Whats a good way to test the sheer speed of your PC?

savatage79

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I just upgraded after years of a pretty crappy temporary computer, and im loving my new rig but its not as explosive fast like i thought it would be...i was thinking lighting pages reloading and what not. Its fast....its just not like eye popping fast that i thought it would be. But then again maybe my expectations were way to high or something.

Now heres a few things though that i do know, vista 64 was/is a must....and its on its way hopefully tomorrow. So this rig is built with vista 32 currently, so maybe thats kind of holding it back a bit which i thought i did read before.

But the new tech is all so new to me, so im just not sure.

Heres what i got...and i7 920, gtx 295, 6gb of 1600 DDR3, a gigabyte extreme mobo and a 1 tb sammy HDD.

Now even without vista 64, i was able to fire up and ran crysis....i dont think it was on the highest settings but i thought i had it cranked a bit. But it ran smooth as silk.

I guess its just kind of like the web pages and what not, even pages ill be refreshing just sometimes doesnt feel like its firing them out there quick as possible....like being able to see a picture load bit by bit....not like it takes forever its just not a BAM right there like i thought it would.

Again maybe my expectations were too grand, its just i went from a sorry sack of crap to this and i was thinking id be blown out of my shoes.

What tests are best to do to check some performance numbers? If i see some numbers or benchmarks then i think i can just sit back and enjoy if i know that whats there is really running great comparitively speaking.

Any advice would be great.
 

4745454b

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First, download CPUz and make sure everything is running like its supposed to. Second, the best way to determine if its running fast is to play your games. If it runs them fast enough for you, the machine is fast enough. If there are hickups, then start looking for issues. The issue might be the machine, or the issue might be you wanted to much.

As for your problem, the issue might be your internet connection. If local games run fine but pages don't seem to load fast enough, that sounds like an internet/browser issue. Without details on these (and possibly your PSU) we can only guess.
 

ehanger

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The reason webpages aren't loading very fast is probably an internet issue, nothing to do with computer hardware speed. If you want to test your computer and get numbers then try wPrime for the CPU and 3D-mark Vantage for the CPU and GPU. If you use wPrime make sure to manually set the thread count to 8 so your whole CPU gets tested.
 

vinman

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I can't tell you how many times people tell me their pc is slow and come to find out it's just the internet that is slow, the rest of the pc is fine but their web pages don't come in as fast as they'd like. Put some cash into your ISP.
 
Yep. Doesn't take much of a PC at all to browse the internet.
If you want pages to "Pop" and video to stream fast without hiccups, you have to a have fast (expensive) internet connection. DSL won't do, you have to have something like 8 mb/s cable, or better to get the speed you sound like you are expecting. Even then, if the net is congested in you area, you will still be waiting on pages to load.
 

savatage79

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Well i got comcast and their biggest boost.... i pay like freakin 250 bucks a month with comcasts internet and all my HD boxes for my Hd sets and what not, but i believe i got the highest they offer.

Whats better out there would you guys say?
 

bc4

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Are you using the latest browsers? IE8 or FF3

What pages are you having trouble with. Some just load slow because of heavy traffic/ server load.

Wow, you pay $3,000/year to comcast. How sad, I hate that company but I have to use them because they are the only ISP in my area.

 

mamw93

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If you want to test it out get 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage. They will run a test on GPU and overall PC performance and give you a score. Do it and give us the results from both. As far as the net running slow... it's slow for everyone. Your computer can't make the internet run any faster than the net's max, which isn't very fast. But with your rig you're getting the almost the best performance possible.
 

mamw93

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One way though to speed up the net though is to download Google Chrome. It's fast as hell. Everything is faster on it... but that's because it doesn't do everything in the background that IE and Firefox does. But I love using it.
 

savatage79

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Yea i guess you guys are right about the internet, which i knew really to begin with for the most part but earlier it seemed to just really be weird...it may of been my connection just shaky, because now its all running pretty top notch.

As for browsers yea i got the latest firefox...how do you guys like chrome and ie8? How are they with protection against spyware and all that junk? Someone mentioned chrome but said the favorites is kind of funky to use, is that true?

Ill run those CPU testers though tomorrow perhaps, but like i said too i do believe that getting vista 64 on my machine is gonna tune everything to where it needs to be, even better than what it is now.

Crysis though did run pretty amazingly well, i was quite in love with what i saw lol
 

royalcrown

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hey maybe it's your router too, we had a crappy one and the internet was always iffy, got a new dlink and stuff flies (if you have a router that is).

And sometimes certain sites are just shi7 slow, like tomshardware.com
 

savatage79

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Well IGN is one of my main sites, yea they are slow as shiz lol.

Actually i do have a router, its pretty old too .... hmmmm, you may be on to something there. I run my pc, ps3, wii and 360 off one...im also planning to get a wireless notebook and i wanted a new router to begin with being this isnt wireless...could you suggest a nice one that isnt too expensive but would cover all my equipment?
 
I feel your pain, I have Comcast too. Most expensive f***ing nonsense I have ever seen. I only have some of the modest expanded cable selections or tiers, no premium movie channels, (I simply refuse to pay even more per month to watch 15 freaking year old movies that I have on VHS tapes around here somewhere.) The premium channels anymore are a complete waste of money. I do have the 8 m/s download speed, and I still pay $150 a month.
Huge, huge ripoff. It's ridiculous, it's way, way overpriced for what you get. PERIOD. Who woulld have thought 20 years ago you would be paying that much to watch commercials all day? Used to you paid for cable TV so you did NOT have to watch commercials. It really ticks me off, anyway, okay sorry I'm done ranting now.

But what can you do? In most places you don't have much choice. In places you do have a choice, the choices may cost a little less, but really are not any better, most are worse. And, that fast connection is only as good the connection on the other end pushing the signal to you. If the servers are busy, the net just gets slow.
 

pat mcgroin

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As for your router, just bypass it and see if things pick up.
If so then consider a new one
Perhaps the one you have needs just an update.
Also check your network settings in the new machine to be sure that only the necessary protocals are running.
 

The_Blood_Raven

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I'll just venture that my i7 920 at 4.2 Ghz feels about the same as any halfway decent dualcore for web surfing. Hell the only time I actually see ANY difference between my i7 and my C2D is when I encode, convert, or encode or convert while playing games. Don't blame the CPU, it is plenty fast but the problem is it is almost useless for most people. That said this speed can also allow you to cultivate your computer uses and possibly get into making videos or playing hi-def videos on a nice HDTV, who knows.
 

savatage79

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I hate lacking the knowledge of this stuff, but how can i check the protocals and what not and how do i know which ones are meant to be running and not?

Also, ive never downloaded a new driver for my router or anything, should i go to linksys and check for drivers? Im not sure which model, its just a 4 port linksys router....its their most basic one pretty much.