Why is my new i5 getting beaten by my 2 year old celeron?

About 2 years ago, I bought an Asus with a Celeron processor. Realizing that my old Asus doesn't have much time left, I, a few days ago bought a new Asus with an i5 processor. I guess I was being a bit dramatic in the title - my new Asus isn't exactly getting beaten by my old one - it's faster in pretty much every aspect (which is to be expected). There's one thing though that is driving me crazy. Whenever I play online chess my new Asus (with the i5 processor) lags like CRAZY whereas my old Asus (with the Celeron processor) doesn't lag at all - and it's 2 years old. And keep in mind that this isn't some kind of first person shooter game either - we're just talking about online chess. I really can't figure out why my new Asus is doing this. Does the problem have to do with RAM? My old Asus doesn't have more RAM than my new one (both have 4GB) but I'm thinking that maybe my new Asus has a processor that's much too powerful for the amount of RAM the laptop has therefore creating some kind of imbalance. Does that even make any sense? Would adding more RAM to the laptop solve this problem? I know far too little about computers to form a coherent theory. I really can't even begin to understand why this is happening. If anyone could throw in a theory/solution it would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

how do you know its the processor? What are the exact specs of boths laptops?

 

Online chess? Via a LAN connection or wireless?

Can you give a link to the game or title? Is the AI done in the cloud or locally?

What specific Celeron and RAM (DDR2/3?) and what specific i5?

What O/S on both systems?

HDD's or SSD's power them? Defragged them? (PerfectDisk 14 Pro highly recommended w/both Online and Boot time defrag runs...).

Updated the drivers (all... but especially the video, mouse, sound and NETWORK drivers)?

What router are you connected to (especially if wireless...)? Has it's firmware ever been updated?


Overly dramatic title is an understatement given that any or all of the above can affect what is actually happening in this case.

 

The game is on chess.com. I'm not sure how to check if the AI's done cloud or locally. The OS on my old Asus is Win8 and the OS on my new Asus is Win10. Both laptops are powered by an HDD. The i5 on my new laptop is i5-5200 CPU @ 2.2GHz 2.19 GHz and the Celeron on my old laptop is Celeron CPU 1007U @ 1.5GHz 1.5GHz.

New Asus:


Old Asus

image sharing


The router is a TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless N Router - both computers are connected to the same router though. Is it necessary to update the drivers on a new laptop? Wouldn't its drivers be more updated than a 2 year old laptop's?


Also, whenever I'm on the internet my new Asus has a 5 second freeze every 5 minutes or so. I'm thinking that this problem might be related - or might be explained in the screen cap I gave you.

 

See:
https://cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=1847&cmp[]=2440

With both single thread and CPU Mark being roughly double, the cpu is not the culprit.


See:
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/what-muat-be-the-requiremnts-fritz


Seems from that old post that cpu prowess matters... but this wouldn't account for the new system being laggy...

I'm assuming you are connecting wirelessly to that half decade old TP-Link router?

Try an RT-AC68U in your network and see if things improve. They should. A current AC1900 class router helps even when using older N class clients with it.

See:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...oes-an-ac-router-improve-n-device-performance


Is there any other activity on you network when you see the lag? Is the new notebook sporting an AC class WiFi card?

'Updated drivers' are relative: a brand new system may receive many small/incremental (but important) updates to it's drivers in the first few weeks/months of being introduced - so even a two week old drive may be ancient. Whereas an old platform may have finally stabilized it's drivers years ago...

I would be testing each driver available for your new system (and possibly testing the settings within the drivers too - cautiously).

What browser are you using to play with? Did you clear the cache and/or fully reset the browser to defaults? Does using another browser work better?

Did you try rebooting the router and notebooks?

Did you check to see if your router has a newer firmware?



As you might be able to tell from my questions/post above; to fully enjoy a new platform, you need all the ancillary devices around it fully updated too.

Good luck.

 

I'd agree with tiller that it sounds like your network connection is the culprit. If you're connecting the same way with both computers, you can try updating your network drivers for the new Asus and also try going into settings for your wireless card (via device manager) to increase the transmit power and see if that works.

 

Thanks a lot for the responses everyone. After using this laptop a bit more, I realize that it's crappy all around. I actually was trying to post in this thread a second ago but had to restart because the laptop would only let me type a couple of words before making sounds like an airplane taking off, becoming unresponsive, then showing me the 'loading' blue circle. I'd try to close out of some tabs in an attempt to speed it up but even that would take forever as it would take 5 seconds+ to select a tab and another 5 seconds+ to close it. I'd been having similar problems before but didn't want to admit to myself that the laptop was crap. Do Asus' usually have these kinds of problems or is it just because I bought such a cheap model? Would upgrading RAM be a partial solution or should I just take this laptop back? It sounds like this might be a problem with the processor but why would an i5 be doing this? Thanks.

 

Did you check that you are on "high performance" mode in power options?

And I don't think any network connection would matter for a chess game. Very little data is being transferred for a game like that.

But from the sounds of it, the laptop is faulty. If fans speed up periodically, it could be a bad thermal paste job or bad heatsink or heatpipe. monitor temps using hwmonitor and see if temps spike periodically.

 

Ignoring the questions I've asked above won't solve your issues as they could just as easily happen on any new computer you buy.

Asus isn't the problem; it's your configuration/setup of the new notebook that is hinted at from my point of view.

I would highly recommend getting 16GB or more of the highest quality/performance RAM your platform can support. Yeah; even for 'light' usage.

As you can see from your surfing experience, browsers are not that 'light' anymore.

Make sure your system has all the updates available and reboot it twice.

Download PerfectDisk 14 trial and do an online and boot time defrag (I'd do this three times in a row... ending with an online defrag and then simply rebooting the computer and using it normally afterwards).

Reset the browser you use to defaults.

Get a new router to test in your environment (again; RT-AC68U or better and with an Asus router, RMerlin firmware highly recommended).

You give very little information of your new/old systems but continue to give us the symptoms.

The above posts will solve most issues, including yours.

Take the time to try them out and see where and if progress is made and report back then.

 

Your system sounds like it needs to be replaced. I just tried on my older, system a 2010 Dell Latitude and the 5 year old first gen i5 played that game without any issues. Took out 4GB of RAM and tried with only 4GB and was fine. Everything you've typed suggests that it's either dying/faulty hardware or spectacularly ruined software. Contact wherever you bought it from and get it replaced. I'm surprised this even needs to be said...

 

If the system struggles with such simple tasks, then it could mean a bad pasting job or similar. I agree with bennni: contact Asus support and ask them about a replacement.

 

Also check Task Manager to see something else is trying to hog all the resources. Such a situation can make the best of CPUs feel laggy.

 

John, thanks for reminding me:

A clean install of the O/S (without any bloatware from the manufacturer...) usually fixes everything right up too.

 

I've heard that Win10 require 4GB RAM. Is it possible that my laptop's not running properly because it only has 4gb ram (none "left over")?

How do I do that?

Thanks. I guess your referring to programs/software running in the background?

 

Look in Task Manager (right click on Task Bar and select Task Manager) when the fan comes on or the computer feels laggy and it should show the % CPU utilisation for each program / process. Background processes might create significant CPU load if doing serious work such as a virus scan, a badly-coded web page can fully load one CPU core or a corrupted driver can be stuck in a loop and load up the CPU. Most of these problems will show up in Task Manager where 25% CPU utilisation (for a 2 core CPU with hyperthreading) represents full usage of one core.

The current challenge is to identfy the cause of the lagginess. I'm 100% sure it is software not hardware. Also run HWiNFO and check whether the CPU speed is varying according to the workload (Task Manager doesn't show this). If the CPU is stuck at minimum speed then it will behave like a slow CPU. In which case make sure that your power profile is set to Balanced Performance and any silent mode feature is disabled. Talking of reinstalling Windows should be saved for later.

John

 

No, it doesn't *need* that much to run an online chess game or type things. Check for yourself: check the performance tab in the task manager - it'll show you how much RAM is being used. Obviously, the more RAM the better but 4GB should be plenty to do the tasks that you've reported your system struggling with. My wife's system runs Windows 10 and all of the online 3D games from dodgy looking sites just fine with 4GB - and it's the slowest, most disreputable and miss-matched RAM too (2.3GhZ).

HWInfo will tell you if you're being throttled due to crazy high heat or locked down to a low CPU speed - although if either of these is the case, I'd just contact ASUS (ASUS doesn't have the best reputation for this, according to others) if it's still under warranty. For software issues I suppose it could be a faulty driver - the ones I had in the past showed up in the task manager as using crazily high amounts of system resources.