why does my brothers weaker cpu outperform mine?

[lovely?]

how big is the differencce between an AMD Sempron 2800 and the one i have now? (amd athlon 64 3400) i only ask because my brothers hp has the first, and his nearly outperformes mine in multitasking. i would usually expect a night and day difference.

i have all my drivers updated, i have no virus's, we both have the exact same programs, but his runs stuff better. (exept for video games, mine smokes his)

 

[Archangel]

Checked your pc for spyware/adware? =o http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html

 

[spacedude89]

What about hard drives? RAM? Etc, They all make differences in speed too.

 

[Bizmark]

Checked your pc for spyware/adware? =o http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html

Only recommending Ad-Aware is insufficient.

I'd also recommend Spybot: Search and Destroy and Windows Defender.

 

[Shane]

What about hard drives? RAM? Etc, They all make differences in speed too.

Yeah,

I see in your siggy that you have mixed 2 diffrent brands of ram.

Maybe this could be a problem?

 

[fade2green514]

what does it outperform in... it could be another part in the computer thats causing yours to perform worse or his to perform better.
what are the full specs of both computers?

 

[liquidshadow]

It could also be that you have more background processes running which would add to your CPU load.

 

[Motoxrdude]

It could also be that you have more background processes running which would add to your CPU load.

Agreed.
It could depend on video card, hard drive, ram, etc.

 

[Bl00dFox]

Can you give us the full system specs of your brothers comp?

 

[randomguy]

If you have more than one piece of RAM, try to see if they have the same speed (400 or 533 MHz).
If you have two different ones, the computer will use the lowest one, I believe.
So it might cause differences in performance.

 

[lovely?]

a regular hp. it has a 2800 sempron like i said, it has the exact same programs, so pretty much any virus it may have i have too, um 512 ram, onboard nvidia graphics, cheapy hp standard mobo (so cheap it doesnt even have an agp 2x/4x thing) uh, we run at the same resolutions, (except he has an lcd) and his ram is the same speed as mine. 400mhz 184pin. (but my ram is higher quality)

EDIT: bump for some importance. (if i can figure out why mine stinks so bad, i might not have to upgrade to another, and will save myself some cash)