reinstalled windows multiple times.

BTW, by sluggish I mean having firefox open, and not changing tabs instantenously, stuff taking too long to load, or changing programs sometimes takes too long, etc.

I would ask you guys for 2 things:

- ways to make it faster
- how to measure its performance (and what I should get) so I can complain with alienware with proof

TIA! Would so soooo grateful if you could help me!

 

I have that problem, too. I can play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 fine, but when I browse through Firefox... it's sluggish and painful. I can click a tab, and it may take 2 or 3 seconds to load. Internet Explorer is worse. I can write entire sentences, an they'll show up 20-30 seconds later.

I've gone back to the original image, uploaded drivers, BIOS... but I get REALLY weird performance in web browsers and I can not determine why.

Youtube videos stutter (both on the Intel IGP and the Nvidia).

 

Whenever I see sluggish performance on a machine, it is usually because either the hard drive or CPU is maxed out.

When you experience sluggish performance, is there a lot of hard drive activity at that time? You can tell by looking at the eyes of the alien head power button right above your keyboard. If it's flashing so much that it is practically always-on, then your hard drive is getting pegged. Otherwise, check your CPU - is it being maxed out by anything during the sluggish periods? Are your power savings set to Battery Saver mode, which limits the CPU speed to 50% of max clock rate?

 

I'm on Power mode, CPU to full speed (and OC'd). Scrolling up and down in Firefox will send the CPU to 50-60%, and resizing the browser will take up 80-90%. IE adds about 10%.

It's weird as it only affects the browsers, and it's not a HD issue. CPU speed seems to be the issue, by why basic web browsers just on msn.com...

 

Assume you have the M11xR1 over-clocked. (Good)
And that you can successfully over-clock your CPU and have it stable.

If so, I'd say there is another process hog or rouge hardware device interrupting the system excessively.

Assuming you've checked all background processes and that you're not running the notebook as an SQL server or something. (Cool, just checking)
Assuming you have a pagefile and or you've let the system decide on performance settings in Advance System settings.

I'm a tab monster in Firefox, Opera and etc and have numerous tabs open.
I also have a manual Adobe Flash opener via an add-on and have advertisement blockers, leaving pages open with the rotating animated gifs and etc is well... just boring and a resource hog.

You've remove Alienware control center from the services list.

You have 0-5% CPU peak when the system is idle.

Some of us get a little bit excited about process working set, committed and sharable memory too, but that's beyond this query.

You have 4GB+ of memory

Virus scanners are run at known times.

You have a 7200RPM HDD with no errors or continuous background I/O

The reason I say all this is cause just a few minutes ago I noted I was playing a DVD (Integrated Intel mode) in the background occluded by my browser window.

Browsers were fine with millisecond responses between tabs.
So you guys have something seriously wrong.

So... M11xR1 SU7300 BIOS A05 and I'm going off like a frog in a sock with NO slow response on browsers or tabbing. Even running Flash player 10.2 beta to complicate the mix. No problems there either.

Winamp music player can be a bit of a recourse hog. But you're kind of aware it's open given the banging tunes being pumped out.

In general the M11xR1 is no slug in the sub 12" notebook category with an over-clocked CPU.

EDIT - Doh! to slow at writing (Not the system) as kent1146 has beaten me to it. Resizing the browser window does up the CPU as does Javascript pop-up window movement, but the recovery/response time is normally instant with millisecond response after the pionter is released.
I even had winamp going while I was test it.

 

How much ram are you running and what HD ? Do you have the CPU overclocked ?

 

Ive got 4 gigs of ram. Ive reinstalled many times, and its always like this. What diagnostic can I run to find out whats wrong ?

Dont even mention de Dell diagnostics Ive run those, and nothing´s come up!

 

New SSD