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Optimizing my PC? Techies?
Shegokigo
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Just got this thing reformatted and downloaded all my drivers.... yet I'm still seeing spurts of frame loss and application opening frame loss.
I'm wondering what I can do to help speed up the PC a bit, I want stuff to open when I click it, I want my applications to run at the FPS they're "showing" without any skipping.
Any help here from our PA techies? I don't exactly trust stuff like this:
http://www.liutilities.com/products/speedupmypc/
Incase some info is required:
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E 6850 @ 3.00GHz
3.25 GB RAM (4Gigs really but XP only reads that much)
NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT
Asus P5N-E SLI Motherboard
I'm wondering what I can do to help speed up the PC a bit, I want stuff to open when I click it, I want my applications to run at the FPS they're "showing" without any skipping.
Any help here from our PA techies? I don't exactly trust stuff like this:
http://www.liutilities.com/products/speedupmypc/
Incase some info is required:
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E 6850 @ 3.00GHz
3.25 GB RAM (4Gigs really but XP only reads that much)
NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT
Asus P5N-E SLI Motherboard
Shegokigo on
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Posts
http://stevestechguide.com/ultimate-windows-xp-optimization-tweak-guide/
if you're using XP..
There's a lot around, I used a different one, but a lot of the info is the same sort of stuff. I just skimmed over that one, most of that is pretty useful. Check it out.
Generally google: <yourOS> tweak optimization
and there's heaps of stuff around.
You can really break your shit that way, and unless you are running a P3 with 256 megs of ram you really don't need to optimize XP.
In Vista you will notice big gains from disabling the side bar as that POS takes forever to load.
If hard drive access seems slow, there may be a driver problem. A little stutter here and there in games is, unfortunately, fairly normal.
Not necessarily true on XP.
Depending on how long it's been installed, XP has a horrible, horrible degradation over time. So if XPs been on the same system for over a year or so there is a chance that a fresh install will help.
I've never seen a plausible explanation. I don't let spyware and random crap get on my computers.
Totally misread that. Thought he was saying that a fresh install wouldn't make things faster. Whoops.
I think part of it is the load of garbage that is the windows registry.
If you're serious about this get jv16 Power Tools. This is one of the oldest tool sets around and probably the best registry cleaner. Combined with CCleaner I actually don't notice many differences between fresh installs and an OS that's been running a year or 2. As long as nothing hammered the OS, I'm only talking normal usage wear & tear.
If I were you want to stick with XP, that's fine but that rig would be quite zippy in Vista 64. I would just suggest clearing cache files and browser histories fairly often. Defragment regularly, and do general windows maintenance and you should be fine.
http://lifehacker.com/5033518/debunking-common-windows-performance-tweaking-myths
That link was somewhat shitty. Half the things there, he's right about. Memory optimizers and System Restore, for example. But cleaning up your registry and disabling certain services can absolutely free up memory and HD space. Look at the first couple comments, people trash him for being a hypocrite and a liar.
Yeah, I looked through the comments. "omg u r liar i disabled CrazyFrog.exe and UltimateAdWareDeluxe.exe and my system was sooooo much fastar u sux!" seemed to be the feeling I was getting.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
I have to comment on this as well because of the amount of trouble this has caused me when cleaning/repairing PCs. The only services that are not normally used are the tablet PC services. Between the power of modern CPUs and the cheap memory prices just add more memory to your system. The amount of time I've spent trying to figure out what someone did to their PC by messing with services is obscene. Most of the people who tell you to disable things have no idea what they're doing. Like Ed Bot said, ask them what you'll gain and they usually can't answer.
Then you didn't read clearly enough. Look for the comments about BlackViper and startup.cpl, and others. The actual intelligent, debating replies and not the stupid ass ones you find on Gawker.
As someone in the comments pointed out, why exactly do Vista and XP have the Wireless Services on by default with computers that don't have fucking wireless cards? Turn that shit off and it frees up idle memory.
I would argue that the use of that idle memory makes a difference, though. So lets say I have 1gb of RAM. XP takes 256 of that away. So now I have 768. The game I'm playing, let's say Diablo 2, uses 512. So I have 256 free still. If I disable processes and free up another 44 mb, I now have 300mb free while running XP and D2. But so what? D2's not taking advantage of that extra memory, so it's not going to run smoother. Now, I start with 512 memory, and XP takes up 256....then yes, you will see a performance boost because the freed up memory is actually being used.
That's the better argument than "it does nothing!"
Yeah, that's a poor choice of supporting argument. That tweak guide has fucked over a lot of systems when followed by people who don't bother to read, turn off a service or two, reboot, test to make sure things aren't hosed, benchmark, repeat, etc.
And even the "free memory" argument is a little moot considering the use of paging and especially SuperFetch, which is designed to preload as many of your commonly-used applications into memory. "Vista is such a RAM hog, it takes up 2GB just sitting there." Yes, and what's filling that 2GB? Word, Outlook, Excel, FireFox ... whatever you like to run a lot.
And as far as the services argument, most of them sit idle, using next to nothing for processor cycles and RAM. People make the "AC adaptor" analogy and I agree - but have they really looked at how much wattage those use? 1W per wall-wart, so you can have sixty of them on and it's only as bad as one bulb running 24/7. Meaning, of course, that it doesn't make nearly as much difference as what temperature you set your central A/C to.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.