Occassional Lockup - CPU related?

[alikum]

Hello everyone,

Here is my system specs:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ stock, CoolerMaster V8
MSI 790GX-G65
HIS HD4850 i-Cooler
Xigmatek NRP-MC751 750W modular PSU
2x KVR1333-2G @ 1333MHz
Seagate 7200.12 500GB
Windows 7 Professional x64

I get occassional lockup/stutter for 2-3 seconds when opening applications and things go smooth again. Just an example, sometimes when I open Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (genuine), everything would become slow or stutter slightly or sometimes, when running Firefox, after loading a page, I try to scroll up down, it wouldn't respond for a few seconds and would turn normal again. It happens with many applications, not just those that I've mentioned. I have the latest Windows Updates.

I have never experienced such issues with my previous Intel Core 2 Duo E7400. In fact, it was very smooth. But of course, it was running on Windows Vista x32.

I thought the processor should be more capable than that?

Can anyone help me? Also, let me link you to the problems I've been facing thus far:

Here

I suspect that it could be CPU related because I'm sure a good AMD processor is much more capable (faster) than my previous E7400.

I need advice.

 

[sminlal]

It's a lot more likely to be a disk bottleneck than a CPU one. Use Resource Monitor and Task Manager to see if CPU or disk activity is maxed out while your lockups are happening.

 

[alikum]

Hello sminlal, I will monitor when I get home later. Thanks.

 

[COLGeek]

Are you using Win 7's stock GPU and chipset drivers or ATI/AMD's drivers? If stock Win 7, you need to go to ati.com and download and install the latest (10.9) suite of drivers.

Try here:
http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/Pages/radeon-win7-64.aspx

 

[alikum]

Hello ColGeek, I am using Catalyst 10.2 [planning on an upgrade to GTX460 some time in the near future], not stock Win 7. Hence, I won't be upgrading drivers to save myself the hassle.

I monitored and it seems that the disk activity is usually at peak when a program opens, like firefox or Outlook. When firefox is being opened, the first thing I saw was many instances of firefox.exe from different paths. The same goes for Outlook.

 

[COLGeek]

Got it, but you can still update the ATI chipset NB and SB drivers, also found at ati.com.

Switching to another GPU will not fix the disk access problem. I have a 965 BE system with a HD4850, 4GB RAM, and a 500GB HD, on a very similar mobo and it is silky smooth and fast with Win 7 Pro x64.

Your system just needs a little fine tuning, it seems.

 

[alikum]

Thanks COLGeek. What sort of fine tuning are you talking about?

Yea, I guess it wouldn't hurt to update the drivers.

By the way, I just remember an incident that happened when I was building the rig close to a year ago. Back then I was using the stock HSF and the temps were rather high. I decided to get an aftermarket cooler and purchased the V8. When I was removing the stock HSF, the CPU came off with it with the socket lever still locked. I gently ripped the CPU off the HSF, cleaned the grease and put it back in with the V8. I did not check for bent pins or damaged parts since it booted up just fine.

I'm not sure if this could the root of all issues though. Another thing is the machine was built for development. I have instances of SQLServer installed and some other services. Without opening anything, according to Task Manager, I have 64 processes running.

 

[COLGeek]

In Task Manager, how much memory are you using at start?

Your CPU is likely fine, or it wouldn't work at all.

Updating drivers is mostly what I meant by fine tuning.

 

[alikum]

At start, it's roughly using 1.4GB RAM being used