My R3000Z is slow!!!

Hi,

My wife has had a Compaq R3000Z for a couple of months now, and she complained to me recently that the laptop was slower than my Pentium 4 1.4GHz desktop. I took a look and it does seem to be much slower than it should be, considering it has one of the fastest processors in the market, an Athlon 64 3200+. I know that it has a slow drive at 4200RPM (60GB), but I just wanted to check with other people that have this laptop to see if they have had a similar experience.

It takes about a minute to boot up to the welcome screen, and then another minute to fully load my profile. I've already cleaned up most of the stuff in the startup programs list. Running most applications also seem slower than they should be. I've also ran Sandra Standard 2004 SP2 (version 2004.8.9.131) to get some benchmark numbers, and compared them against a review on this website at http://www.notebookreview.com/default.aspx?newsID=1921. My numbers on the hard drive benchmark are quite lower than what the review says. The drive index is 17MB/s against 23MB/s on the review, and the benchmark breakdown is (results from the review in parenthesis next to each one):

Buffered Read 68 MB/s (92 MB/s)
Sequential Read 19 MB/s (26 MB/s)
Random Read 14 MB/s (26 MB/s)
Buffered Write 17 MB/s (86 MB/s)
Sequential Write 18 MB/s (25 MB/s)
Random Write 14 MB/s (20 MB/s)
Average Access Time 17 ms (14 ms)

I've fully defragged the hard drive, cleaned up temp files, IE cache, scanned for viruses, spyware, etc, etc. I'm now concerned something is wrong with the hard drive or something else. Can someone please help? If someone can provide their Sandra benchmark numbers for comparison it would be great.

Thanks!!!!

 

Sorry, it somehow got posted twice, so I just edited the double post to let you know why I have this post on here.

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Fujitsu S6210: 1.6Ghz PM ~ 768MB RAM ~ 60GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
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Sounds liked you have tried just about everything. Im not saying you need a new harddrive, but if you want to upgrade to a 60gig 7200rpm harddrive, www.zipzoomfly.com has it for about $180.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=100519

*******************************************************
Fujitsu S6210: 1.6Ghz PM ~ 768MB RAM ~ 60GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
*******************************************************

 

Did you disable your virus scanner/etc before you benchmarked the drive?

Replacing the s-l-o-w HD HP is using with the one Run1track mentioned did wonders for my zv5000z (same guts as the R3000z) notebook. Boot times are very close to what a desktop gets (fast). I didn't keep the original drive long enough to form any lasting memories of precisely how slow it was.

 

The benchmark was done almost right after I took that computer out of box, so there weren't a lot pre-installed software. I have the impression that all versions of Windows will perform slower after some time usage, craps can get into your registry and system folders without letting you know it. So if you want to enhance its performance, and upgrading a harddrive is not an option yet, try to clean install your OS from the scatch, of course if it doesn't bring too much pain for you to reload all software you've installed. Simply doing cleaning caches won't make much of difference. Also check your "administrative tool - service" in control panel, see if you have too many services running that you don't really need, turn them off may also help a bit.
By the way, what's your OS? XP home or Pro?

 

Hi,

Thanks to all for your responses.

Run1Track, thanks for the suggestion on the hard drive. I will definitely consider that, although I still feel that maybe something is wrong with my hard drive since it is sometimes awfully slow.

brianstretch, I think I might have not disabled the antivirus. Good point, I can try to run the benchmarks again.

Wigner, yeah, I know what you mean about Windows slowing down over time. I remember that I used to format and reinstall once every 3 months or so in the Windows 95/98 days. I could also try that and see how it goes. I am running XP Home, by the way, so I think it could be a bit faster than Pro since it is missing some of the Pro services. Any chance you can run your Sandra benchmarks again to compare now that you have been using your computer for a while?

It would still be great if other people can report their Sandra benchmarks for comparison. I wanted to do this before I spend useless hours on the phone with HP support for them to determine that there might a problem so I can send it in for checkup ;-)

Thanks!

 

Hi,
I has this issue with my desktop . I installed winpatrol (http://www.winpatrol.com) . It helped me detect programs I did not need.

 

Here is the new result, the computer has SQL server 2000, IIS ZoneAlarm, McAfee 7.1 Enterprise and EarthLink running at the time of test. Many numbers are lower, but access time is slightly better than the old test.

Benchmark Breakdown
Buffered Read : 17 MB/s
Sequential Read : 21 MB/s
Random Read : 16 MB/s
Buffered Write : 80 MB/s
Sequential Write : 21 MB/s
Random Write : 15 MB/s
Average Access Time : 13 ms (estimated)

Like I said, the ovverall performance will be lower after some usage. Maybe swaping a faster HD is a good idea.

 

Also try to run Bootvis. I have the same laptop and it helped a bit. Are you running at 2 GHz or 797 MHz? That can also make a difference. BTW: do not update the AMD K8 processor driver or it will no longer toggle the CPU speed (it will be stuck at 797 MHz). The driver on the recovery disk is the best driver for this machine.

 

I'm running the latest processor driver and it adjusts the CPU speed as needed for me, verified by MobileMeter (and the hot air exhaust). I'm also running the current BIOS (F.12) but I doubt that makes a difference.

 

Hi Wigner,

Thank you very much for running the benchmarks again!!! I'm still concerned that my numbers are much lower than yours and I wasn't running as many apps as you were. Notice specially my low score for the buffered write against yours. Is there something I might have disabled on the system settings? So are you still running the 4200RPM drive on a 3000+ CPU?


<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Wigner

 

Here is the whole file of benchmark. Actually I don't see much difference between yours and my new test. Although the buffer write is much lower than mine, but your buffer read is high comparing to my new test. To tell the truth, I don't know exactly how these two numbers are related to drive performance. By the way, what't your configuration? Mine is as the review says (3000+, 512RAMx1, 440 Go). And Sandra version is 2004.2.9.104, a bit older than yours. It specifies that the numbers can only be compared within the test results obtained from the same version.
My computer runs at 797MHz almost all the time at Laptop power setting.
SiSoftware Sandra

Benchmark Results
Dhrystone ALU : 7798MIPS
Whetstone FPU : 2839MFLOPS
Whetstone iSSE2 : 3710MFLOPS

Performance Test Status
Run ID : PC242662170183 on Monday, August 09, 2004 at 8:09:19 PM
NUMA Support : No
SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 1
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : No
Number of Runs : 64000 / 640

Processor
Model : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
Speed : 798MHz
Model Number : 3000 (estimated)
Performance Rating : PR1197 (estimated)
Type : Standard
L2 On-board Cache : 1024kB ECC Synchronous Write-Back (16-way, 64 byte line size)

Chipset 1
Model : Nvidia Corp nForce 3 Host Bridge
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 200MHz (400MHz data rate)

Chipset 2
Model : Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 / Opteron HyperTransport Technology Configuration
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 600MHz (1200MHz data rate)

Features
SSE2 Technology : Yes
SSE3 Technology : No
HTT - Hyper-Threading Technology : No

Performance Tips
Notice 5008 : To change benchmarks, click Options.
Notice 5004 : Synthetic benchmark. May not tally with 'real-life' performance.
Notice 5006 : Only compare the results with ones obtained using the same version!
Tip 233 : Consider using the Win64 AMD64 version of Sandra.
Warning 5009 : Mobile processors yield lower indexes in power management modes. Check power settings if index is low.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.

SiSoftware Sandra

Benchmark Results
Integer aEMMX/aSSE : 16874it/s
Float iSSE2 : 18386it/s

Performance Test Status
Run ID : PC242662170183 on Monday, August 09, 2004 at 8:13:15 PM
NUMA Support : No
SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 1
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : No
Rendered Image Size : 640x480

Processor
Model : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
Speed : 798MHz
Model Number : 3000 (estimated)
Performance Rating : PR1197 (estimated)
Type : Standard
L2 On-board Cache : 1024kB ECC Synchronous Write-Back (16-way, 64 byte line size)

Chipset 1
Model : Nvidia Corp nForce 3 Host Bridge
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 200MHz (400MHz data rate)

Chipset 2
Model : Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 / Opteron HyperTransport Technology Configuration
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 600MHz (1200MHz data rate)

Features
MMX Technology : Yes
SSE Technology : Yes
SSE2 Technology : Yes
SSE3 Technology : No
EMMX - Extended MMX Technology : Yes
3DNow! Technology : Yes
Extended 3DNow! Technology : Yes
HTT - Hyper-Threading Technology : No

Performance Tips
Notice 5008 : To change benchmarks, click Options.
Notice 5004 : Synthetic benchmark. May not tally with 'real-life' performance.
Notice 5006 : Only compare the results with ones obtained using the same version!
Tip 233 : Consider using the Win64 AMD64 version of Sandra.
Warning 5407 : Optimisation Override has been engaged on this CPU.
Warning 5009 : Mobile processors yield lower indexes in power management modes. Check power settings if index is low.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.

SiSoftware Sandra

Benchmark Results
Drive Index : 18MB/s

Performance Test Status
Run ID : PC242662170183 on Monday, August 09, 2004 at 8:15:07 PM
SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 1
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : No
Operating System Disk Cache Used : No
Use Overlapped I/O : Yes
IO Queue Depth : 4 request(s)
Test File Size : 511MB
File Server Optimised : No

Benchmark Breakdown
Buffered Read : 17 MB/s
Sequential Read : 21 MB/s
Random Read : 16 MB/s
Buffered Write : 80 MB/s
Sequential Write : 21 MB/s
Random Write : 15 MB/s
Average Access Time : 13 ms (estimated)

Drive
Drive Type : Hard Disk
Total Size : 56GB
Free Space : 41GB, 100%

Performance Tips
Notice 5008 : To change benchmarks, click Options.
Notice 5004 : Synthetic benchmark. May not tally with 'real-life' performance.
Notice 5006 : Only compare the results with ones obtained using the same version!
Notice 5209 : Consider using the Removable Storage/Flash Benchmark for Flash devices.
Tip 5202 : Use cache on to measure Windows performance.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.

SiSoftware Sandra

Benchmark Results
RAM Bandwidth Int Buffered iSSE2 : 2465MB/s
RAM Bandwidth Float Buffered iSSE2 : 2471MB/s

Int Buffered iSSE2 (Integer STREAM) Results Breakdown
Assignment : 2470MB/s
Scaling : 2471MB/s
Addition : 2458MB/s
Triad : 2461MB/s
Data Item Size : 16-bytes
Buffering Used : Yes
Offset Displacement Used : Yes
Bandwidth Efficiency : 97% (estimated)

Float Buffered iSSE2 (Float STREAM) Results Breakdown
Assignment : 2474MB/s
Scaling : 2472MB/s
Addition : 2475MB/s
Triad : 2463MB/s
Data Item Size : 16-bytes
Buffering Used : Yes
Offset Displacement Used : Yes
Bandwidth Efficiency : 97% (estimated)

Performance Test Status
Run ID : PC242662170183 on Monday, August 09, 2004 at 8:18:25 PM
Memory Used by Test : 255MB
NUMA Support : No
SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 1
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : No
Page Size : 4kB
Use Large Memory Pages : No

Chipset 1
Model : Nvidia Corp nForce 3 Host Bridge
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 200MHz (400MHz data rate)
In/Out Width : 16-bit / 8-bit
Maximum Bus Bandwidth : 1200MB/s (estimated)

Logical/Chipset 1 Memory Banks

Chipset 2
Model : Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 / Opteron HyperTransport Technology Configuration
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 600MHz (1200MHz data rate)
In/Out Width : 8-bit / 16-bit
Maximum Bus Bandwidth : 3600MB/s (estimated)

Logical/Chipset 2 Memory Banks
Bank 0 : 256MB DDR-SDRAM 2.5-3-3-3CL 1CMD
Bank 1 : 256MB DDR-SDRAM 2.5-3-3-3CL 1CMD
Channels : 1
Bank Interleave : 2-way
Speed : 2x 159MHz (318MHz data rate)
Width : 64-bit
Maximum Memory Bus Bandwidth : 2544MB/s (estimated)

Features
MMX Technology : Yes
SSE Technology : Yes
SSE2 Technology : Yes
SSE3 Technology : No
EMMX - Extended MMX Technology : Yes
HTT - Hyper-Threading Technology : No

Performance Tips
Notice 5008 : To change benchmarks, click Options.
Notice 5004 : Synthetic benchmark. May not tally with 'real-life' performance.
Notice 5006 : Only compare the results with ones obtained using the same version!
Tip 233 : Consider using the Win64 AMD64 version of Sandra.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.

SiSoftware Sandra

Benchmark Results
Combined Index : 5117MB/s
Speed Factor : 9.9
2kB Blocks : 13187MB/s
4kB Blocks : 13923MB/s
8kB Blocks : 14299MB/s
16kB Blocks : 14396MB/s
32kB Blocks : 12675MB/s
64kB Blocks : 11863MB/s
128kB Blocks : 8999MB/s
256kB Blocks : 7774MB/s
512kB Blocks : 7773MB/s
1MB Blocks : 7374MB/s
4MB Blocks : 1460MB/s
16MB Blocks : 1467MB/s
64MB Blocks : 1462MB/s
256MB Blocks : 1458MB/s

Float SSE2 Cache/Memory Results Breakdown
Data Item Size : 16-bytes
Buffering Used : No
Offset Displacement Used : Yes

Performance Test Status
Run ID : PC242662170183 on Monday, August 09, 2004 at 8:19:43 PM
NUMA Support : No
SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 1
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : No
Page Size : 4kB
Use Large Memory Pages : No

Processor
Model : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+
Speed : 798MHz
Model Number : 3000 (estimated)
Performance Rating : PR1197 (estimated)
Type : Standard
Internal Data Cache : 64kB Synchronous Write-Back (2-way, 64 byte line size)
L2 On-board Cache : 1024kB ECC Synchronous Write-Back (16-way, 64 byte line size)

Features
SSE Technology : Yes
SSE2 Technology : Yes
SSE3 Technology : No
EMMX - Extended MMX Technology : Yes
HTT - Hyper-Threading Technology : No

Chipset 1
Model : Nvidia Corp nForce 3 Host Bridge
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 200MHz (400MHz data rate)
In/Out Width : 16-bit / 8-bit
Maximum Bus Bandwidth : 1200MB/s (estimated)

Logical/Chipset 1 Memory Banks

Chipset 2
Model : Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 / Opteron HyperTransport Technology Configuration
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 600MHz (1200MHz data rate)
In/Out Width : 8-bit / 16-bit
Maximum Bus Bandwidth : 3600MB/s (estimated)

Logical/Chipset 2 Memory Banks
Bank 0 : 256MB DDR-SDRAM 2.5-3-3-3CL 1CMD
Bank 1 : 256MB DDR-SDRAM 2.5-3-3-3CL 1CMD
Channels : 1
Bank Interleave : 2-way
Speed : 2x 159MHz (318MHz data rate)
Width : 64-bit
Maximum Memory Bus Bandwidth : 2544MB/s (estimated)

Performance Tips
Notice 5008 : To change benchmarks, click Options.
Notice 5004 : Synthetic benchmark. May not tally with 'real-life' performance.
Notice 5006 : Only compare the results with ones obtained using the same version!
Tip 11 : Use the 'Switch Chart Type' button to switch between Detailed and Combined charts.
Tip 233 : Consider using the Win64 AMD64 version of Sandra.
Warning 5009 : Mobile processors yield lower indexes in power management modes. Check power settings if index is low.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.