Still Slow

F

falcon4216

New Member
OK, im new to this site and have spent the past couple hours milling around and havent found this issue that I have had with this computer. I recently just purchased pretty much new hardware for this computer, new motherboard and CPU along with 2 graphics cards and RAM that were given to me by a friend when he upgraded his components. Before i had a AMD X64 5000+, 4 GB of 1333MHz RAM, basic mobo and an MSI GPU. Between the builds the only thing thats the same is the hard drive that got transferred over. The main problem is that while i am able to play games better, its only marginally so; boot time and loading time after logging in are still about the same as well, so what I am trying to find out is if it is all being held up by my HD? If it is, what do i need to do to help make it faster. I know an SSD would help a ton but what parts of a HD determine its speed exactly?


Far as i can tell all drivers are up to date, the only thing I discovered was that this Mobo is not SLI compatible so just ordered a new one to allow that feature. I wouldve figured that with the massive upgrade on RAM and CPU that the computer would have been much more powerful and faster. Thanks for any help


This is what i have currently:
Processor AMD FX(tm)-4350 Quad-Core Processor
Manufacturer AMD
Speed 4.5 GHz
Number of Cores 4
Video Card 1 NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
Manufacturer NVIDIA
Chipset GeForce GTS 450
Dedicated Memory 1.0 GB
Total Memory 4.0 GB
Video Card 2 NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
Manufacturer NVIDIA
Chipset GeForce GTS 450
Dedicated Memory 1.0 GB
Total Memory 4.0 GB
Memory 8.1 GB
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Edition Service Pack 1 (build 7601), 64-bit
Service Pack 1
Size 64 Bit
Edition Home Premium
Display Maximum Resolution 1280 x 1024
DVD
CD
Drive 1 Western Digital WD Blue WD3200AAKX 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"
Size 298.0 GB
Free 21.2 GB
Drive 2
Size 100.0 MB
Free 58.1 MB
 
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Yes, the hard drive is usually the bottleneck of most systems, though 7,200 RPM is definitely as fast as consumer-grade hard disks get.

How long is it taking to boot?

How much free space do you have on the drive?

Have you tried testing the drive with the appropriate software? Look here and download the Western Digital software: http://www.computerforum.com/211596-list-hard-drive-diagnostic-utilities-test-your-drive.html sometimes a dying HDD can make Windows run slow. If it has bad sectors you need to replace the drive.

Have you tried reinstalling Windows fresh? As in wiping the drive completely and starting from scratch. You mentioned the drive was transferred from another PC - do you mean it was transferred with Windows already on it or did you free install Windows onto the drive when you put it in the new PC?

If you want the quickest boot times and application load times possible I'd advise getting an SSD. You can get 250GB ones cheaply now which is not much smaller than your existing HDD and you could even use your existing HDD as a storage drive or something.
 
I havent wiped the hard drive yet, though have been considering it. The hard drive is the only part from the original computer and takes about a minute from the power button to login, but takes a good 2-3 minutes before i can open programs after logging in. I dont have many start up programs since my old pc was only a tenth as fast as this so anything i did to speed it up helped
 
But did you do a fresh install of windows after putting it in the new system? You really can't reuse an old install of windows that was from a different system as the hardware is different. Also the drive you have is an older one, you should get a western digital caviar black drive with 64mb cache.
 
I think if you do a fresh install of Windows on your existing setup you will notice it is much quicker. You may not even need to buy a new hard drive.
 
Yup reinstall Windows before you spend any money. You might not even need that new HDD if Windows is running fine on your existing drive once you have reinstalled.

Let us know how it goes!
 
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