E8600 or Q9650 for snappiest Vista experience ??

[Tom92602]

I need some advice..

I was using an AMD X2 6000+ overclocked to 3.5 GHZ with XP home.
I just bought a new PC with an E8600 running Vista. I haven't OC'd
the E8600 yet.

I am so disappointed in the sluggishness of Vista. I notice the Vista
Experience score is only 5.7 and not 5.9 like some people seem to report.
Is 5.7 correct for an E8600?

I am a non-gamer. I email, surf the web, make music CD-Rs,
create documents in OpenOffice3.0, and play old style games with
the MAME emulator. I don't have nor play any of the newer games
at all so I kinda feel this qualifies me as a non-gamer.

I like the look of Vista but it feels so slow next to the XP
system I have.

Did I buy the wrong CPU? Knowing how I use the computer, would
a Q9650 make vista snappier and more responsive? Nothing I do is
CPU intensive so I feel it's VISTA that is making me feel like the system
is such a dog. XP just seems so much snappier..

Will a Q9650 make any difference over the E8600 or do I just need to
reload the machine with XP home?? If a Q9650 is only marginally
more responsive with VISTA (if at all) I'll just give up on it and reload
with XP home.


Thanks!!
Tom

 

[ausch30]

E8600 should be more than enough. What are the rest of the components in your system? I had a E8400 which got about a 5.7 and upgraded to the Q9650 which gets a 5.9. I noticed a few programs are faster but overall there is very little noticeable difference in performance.

The first thing I would do is make sure you have the latest drivers and updates for everything. The E8600 is a more recent chip, your motherboard manufacturer may have come out with a more recent BIOS that could increase performance. Also you could check your power management settings. My brother's system was super slow and I played around with it and found that it was setup as if it were a laptop. It is an older system with a Athlon 64 2.2GHz but it was running at 900MHz and nothing I ran would make it speed up. I turned all the power management features off and the system is much more responsive now.

 

[gamerk316]

Well, my QX9650 (at only slightly above stock speeds) beats my cousins E8400 by a decent margin at even normal Vista tasks; I'd go for a 3.0 Quad over a 3.33 Duo every time; the Mhz diffrence doesn't justify loosing two extra cores.

 

[Tom92602]

It's a brand new Dell Studio Slim. It came with some slow dual core so
I bought an E8600 from NewEgg and popped it in. Windows experience
CPU went from 4.1 to 5.7 but the system seems like a DOG compared to
my old AMD X2 running XP. Maybe I need to reinstall Vista SP1 since I
changed out the processor??

System had 2GB DDR 800 Ram. Memory and Disk score 5.9 Graphics scores 4.5.

Thanks for the help guys!!

 

[Tom92602]

I have Vista Premium SP1. I think it is 32 bit. How do I tell?

I read Vista 64bit is only slightly fast but isn't as stable and
has more compatibility issues with drivers and software?
Is this still the case???

 

[BoBzzz]

I certainly feel that the 64 bit version is snappier but either way you won't really be hampered by either of those CPU's. You'll feel the biggest difference depending on your harddrive. Are you still using an old hard drive from your last system?

 

[bluzman32]

Do you have 4 gb of RAM?
Is it 64bit vista?

I'm running on an e8400 @ 3.6 ghz, I get a 5.9 on the score (although really those numbers are probably just BS) and I feel Vista is much faster than XP, even before I overclocked.

note---just saw your last post.

Its your RAM, get another 2gb stick and that SHOULD fix your problem.

 

[KyleSTL]

1) Install 4GB ram (if you haven't already)
2) Make sure your processor is running at stock speed.
3) Remove all the bloatware (reload Vista if need be)

I email, surf the web, make music CD-Rs,
create documents in OpenOffice3.0, and play old style games with
the MAME emulator.

There is absolutely no way you need to upgrade your processor, it's not your hardware that's holding you back, that I am certain of.

 

[bardia]

I'm 99% sure this is just related to needing to reload. Sometimes dell manages to get crappy programs on there that slow it down, and you may not even notice them. There is no way Vista shouldn't be anything but snappy on that hardware.

I have a P8400 (a much slower CPU than the E8600) notebook and vista FLIES.

 

[Tom92602]

Right now the system only has 2GB

The CPU idles at 6x multiplier and 2 GHZ at idle but jumps to 3.33 GHZ + 10x multiplier under a load.
I haven't been able to disable the speedstep thing even though I disabled that option in the BIOS.

I will try reloading Vista SP1 tonight.

Is Vista SP2 mature enough to try out or will I just make matters worse for myself??


Does anyone know of a CPU overclocking program that works in Vista? On my other Dell with XP home
I used Clockgen and pushed the CPU from 3 GHZ to 3.5 GHZ. But Clockgen does not work in Vista.

 

[daship]

Get a copy of Vista oem and use your dell product key to install to get away from the Dell bloatware.

I never seen a dual core get 5.9 unless it was over 4.0GHz so I ask the 3.6 guy to prove it with a srceen shot of cpu-z and index page side by side.

If you want a snappy feel the best improvement is to get a faster hard drive. Dell is famous for using older slower hard drives. Get a ocz vertex ssd or even better would be 2 in raid 0.

Use HD tune and test the speed of your hard drive, I bet it is in the 50MB/s range which I would call slow. I personally wont use anything under 90, and thats seems slow after using my raid 0 SSD @ 507MB/s. and .2 access time.

You should run 4G ram on Vista.

 

[Tom92602]

Where can I find a copy of Vista OEM? I don't want to spend another $100
for something I already own a license for..??

Harddrive scores 5.9 in Vista Experience so could this really be a hard disk issue?

Is Vista SP2 solid yet or should I stay with SP1??

Vista compatible OC software like "clockgen for XP"??

Thanks, you all are great...!!!

 

[daship]

You can download Vista in various places on the Web, make sure you get OEM version.

Vista scores dont mean ***! 5.9 dont mean ***! Hard drive speeds plays major roles in responsiveness. HD tune is a free test and will tell us really how well the HDD is.

Try windows 7 maybe.

There is no software that I,m aware of and if there was it isnt smart to use.

Dont buy Dell, HP, ect......... if you have OCing plans.

I built my mom a Intel e1200 1.6 with a fast HDD and 4G or ram and it is as fast as hell for everday computing.

 

[Tom92602]

Thanks for the tip on HD tune. I'll download it tonight.
*What is a good HD score? What is an excellent score?

Clockgen works great with XP. Allows me to OC quite a bit and I never crashed.
What makes it so bad to do?

I really like Dells because they are so quiet and the cases feel very solid.
My Dell Studio Slim in black is not only super solid feeling but it also looks ultra classy.
So that's why I keep buying dells..

*Anyone using Vista SP2?? Is it solid yet??
*Will my Vista License work with Vista 64??
*Will Vista 64 show more compatibility issues over Vista 32bit??


Thanks!!!

 

[daship]

90MB/s +
Over voltage
Not sure on SP2, I wouldnt use it til its fully released.
Yes
No

 

[Tom92602]

Clockgen didn't increase the voltage at all. It would only allow you
to boost the CPU speed to the highest stable GHZ at the stock voltage.
I loved that program!

 

[KyleSTL]

You do not need to overclock. As stated before the E8600 is plenty fast at stock for everything you're doing. I'm not trying to talk you out of overclocking, but the problem does not lie in your CPU frquency or core count. Reload and go from there.

 

[Tom92602]

Regardless of Vista being slow I intend to overclock if I can
find software like clockgen that works in Vista. The E8600
can to 4 ghz easy so I'd be stupid not to overclock and take
advantage of the extra speed.

 

[ausch30]

As the others have said, in an attempt to make more money,OEM's install a bunch of trials and other programs in new computers. Even after uninstalling these programs bits and pieces are still left behind to gum up your system. All Vista disks, with the exception of Basic I believe, contain all the versions of Vista. If you could download or borrow a copy of the disk from someone you could do a clean install and use the Dell product key to activate it. One thing I do is use Activation backup and restore, makes using the key you have very easy. Also you could download Keyfinder to see what keys you have installed on your system.

 

[Tom92602]

ausch30:

You make a lot of sense. I have noticed lot's of garbage pre-installed on my machine.

What do you mean by this comment:
"All Vista disks, with the exception of Basic I believe, contain all the versions of Vista"

My install CD from Dell Says "Vista Premium SP1". My machine came with about
5 other cds as well. Is there a way I can just re-install with this "Vista Premium SP1" and specify during the install only to install the OS and none of the bloatware?
(I never installed Vista before) On my other dell I just re-installed with the XP Home SP2 CD and the machine was clean with only the basic XP OS components.

 

[ausch30]

Usually OEM's just give you a restore disk or have a restore partition on your hard drive which would bring you back to the way the system was when it left the factory, bloatware and all. If you have an actual Vista disk you can just use that but it's very unlikely that they gave you one.

What I meant by what I said was that all actual Vista disks come with all versions of Vista on them. When you are installing the OS you choose which version you bought and have a key for.

 

[Tom92602]

I think Dell is different. My other machine had a full "XP home SP2" disk that
took you through the whole Microsoft install process. I was not a restore CD
at all. If after I reinstall vista SP1, the machine is still slugish I may just install
XP home SP2 on it. Would you say XP SP2 is snappier than Vista no matter
what you do? Maybe I am just expecting too much from Vista after living
with XP home for 7 years?

I'll be trying out the Vista SP1 CD this weekend but I bet it's an install CD as well.
I bet the other 5 disks that came with the machine is where all the bloatware is.

Also, I yanked out the original intel dual core CPU the first day I got it and put in
the E8600 so maybe there are different intel drivers that I need which will get
rectified when I reinstall Vista SP1..??

 

[ausch30]

Like I wrote earlier though you might also want to check for an updated BIOS because the might have released a new one to increase compatibility since the release of the E8600.

 

[Tom92602]

I checked and I have the very latest BIOS from Dell already..

 

[Tom92602]

I think I have my answer... My video is an Intel GMA 4500HD and I was told
it hogs 25%-40% of the cpu since it's embedded.

Also:
My BIOS has a newer rev than what is even available for download at Dell's Site.