• Is my computer bottlenecked?
    9 replies, posted
Hello, I built a computer a few years ago and have upgraded a few components, but sometimes it feels slow. Such as booting windows 7, sometimes opening programs, etc. I was wondering if it may be a bottleneck? Im thinking itd be my RAM, if anything. My specs are; gf8200a motherboard 585w power supply Phenom 2 x3 720 OC'ed to 3.4Ghz 2x2Gb ram (800Mhz, 5-5-5-15 timing, forgot the brand) (edit; just looked, it's in regular, unganged mode. It's supposedly better that way for Phenom 2 processors?) Geforce GTX 465 at stock clocks main drive, 250Gb Spinpoint F3 with 3 month old w7 64 bit install. Optimized, unneeded services dissabled, all that stuff. Storage, Spinpoint F3 1Tb This computer doesnt have much room left for upgrades, but it does support 1066 RAM if thats the issue.
4 gigs of slow ram is kinda hard to work with nowadays,¨ Depends on what you are doing, but i would recommend getting more and faster ram
I do a bit of gaming, game modding, sometimes video and photo editing, occasionally play the physics simulator Rigs of Rods which is pretty resource intensive. I haven't seen my 4Gb of ram actually fill up during any of the times I've actually monitored it, but if I do upgrade, I'll be sure to invest in more. I've researched into Phenom processors, apparently they handle memory better when it isn't in dual channel, so I'd be alright running an odd number of sticks if I had to. It seems to be harder to find 1066 sticks than 800 sticks.
get a SSD, maybe a quadcore or sell everything except the gpu and buy a new i5 + 8gb ram + ssd nad a new gpu when you feel like it
I'd just build a whole new rig tbh
At this point, im not looking to build a whole new rig. I understand that this one is outdated, but what id like to do is squeeze the last bit out of it, enjoy it, then build a new one Ive researched into my options for cheapish upgrades Replacing my RAM with 8Gb of ddr2 1066 would be $80. Replacing my mobo and upgrading to 8Gb of ddr3 1066 or 1333 RAM would be 110ish.
Your machine should be able to run windows 7 nicely as is, i'd post a picture of the 250GB HDD's smart data. It might be starting to die.
The 250Gb is brand new, just bought off newegg and installed a week ago. They had a decent deal on it and i needed a drive, so i bought it. After installing this drive, my boot times speeded up by a good 25-30%. My old drive was a Seagate 120Gb, fairly old and averaged 45Mb/s read rate. This F3 is averaging 100+Mb/s transfer rates I can check the smart data on my drives later tonight though
They can be new and be still be stuffed.
Here's the SMART data. It took me a while to find a program that'd actually read it. The 250Gb reports 19 hours of power on time, the 1Tb reports 471 days and 19 hours of power on time [img]http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff136/fcfordlord/SMARTdata_zps820c3b42.jpg[/img]
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