Upgraded Homebuilt sluggish at times

[thindery]

Here's whats in the system:

RAM
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-8500CL5D-4GBPK56623749 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231166)

PROCESSOR
AMD Athlon II X3 425 Rana 2.7GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Processor Model ADX425WFGIBOX56623749 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103726)

MOTHERBOARD
ECS A780GM-M3 AM2+/AM3 AMD 780G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard56623749 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135233)

DRIVES
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 ST3300831AS 300GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive

Western Digital 36 GB 8MB 360GD Raptor SATA 10K RPM


It is running on Win 7 Premium. The new system opens applications quickly, surfes net smoothly, and is extremely responsive most of the time.

I have noticed that somtimes if I am copying large video files(movies for example) to a USB drive(I use my iPod so I can transfer the movies to a PS3 and watch) the system basically freezes to the point that the mouse is nearly unresponsive. It may move about 10-15 seconds after I initially moved it. There is absolutely no way I can perform the transfer of files in the background and continue to browse the net, etc. However, the system always completes the task and the transfer status box seems to update during the process when I watch it.

Also, if I plug in my SD card into a reader and open up the folder to view the images in thumbnail form (large) the computer takes roughly 20 seconds to buffer the images so the view of the thumbnails are not blurry. Anytime I scroll down the folder it continues to buffer. During the buffer process the computer is unresponsive as noted above, with a huge mouse delay and virtually impossible to perform another task until the buffer is done. The images aren't extremely large. They are taken on a 5 year old 5mp camera in the highest quality. Image size is much smaller then newew cameras I am sure since my MP is so low.

I ran a performance and it said my graphics is at 4.2. Would these two situations be happenign because I don't have any graphics card, merely on board graphics? Also the hard drives are about 6 years old, maybe it's that? I'm not really sure.

Anybody have a recommendation on what to do to stop these two issues? I'm not a gamer, I just use the system for small day to day tasks. I'd like to keep any new hardware to $75 or less if possible.

Here's a screenshot of the performance numbers:

link to image

Thanks for the help!

 

[MadAdmiral]

It's a number of things here. First, you have older, slower RAM. Second, you have a very old HDDs that are slowing everything down.

The Windows performance numbers mean nothing.

Unfortunately, the best solutions to this are going to cost more in the range of $200. I would suggest starting to save some money up to buy an AM3 (NOT AM3/AM2+) board and DDR3 sticks of RAM. Together, that would cost about $200. What you could do immediately is buy a new HDD. I recommend the Seagate 7200.12 500 GB for $55. This is an extremely fast HDD and shoudl speed the computer up quite a bit.

 

[henrystrawn]

Are you running your RAM gang or unganged. I would recommend unganged. Also have you updated your BIOS? There may be one specifically for your cpu.

I agree with MadAdmiral's suggestion, but with what you describe, your hardware shouldn't be causing the extreme slowdowns that you are experiencing. I am just offering you some no cost suggestions before you throw money at it.

Try a registry cleaner like ccleaner, and defag your HHDs.

 

[shovenose]

It's a number of things here. First, you have older, slower RAM. Second, you have a very old HDDs that are slowing everything down.

The Windows performance numbers mean nothing.

Unfortunately, the best solutions to this are going to cost more in the range of $200. I would suggest starting to save some money up to buy an AM3 (NOT AM3/AM2+) board and DDR3 sticks of RAM. Together, that would cost about $200. What you could do immediately is buy a new HDD. I recommend the Seagate 7200.12 500 GB for $55. This is an extremely fast HDD and shoudl speed the computer up quite a bit.

i partially disagree. i use much worse computers, and get much less lag than the op claims to have. that is decent (not great) ram...
anythign connected via usb 2.0 or 1.1 is gonna be slow to load or copy files to and from. thats just the nature of usb.

 

[thindery]

Are you running your RAM gang or unganged. I would recommend unganged. Also have you updated your BIOS? There may be one specifically for your cpu.

I agree with MadAdmiral's suggestion, but with what you describe, your hardware shouldn't be causing the extreme slowdowns that you are experiencing. I am just offering you some no cost suggestions before you throw money at it.

Try a registry cleaner like ccleaner, and defag your HHDs.

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure how the RAM is set up. I am betting it is ganged. If I switch to unganged will each of the 3 cores have access to 1/3rd of the 4gb of ram? Or do they each take 1gb leaving 1gb idle?

Thanks again.

 

[Hunter844]

Find out how many processes you have running in the background. This may be where a big part of the issue is. Something is chew up a good deal of ram either by error or just by the fact that it's a fat application. Something like AVG going buggy could be a problem for example.

I had a similar problem cleaning up an old laptop I'm giving away to a friend this weekend. The thing wouldn't run very well at all so I started uninstalling programs getting rid of stuff I knew didn't need to be there. It started getting a lot more responsive after a few times doing that.

I can't see any reason that computer isn't pretty fast without there being either resource conflicts or something going bad on you.

 

[henrystrawn]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure how the RAM is set up. I am betting it is ganged. If I switch to unganged will each of the 3 cores have access to 1/3rd of the 4gb of ram? Or do they each take 1gb leaving 1gb idle?

Thanks again.

Yes, that's it sort of from my understanding. unganged allows each core to access ram individually, rather than as a block. Here's a link to a discussion:

http://www.overclock.net/amd-memory/324052-ganged-vs-unganged-mode.html

There may be better info out there, but I just ran it ganged and unganged, and seemed to get better results. Also everything I have read recommends it.