Help speeding up the Pentium D

[brandnew]

I built a system with a Pentium D 2.8 Ghz processor and 1GB RAM. I'm running windows xp prof. and i was wondering if there was a way to optomize the processor to work up to its potential because it doesn't seem to run as fast as it should. I'm not much of a gamer, but I just run other software programs on it.

 

[chuckshissle]

8) The intel Pentium D 820 2.8Ghz processor is not you would call a gamer's CPU. I have the same CPU which runs good however overclocking wise is another issue. As you might have known, a lot of pc gamers/builders have issues overclocking the Pentium D 820 yet some gaming motherboard do not even register both cores. The 820 compare to that of 830 and 840 do not have the same features. The 820 don't have the 64 bit support nor the intel inhance speedstep technology. So that means that the 820 processor is I would say a fix processor, but Im not saying that you can't overclock it but like a say there are been some issues with the cpu when it comes to boosting the performance.

But a good high performance memory of 2 gigs and a decent graphics card ( 7800 gtx) would deffinitely increase your pc's performance. Some of the newer games that are coming out ei: BF2, FEAR etc. are taking more advantage of the vga/graphics card rather than just relying the CPU power. So an 820 processor with high performance memory and graphics card is good enough to run the latest pc games. 8)

 

[luminaris]

Well a couple of things you might be able to do besides overclocking is go into the BIOS and tweak your rig that way. By enabling the enhanced defaults in the BIOS that should squeeze more performance. Another thing that might help is go to start>run>type in msconfig and disable any programs from starting up that you don't need. The less programs running in the background, the better. Provide us a little more of your rig specs as well such as hard drives, mother board type, power supply etc. Make sure you have the mother board setup for that processor such as front side bus and memory too. Check the hardware profile and make sure Windows is reading the right processor speed. I'd definately start there and see what happens.

 

[ltcommander_data]

The 820D doesn't have EIST because the higher models downclock to 2.8GHz anyways so the 820D has no where lower to go. The 820D does have 64-bit support as well as all the other features of the higher 8xx series except EIST which I already explained. The only boards that don't support the 820D are the nVidia ones because the 820D uses too little power or voltage or something like that, which is actually kind of funny considering Smithfield's reputation for power hunger and heat. In any case, he saids he's not much of a gamer anyways so it doesn't really matter.

On top of the other suggestions, you should also make sure you have the latest BIOS and drivers for everything. You're hard drive should also be nicely defragmented and your registry cleaned for smooth operation. If you have an Intel motherboard you show also install their Matrix Storage Manager Drivers which help with the hard drives.

 

[chuckshissle]

my mistake Pentium D 820 does support 64 bit.

Thanks

 

[dvdpiddy]

wanna know the best solution

 

[dvdpiddy]

buy an athlon 64 x2 3800 you should save atleast 200$ a year on electric bills

 

[slvr_phoenix]

My first question would be, if you run devmgmt.msc and look under the Computer heading, do you see Uniprocessor PC or Multiprocessor PC?

 

[mdd1963]

What model mainboard?

Running any single application that is not SMP/HT threaded, you will only have the performance of roughly a single core 2.8 Prescott...

When/if running multiple applications, the differences should then be noticed if the dually is being utilized....

 

[brandnew]

Thanks everybody for their help. I've been really busy and haven't had time to respond.
I have 1 SATA 300GB hard drive and 1 SATA 80GB hard drive. The OS is installed on a 25GB partition along with most of the programs I use and its getting pretty full so I was thinking of reformatting and making the partition size a bit bigger.
My system recognizes the two processors and is listed as a multiprocessor PC and I have disabled all the startup processes I do not need but it is still running rather slow. It also takes a few minutes to reboot. Any suggestions?

 

[guyinyourattic37]

buy an athlon 64 x2 3800 you should save atleast 200$ a year on electric bills

you know, if that's really true, that's pretty outrageous, how did you come up with those numbers anyways? i've heard this a few times, but didn't really take it serious.

Don't worry its not $200 a year.