What's a bigger factor when installing a program? CPU or storage?

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rizzo183

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Nov 1, 2014
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I know everything plays a part in the overall speed and performance of a computer, but exactly what makes a computer significantly slower/faster when installing a program?

COMPUTER A (1 hour): core i7 7700HQ, 1TB HDD, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD
COMPUTER B (2.5 hours): core i5 7300HQ, 1TB HDD, 8GB RAM

I know it's probably not the RAM, because neither computer's memory was maxed out.

I wasn't installing the program on the SSD of computer A.

The difference in time is definitely expected. But I'm not sure why there was such a big difference. Computer B has been acting up recently, getting stuck when watching videos on youtube. So I'm not sure if it's because of that, or if it's really because of the hardware differences.
 
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bloodroses
In your particular case, your GTA V file is HIGHLY compressed. Usually with compression algorithms, performance is traded for reduced file size. Your CPU performance is the deciding factor there.

I've noticed the same performance difference between my two machines (desktop/laptop); where the laptop has a faster drive (SSD vs platter), but slower CPU (i5 5200U vs i5 4670k). The laptop lost considerably in comparison to the desktop in trying to extract a similar file to what you have.
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Samat

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Well SSD can make a huge difference especially on laptops since they usually only have 5400 RPM drives. And if you have background programs accessing disk while installing a big software... CPU speed can make a bit of difference but usually storage is the limiting factor, some games for example use higher level of compression and require more grunt from the cpu aswell.

Check background programs, but I'd say the storage is the culprit.
 
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rizzo183

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I had background programs running on both machines. The faster one handled them easily as if everything's normal, while the other one stuttered a lot while doing simple things like opening a tab on a browser.

Would storage still be a factor if I installed the program on both the computers on the HDD?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Is there some large component that this is getting from online somewhere?

Is this simply copying from the HDD, or actually installing from some exe on the HDD?
 
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rizzo183

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It's an .exe on the HDD. It says "Unpacking..." on the progress menu while installing.

The setup folder is 37GB and after installation the game takes up 67GB on the disk.

 
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bloodroses

bloodroses

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In your particular case, your GTA V file is HIGHLY compressed. Usually with compression algorithms, performance is traded for reduced file size. Your CPU performance is the deciding factor there.

I've noticed the same performance difference between my two machines (desktop/laptop); where the laptop has a faster drive (SSD vs platter), but slower CPU (i5 5200U vs i5 4670k). The laptop lost considerably in comparison to the desktop in trying to extract a similar file to what you have.
 
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