New computer - great result but slow

[magicmerlin]

Hello!

I bought a new computer yesterday. Hereīs my setup:

Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R
Processor: Intel I7-930
RAM: Crucial DDR 3 - 6 GB - 1600 gHz memory
Hard Drive: Western Digital Black 1 TB
Graphic Card: MSI N240GT
Soundcard: Asus Xonar
Operating System: Windows 7 64 Bit

In performance test it gets 2008 points - still when i install games it takes much longer time than my old computer to install.
What is wrong with it? Itīs also slow in opening programs while i install, i mean small ones like IE or Opera. This feels like the exact opposite of what it is supposed to do.

My old computer had the same OS but a MUCH slower processor: AMD Dualcore 6000+ and only 3 GB in RAM.

Shall this processor have the 32-bit os instead? Im totally new at Intel and have always used AMD before without any processor-related problems.

/Mikael

[David (PassMark)]

Where the disk results OK. Low disk speeds can make he entire PC feel sluggish.

[magicmerlin]

Where the disk results OK. Low disk speeds can make he entire PC feel sluggish.

The disk tests are:
Disk Mark: 689.7
Disk Sequential Read: 92.5
Disk - Seq. Write: 95.1
Disk - Random Seek + RW - 3.18

Tested three times and these where in between.


That seems alright? Itīs the same disk as i used in my old computer, and its not an old disk, only about 6-7 months. 32 mb cache.

[David (PassMark)]

Disk speed looks OK.

Are these the same games as you were running on your old machine. Maybe the game install is longer simply becuase new games are larger than the old games. Do you have exact numbers.
It might be normal that the browser is slow to open while the game install is in progress.

[magicmerlin]

When i try to do something the computer almost always freezes and its frustrating. I install the same games i had on my old computer and then the installation took maybe 1-3.5 seconds per %. Now its more like 1 minute per every 10 %

I have re-installed windows 3 times now, and every time itīs like this.

[wonderwrench]

Try disconnecting all internal and external hardware not needed to boot your PC. Optical drives, memory card readers, sound card, all external USB devices excluding keyboard and mouse and retest. Try a different keyboard/mouse, retest. Check the event logs for disk related errors, if found I suspect SATA cabling problems. Re-seat or swap the SATA cables with known good cables and see if the problems go away.

Can you reproduce the freezing on a totally clean install, no drivers, windows updates etc? Which onboard storage controller are your drives attached to? Your Gigabyte X58A-UD3R has 3 different controllers for
internal storage.
South Bridge: IntelŪ ICH10R

1. 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_0, SATA2_1, SATA2_2, SATA2_3, SATA2_4, SATA2_5) supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices
2. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10

Marvell 9128 chip:

1. 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3_6, GSATA3_7) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2. Support for SATA RAID 0, and RAID 1

GIGABYTE SATA2 chip:

1. 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
2. 2 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (GSATA2_8, GSATA2_9) supporting up to 2 SATA 3Gb/s devices
3. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD

It looks like you have no SATA 3 devices so I would use the Intel controller
and disable the others in the bios at least until you find whats causing the freezing. Have you tried disabling unused hardware in the bios? Onboard sound, floppy controller etc?

Have you checked to see if you have a DPC latency issue caused by a driver conflict? Here is a free tool to test for high latency.
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Your hard drive results seem a little low to me. I get about the same results with a WD Blue 320 gig in my HTPC. I would think your WD Black would test faster.

BTW a friend of mine is building a system using the same motherboard and processor in the next week or so. We will see if he has any similar problems. See wish list here http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=18337328

Hope this helps
Bill

[magicmerlin]

Hello again!

I think i might have fixed my problems, i feel a bit stupid now - but after reading the manual properly - i saw that the RAM should be in other slots than i had put them. The correct slots was 1, 3 & 5 if i recall correcly. Also, the voltīs cannot be changed to the preferred 1.65 - but the closest are 1.64, and i hope that is fine.

The system is much more stable now.

And if your friend gets some problem with the software too - cant open explorer.exe properly and gets an error-message, it was something weird in the startup that caused it, or possibly if the help was to create another administrative account and delete it. For that problem thereīs more solutions than one, but this was the only that worked for me.

Also - how much difference is normal with Performance Test? At the last install i had i got 2700 points without a cd in the reader. Now my points are around 2000-2200 - so its a difference of about 500 points - is that just me or does that seem alot?

Im not all certain that im done with the bios and so on, but im happy i can click around in explorer, use internet and regular computer usage - the game installations worked much faster than the last time - but im not sure it has reached its full potential - maybe the disk is the bottleneck right now in my system?

As a risk of expand this post even more, when i test my disk it sounds weird - like mechanical birds are nesting in my chassi. I have never heard that sound before and should i be worried? Right now i have almost nothing backed up at this disk - its my most important disk and i would be a really sad man if it broke down (almost trip to the mental institution sad)

[David (PassMark)]

Always backup your important data. Always.
Do this regardless of how noisy the mechanical birds are.

You would need to look at the indivdual results to determine why you get such a large difference between runs. It might be just the CD test, but more likely one of the other scrore has changed. Maybe due to different device drivers being loaded or some other change between installs.

[magicmerlin]

Hard drive

I feel like i want to buy another hard drive - i have read some great reviews of Western Digital Black 2tb - is it as fast as they say?

It is kind of expensive, thats why im asking.
As i said, i had a WD Velociraptor, but just for a few months because i got dissapointed with the price/performance value.

My friend told me that i might get better results if i buy another disk to have Windows on exclusively - that i split the disk into other partitions because that slows it down and makes it more unstable. I have not heard much about that before - is it true or is he just making up stuff as he goes along?

That question is important because if i buy a hopefully fast WD 2tb black - it would suck not to be able to split it up. I like to format and start over again with a fresh windows from time to time - if i have 2 TB i either use the whole disk to windows or some important files as well - in that case they must be moved if i dont want to lose them when i format - so that sounds like either alot of work or alot of unused space if what he said was true.

If i was a millionaire i would buy the HyperOS.

[David (PassMark)]

The best config is a small (fast) solid state drive as your boot drive and a larger (cheap) traditional drive as a 2nd drive.

Partitioning the drive doesn't slow it down (in general) and doesn't lead to instability. So people even partition to increase speed, at least this is what they claim. (look up "short stroking" on Google).