slow new setup

paul_radford · 8 Jul 2011 at 12:31

Hi,

I needed to get a cheap cpu motherboard bundle after my last setup had a problem and was old. Im loyal to amd, so wanted am3. looking around, I found a cheap bundle:

biostar n68s3+
amd athlon II x2 (I liked the last athlon I had)
4gb ddr3 1333

I assembled it, did a new install (xp for the moment, would like win7, but may wait for win8), fired it up and slooow. Its slow to boot and slow to run. I dont get it... The cpu is dual core, which should be quicker than my old single core. the memory is the best that will fit the board. that leaves just the board itself which I have a couple of gripes about, but thats me being picky. so why so slow? would I do well to look into finding an asus or msi board?

Thanks to all who reply..

Emphacy · 8 Jul 2011 at 12:33

The board is merely a data bus for all your components and couldn't really slow anything down, unless you go into bus speeds etc, but yours is fine.
How old and what type of HDD are you using? It could be the HDD letting you down or on its way out.

Hagar · 8 Jul 2011 at 12:46

Try disabling cool and quiet in the bios, see if that speeds it up, it may need more load.

It is an old chipset, are you using the Nforce graphics or a dedicated card?

paul_radford · 8 Jul 2011 at 13:14

Thanks Emphacy. I hope its not the drive, It the only 1tb sata I have left, but was quick enough on my last setup, though Its about 2 year old. I do have 1 ide in there for data storage. maybe I'll try pulling that out...

cheers nkata. I do have a pcie gfx card for my system. though onboard gfx may be ok, dedicated gfx cards are better - least thats my school of thought. however, the card is old now its a pcs powercolor hd4850 1gb ddr3. I do intend to upgrade, but the phrase with computers is "how deep is your pockets" and I have to build finances for a new board. I will check the bios though, thats an helpfull comment.

just got me, that I added dual core and newer memory, then lost so much speed. it now seems like boot, do a cuppa, run apps, do another cuppa. probebly not quite that bad, but I expected more from upgrading, and while Im not 100% happy with the mobo it pointed me to that. One setting can make a difference - check bios..

whilst im on the point of os - do you agree I should wait for the new ver of windows?

Hagar · 8 Jul 2011 at 14:57

That gfx card should be quite fast. It is a Gen 1.0 PCIe slot though so will run it at 8x rather than 16x. It does not appear that it is a graphics issue from what you are saying though.

Check your cpu and memory is running at spec. in the bios.

Download and run CPUz, also HWmonitor also Prime 95.

You should be able to check the CPU and memory speeds in CPUz and voltages, temps in HWmonitor under load with prime running.

I built an athlon II system with this chipset for a friends wife and it seemed fairly quick. He did swap out for an AMD 800 series chipset motherboard later though.

paul_radford · 8 Jul 2011 at 17:23

Thanks again nkata.

dont get me wrong, it is a darn good card - runs a tad hot, but then its a gfx card. I shaved a little temp of the top by replacing the stock heatpaste and adding the zalman power flower to it, along with ramsinks. its just a tad old, running ddr3 rarther than ddr5 used today. As its not a referance design, watercooling will require a gpu block, but that can be used with the new card also.

so Im back to the mobo, which is in tandem with the bios. will check settings when i can. got and use.hw monitor, will look at cpu`z.

thanks again..

Justintime · 8 Jul 2011 at 18:58

nkata said:
That gfx card should be quite fast. It is a Gen 1.0 PCIe slot though so will run it at 8x rather than 16x. It does not appear that it is a graphics issue from what you are saying though.

It'll run at 16x, i know this because even up to last week i built a spare rig to test some software on and it consists of a E6600 @ 3.8Ghz and 965P DS3 1.0 with HD4870, runs at 16x just fine