Marios1441
Member
I have an old desktop pc with core duo processor and now i have a modern new laptop with i3 processor but is slower than my desktop. Why
is this?
is this?
Laptop slow
- Thread starter Marios1441
- Start date
Marios1441
Member
2.26 GHz Intel Core i3-350M Processor 3-core
3 GB DDR3
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6370 Graphics
320 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive 5400 rpm
None of that is modern or new... where did you get it from?
ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
That's not a lot of RAM and a slow HDD for starters. How fragmented are the HDD files?
Marios1441
Member
Specs of the laptop:
Laptop brand and model: HP G62-450SV.
Hardware of laptop:
2.26 GHz Intel Core i3-350M Processor 3-core
3 GB DDR3
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6370 Graphics
320 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive 5400 rpm
HP Windows 7 Home Premium Greek 64-bit
Specs of my desktop pc (home build):
Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q 6600 2.40GHZ
4 GB of DDR2 (800 mhz) RAM
500MB (1 GB when taking another 500 MB from main RAM) 8500GT NVIDIA graphic card.
Seagate 7200RPM 4TB hard drive Sata 2.
Windows 7 Ultimate Greek 64-bit
Marios1441
Member
I defragmented the hard disk a lot of times but no help. I noticed a slower perfomance in laptops in general even with higher specs rather in desktop pc's.
Marios1441
Member
The laptop i bought from a friend. Is two years old. My desktop pc is much older but is very fast for internet browsing and general Windows usage. No need to buy a new one now for those tasks. But it can't play high resolution games but plays half of games in the market while laptop is slow in Windows OS clickings and internet browsing. Read the specs below.
Marios1441
Member
It also has a DG31PR Intel motherboard.
Marios1441
Member
I mean the desktop pc has a DG31PR Intel motherboard.
Marios1441
Member
Yes. I did a format and a fresh install of the HP's Windows 7 Home Premium from the recovery partition on the hard drive.
SpyderTracks
We love you Ukraine
Hate to tell you but that chip is 5 years old, and the graphics card isn't suited for gaming. Windows itself takes up 2gb ram so you've only got 1gb spare which is not really enough.
Basically it's an old laptop which won't run very well with today's programs.
ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
First let's see whether you're running out of RAM (3GB isn't a huge lot, though it depends what you use the laptop for of course). This is from memory because it's been a while since I've run Windows 7, open up the Task Manager and take a look at the number of Hard Page Faults/Sec, this is also graphed so you can see the recent history. Ideally you want zero hard page faults/sec, but there will always be a few. How many is too many is a flexible number but if you're seeing more than about 20 page faults/sec for most of the time you're out of RAM.
This is because of the way RAM is managed. If there isn't enough free RAM available for a process, Windows will identify the least recently used pages and write them out to the pagefile (on disk). If these pages are later referenced by a process Windows has to page them back in (from disk, and you have a slow disk too) these are called page faults and they cause huge performance delays.
If you are getting many hard page faults then you might be able to increase the installed RAM. You're running 64-bit Windows so that won't be a problem, but it really depends on the max RAM that motherboard can support.
Next you need to look at your disk. A 5400rpm disk is noticeably slower than a 7200rpm model (the speed affects something called latency which is the time taken whilst you wait for the wanted sector to rotate under the read/write heads. Faster disks have lower latency and that makes a big difference to I/O response times).
Other things that affect disk response time is fragmentation (which you have looked at) and data organisation. Ideally you want all the regularly used files clustered close together, typically on the early tracks, and the ones you rarely use stored well out of the way on the later tracks. Windows does not have a tool to reorganise disk data but there is an excellent third-party tool called Ultimate Defrag from http://disktrix.com, although it's not free (it's $29.95 I think) that can reorganise disk data. It makes a big difference to disk performance. So you might want to take a look at that.
Of course, if you have a slow and poorly performing hard disk it makes the paging in of RAM pages even slower making the symptoms of RAM exhaustion even more painful.
Take a look at those two issues and see what turns up.
Edit: As an afterthought, just check how full your hard disk is. If it's more than about 80% full then it's too full. You'll improve performance by copying little used data off to an external disk and freeing up some space. Ideally a hard disk doesn't want to be more than about 60% full. Performance begins to fall off once you pass that.
This is because of the way RAM is managed. If there isn't enough free RAM available for a process, Windows will identify the least recently used pages and write them out to the pagefile (on disk). If these pages are later referenced by a process Windows has to page them back in (from disk, and you have a slow disk too) these are called page faults and they cause huge performance delays.
If you are getting many hard page faults then you might be able to increase the installed RAM. You're running 64-bit Windows so that won't be a problem, but it really depends on the max RAM that motherboard can support.
Next you need to look at your disk. A 5400rpm disk is noticeably slower than a 7200rpm model (the speed affects something called latency which is the time taken whilst you wait for the wanted sector to rotate under the read/write heads. Faster disks have lower latency and that makes a big difference to I/O response times).
Other things that affect disk response time is fragmentation (which you have looked at) and data organisation. Ideally you want all the regularly used files clustered close together, typically on the early tracks, and the ones you rarely use stored well out of the way on the later tracks. Windows does not have a tool to reorganise disk data but there is an excellent third-party tool called Ultimate Defrag from http://disktrix.com, although it's not free (it's $29.95 I think) that can reorganise disk data. It makes a big difference to disk performance. So you might want to take a look at that.
Of course, if you have a slow and poorly performing hard disk it makes the paging in of RAM pages even slower making the symptoms of RAM exhaustion even more painful.
Take a look at those two issues and see what turns up.
Edit: As an afterthought, just check how full your hard disk is. If it's more than about 80% full then it's too full. You'll improve performance by copying little used data off to an external disk and freeing up some space. Ideally a hard disk doesn't want to be more than about 60% full. Performance begins to fall off once you pass that.
Last edited:
Marios1441
Member
Is not a PCSpecialist laptop. What do you mean by what kind of laptop?
Specs of the laptop:
Laptop brand and model: HP G62-450SV.
Hardware of laptop:
2.26 GHz Intel Core i3-350M Processor 3-core
3 GB DDR3
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6370 Graphics
320 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive 5400 rpm
HP Windows 7 Home Premium Greek 64-bit
Marios1441
Member
It is slow in general use.
ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
You have a duplicate thread on here for this problem (https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?40990-Laptop-is-slow). Have you done any of the problem determination suggested on there?
Mods, I suggest you combine these two threads (or delete this one)?
Mods, I suggest you combine these two threads (or delete this one)?
Marios1441
Member
Yes. I did. But didn't helped.