Very slugish reformatted e1705, help please!!!

Ok, Let me start off with my specs...

Dell E1705

-2.0 Ghz Core Duo
-1024 MB ram
-geforce go 7800
-80 gig 7200 rpm hard drive
-High res screen
-9 cell battery
-xp media center editon
usually run 1440 resolution

Ok, i recently reformated the hard drive, removed all the ****py software they put on it. I noticed that every time i alt+tab out of a game, switch windows or multi-task i am noticing a very sluggish performance. Its gotten so bad that when i even pull up winamp (old classic version) while playing a game it can take up to 30 seconds to let me see it. I have the latest video drivers and i even tried to install dell chipset drivers.

The computer is great when on one task, like web browsing, or even gaming ( i get an average of 40+ fps in games like world of warcraft and quake 4) But if it try and multitask it just goes to ****. It acts the same way it did with all of that bloated software. Even my old desktops work perfectly doing the SAME EXACT THING without a dual core processor!!! (athlon xp 2600 geforce 6800gt)

So does anyone have any ideas why i would be getting this type of perfomance out of a nice machine?

 

try upgrading your RAM to 2gb. Most games take up alot of memory, and the more programs you run, the more memory you will use.

I also suggest optimizing your laptop. We have a guide on how to do this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=5787

 

But what i dont understand is durring the game its perfect, beter than the desktop i have, but when it comes to multi tasking... Like a dual core processor is meant to do it falls flat on its face and makes the music skip worse than ozzy ozborne

That guide is very good, and i pretty much did everything listed there and then some other stuff ive learned over the years, still didnt help. I think it may be a problem with software / windows

 

There's gotta be something buggy like maybe a corrupt driver, or the pagefile wasnt created, or some such. My machine with 1GB runs WoW in a window no less while I browse the web and have outlook open with zero lag. The machine has really impressed me with how well it runs with 1GB, and this is on MCE, not even a XP pro reformat.

Have you tried opening task manager and seeing whats using up all the CPU time when you switch apps?

 

Accually yes, nothing out of ordinary. I noticed before i reformated it acted the same way... I looked in task manager before i reformated and noticed there was 52 processes running (which is ridiculous) now its down to 32 or so processes after startup. Nothing takes up more than like 2 mb of memory except worldof warcraft or ie when im using it. Whats MCE?

I can also try to install my windows xp pro disk on the machine, do you think that could be it?

 

Sorry, for some reason i was thinking you said XPS.

I don't really know if this will work or not since i don't have a dual core, but somewhere i read you can tell software to use a one of the processors. I think you can do this in the task manager. This was a given solution for an iTunes problem that i came across recently. Most software on the market isn't designed to detect the dual processors, so it only sees one. I'm wondering if when you are running your game and all of the other things, that it is overloading one of your processors - making it seem like a single core.

I really don't know if you can do that or not.

MCE is the Media Center Edition from Microsoft. It is an operating system. I don't think using your xp pro disk will help any.

 

Last time I checked, I needed 1GB just to run WoW without lag let alone additional programs. Remeber, you are swaping out from the hard disk which, is the slowest moving component on your machine.

I would suggest upgrading to more memory, and faster if you can afford it. 667 DDRII while alot of people dont believe makes a difference, can increase game performance up to 15% alone

2GB should be sufficent for running WoW + additional program such as web-browser or winamp. Its going to have to be as I dont believe 955gm will cache more than 2gb ram.

 

Southergirl is right about this, most mainstream software does not support SMP (Symetrical Multi-Processing) <- spelling is wrong i know ), Games for sure do not.

However, when executing muliple programs, even if not mulitthreaded the system will see a performance increase because, an application requires exclusive access to the cpu, others get cued up waiting for the application to process whereas dual core allows 2 threads to run simultaniously. Therefore rather than waiting for an application -(a) to finish its job with the cpu, application (b) can move to the 2nd core and begin doing its work.

If an application is not mulittreaded, then it cannot address both cores at the same time.

 

very good, very good. How do i go about doing that? Sounds something along the lines of a raid. I did notice in task manager before that i did see the two different core's, and management between them.

About the two gigs, ive seen a couple of places as far as benchmarking that it didnt make that much of a difference going from 1 gig to 2 gig's of ram, for the money. But i have even tested the higher fsb theory myself with my desktop and i did see about a 15-20 % increase in first person shooter games. World of warcraft does take alot of memory, but my computer runs it fine with a gig. It was not worth the money from dell to upgrade the ram and further. I plan on going to newegg sometime and getting 2gb

 

I can tell you that I play WoW on a 512MB machine on ocasion and it runs very well with other stuff. On this E1705 I am on right now, logged into WoW, with Opera open as well as Outlook it multitasks very quickly. I do have the 7200RPM drive, but thats not a HUGE factor.

Anyway, I dont think setting CPU affinity will help in this case. What you can do is check in Control Panels/System in the advanced tab, click on Performance settings then the Advanced tab of the new window, and make sure your system is set to run Programs over system cache or background apps.

Also check and make sure you have a proper size paging file, as sometimes people set it to disabled without thinking and that can cause HUGE slowdown. For 1GB of RAM, at least 1500MB of paging file


Check out a image cap of my desktop now to prove it runs a lot well.

 

Check this out from Microsft may solve your issue.

Computers that are running Windows XP Service Pack 2 and that are equipped with multiple processors that support processor power management features may experience decreased performance.


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;896256

 

The other thing to watch is the disk light. I bet you will see it constantly on while doing this. These page faults are very slow. I bet you will also notice that when running one program at a time the disk does not blink. This is windows pretending it has more memory than it actually does, this is a "Feature".

 

Ah, sounds like a familiar problem.

The problem it seems is that sometimes your "Notebook hardware control" software, it regulates your processors to work at a slower speed. Many MANY people have had their processors show up as running at 1.0Ghz or 1.2Ghz each, which, obviously is too slow.

That explains why it isn't slow for when you're doing single tasks, but when you multitask it slows down. The RAM you have is more than enough for your needs.

I dont know how to change it, but look for some sort of a notebook hardware control or something. I havent got my laptop yet, still in production status so I haven't got a clue where to find it. Someone else might be able to help you with where it is, but I'm sure this is the reason

 

Thanks for everyones imput, i will have to look @ that when i get a chance, the GHZ is 1.0 or 1.2 i do remember that ( i figured maybe thats each core?). That could be the reason why it is so freaking slow lol

 

Yes, check the power profile in the screen saver section of your display properties. Make sure its set to home, and not laptop. This will turn off the cpu throttling.

 

Go to Control Panel - Power Options and set the Power Scheme to "Always On." If you use the "Maximum Performance" setting you will get CPU throttling which will slow up your computer as shown on a Super Pi test. "Always On" disables CPU throttling, which may be your problem.

Click some Rep points for me! I have none!

 

Thanks guys for your help, I set the computer to "always on" and i noticed a beter increase in performace, even in game. I also set up my page parsing file size on my desktop and laptop and i saw at least a 15% increase in fps in wow at least. I dont use the battery often, but if i do, i can always change the power settings.


Once again thanks everyone!