Athlon XP 2000+ FASTER than Athlon 64 2800+

[Bloo Ice]

Hi. I was over at a friends house and found out that his computer is FASTER than mine. It was faster than my old one, but haven't used it since I built my new one so was unaware how fast it is. I'm baffled why mine is so much slower than his. Mine isn't slow, his is just freakin fast.

Mine: Ahtlon 64 2800+ 512MB PC3200 Seagate 40GB 5400rpm 550w 7 fans total keeping proc at a cool 70 F [idle] 210MB RAM used [idle] 1600x1200 nVidia 5500 256mb

His: Athlon XP 2000+ 1024MB PC2700 100GB 7200rpm ? 4 fans total keeping proc at a toasty 120 F [idle] 390MB RAM used [idle] 1280x1024 nVidia 5200 256mb

He has Panda AntiVirus, MS Antispyware, Folding@Home, MSN, AIM, Motorla connection manager thing, and all the XP Pro and SP2 crap running

At my fastest time [which is still slower than his] I only had MSN and XP Pro and SP2 crap running and his was still faster. His gets bogged down easier though, for example now I have Folding@Home, Outlook, WMP, IE, Word, and LimeWire running, and his doing that would be a little less responsive than mine, but overall, his is still faster. I didn't run any real tests, just observations on programs opening and closing and such. Half Life 2 and Garrysmod both load MUCH faster for him, and if I minimize them, it takes forever to get back, but his are instant.

Why is mine so much slower? I can understand the slow hd being a cause for a lot of the slowness, but I would think the faster, cooler processor; faster [and plenty available] ram would make up for it.

 

[urbandragon]

many things could cause this..

for example.. if your primary hard drive is on the same ide cable as your cdrom you will see a small amount of extra wait time when accessing files or programs.

have you done anything to enhance the performance on your xp box, has your friend.

You would be surprised at how faster some of the performance tweaks can make your system.

 

[Bloo Ice]

Nope. Both of our hds have their own IDE cable. We both have a DVD Drive and CD-RW sharing the other IDE cable. Neither of us have done any tweaks to improve speed, other than me not really installing a bunch of stuff, and him installing everything he can get his hands on. His 100GB hd has 9GB free, my 40 has 11GB free. He also has a portable hard drive that is always on, we both have PDAs connected most of the time [his via bluetooth though], both have Microsoft bluetooth keyboard/mouse [first gen]. Also, I rememberd when I was using it he had Garrys Mod minimized. The only time I noticed his being slower was on startup [but he has all of those programs in my first post set for startup].

 

[urbandragon]

Are you using the 64bit version of windows?

 

[Bloo Ice]

No, but my install of Pro is MUCH newer than his. He's on the same install as when he got his, over 2 years ago, and I just reinstalled a few months ago.

 

[urbandragon]

here is a quick speed check..

AMD Athlon XP rated speed 1.67 Ghz.
AMD 64 2800+ rated speed of 1.81 Ghz.

you are averaging .14 Ghz or 140Mhz faster.... but you are using the 32 bit version of Windows which very well could be your bottleneck.

I have not got to play with the 64 bit processor but i will say it runs much smoother for the 64 bit version.

 

[Bloo Ice]

Yeah but that whole GHz is overrated. His proc beat the hell out of my old Celeron 1.7 GHz, which is a whole .03 GHz faster, but his ran like 3 times faster.

 

[derrycraig]

You have a slower harddrive rpm which could affect loading times

 

[Justin]

The slower HDD will definately impact the time it takes to open programs, especially the first instance. A slower drive will also result in a small performance hit in general, even with things as light as going to a webpage laden with images.

It is also possible you have outdated drivers on your system.

I would suggest upgrading to a faster hard drive.

 

[Merc14]

In addition to what Soul Harvester said, you have only half the RAM he does. Double that RAM and you'll see a huge increase in performance. What he loads to RAM you are loading to a 5400RPM HDD. RAM is cheap nowadays, just add 512Mb and you'll see the performance you are expecting. Just be aware of the limitations of the memory controller re. dual sided DIMMs on your Athlon.

 

[Bloo Ice]

Yeah, my hd is about to die anyway, so I'm just waiting until it does to replace it [everything is backed up on another system]. And I will upgrade the ram, it all just comes down to gettting the $

 

[Desthro]

Speed Differences

Well, really the main problem you have as explaiend above is primarily your lack of RAM. You'll be using that horrid pagefile a lot more often than he will because of the amount of memory he has available. And as for the three processors mentioned, Celerons suck because of their impressively slow buss speed, a whopping 533MHz. The Athlon XP I believe is 800MHz, and the Athlon 64 is a staggering 2000MHz. So really, the problem is going to be a slower disk, and less memory. And are you running a 754-socket 64, or a 939-socket 64? Cause getting that dual-channel memory is going to definitely boost performance if you have it. I also discovered that my computer, which has similar specs to his, cept I run a 64 3200+ has the same difficulty in loading programs... I load slower than my friends, despite having faster bus speeds, faster memory and a better disk. So, it's probably just the 64 not being able to fully realize its potential because of the 32-bit OS. Anyway... hope that helps =) Enjoy!

 

[coolhand]

RAM indeed. Theoretically, your computer should be faster than his but like what all these guys said, you should invest in more ram. (They're cheap nowadays). Also, when you say that his computer is faster than yours.. how were you gauging it? Opening programs? Playing games? Benchmarking? You should try and compare some benchmarks with your buddy and see how things are and which of you gets faster framerates on your favorite game.

 

[Bloo Ice]

Yeah, I hadn't gotten any programs to test it or anything, just by observing opening programs, sarting music/videos, resuming minimized programs and such. What benchmarking program do you recommend?

 

[coolhand]

You can use the 3DMark benchmarking apps if you like. I'm not very familiar of benchmarking apps; I'm too lazy to - so instead, me and my friends gauge our machines by trying to boot XP as clean as possible (clearing your startup apps, registry/RUN entries) and then playing games such as Counter-Strike:Source, or Battlefield II. I'm a gamer - I'm sure someone here knows a good benchmarking app - and if you do, please tell. I'd like to know of a real benchmarking app as well and start seeing real numbers.

But for the meantime; I'm using the Everest Benchmarking tool. I love it as it gives full detail about my machine as well as telling me how fast my Memory Read/Write speeds are and then telling me how I match up to other machines with similar setups/different hardware.