Pentium M CHUG-A-LUG LUG

[pepsibottle1]

Hey folks, just wanted to come to you with a bit of a conundrum that I have. I have a HP Pavillion DV1000 that is about 7 years old that I recently aquired from my aunt. The specs are as follows:

1.6ghz Pentium M
2GB Ram
Intel Integrated Graphics
Win XP Home Ed. 32-bit

Now, I don't know whether or not it's me or that the Pentium M seems to be getting a little aged, but for all that it's worth, it constantly chugs along and struggles with just about everything that I throw at it. Now, I can understand the gaming side of things because the hopeless onboard graphics are just plain atrocious, but even with Mozilla Firefox the Pentium M just flat out falls on it's back. Even at idle, I seem to be using way more of the CPU then I should. At first, I thought that AVG may be the culprit because the Identity Protection process was an outright hog. So I turned that off, hoping to see an improvement. Come to find out, that helped only marginally. I then downloaded "Game Booster", which disables unnessecary processes and scrubs a bit of RAM. Even though it is meant for gaming, it still helps out a bit but the Pentium M still struggled mightily when under load.

I know that RAM is not an issue; 2GB is plenty enough for Windows XP and I spoil my computer my defragging and running CCleaner every night so one cannot say that a cleanup would help out much. Now, I realize that the DV1000 is past it's prime and I'm hoping to put it out to pasture and build myself a brand new, state of the art gaming rig in August. I previously had a 2.8ghz Pentium 4 desktop with 2GB of RAM an 8800GT video card, and taking gaming out of the equasion, that P4 Prescott could really scoot along while browsing the internet and could even do some light-duty video editing. The Pentium M is supossed to be a much more efficient CPU but I can't undestand for the love of god why in the world this thing is in a completely different league than that P4, and I'm not talking about that in a good way.

With that said, am I just expecting a bit much from the little ah heck, or is this just plain odd? Anyone know of why the Pentium M is just dreadfully slow? I'm dumbfounded.

 

[internetlad]

what AV are you running?

 

[davcon]

Mobile processors are usually always less powerful then desktop cpu's.
That would be the difference if compared to a Pentium 4.
Your're talking about a Centrino.

 

[pepsibottle1]

Mobile processors are usually always less powerful then desktop cpu's.
That would be the difference if compared to a Pentium 4.
Your're talking about a Centrino.

I do realize that but it is running far from how fast a typical Pentium M should run. It's as if the CPU just falls flat on it's face when under just a light load. Even a friend's Mobile P4 is noticably faster.

 

[pepsibottle1]

I'm guessing that the CPU is just getting aged?

 

[jaguarskx]

I have no problems with my IBM ThinkPad T40 with a Pentium 1.5GHz which has 1.25GB of RAM and running XP. Perhaps you need to do a clean install.

The Pentium M was a good CPU for it's day. In fact it was the basis for a the Core 2 Duo architecture. However, comparing a 1.6GHz mobile CPU vs. a 2.8GHz desktop CPU is asking too much.

Clock for clock, the Pentium M was more efficient than a Pentium 4, however, that efficiency does not make up for the 1.2GHz gap between the two CPUs.

 

[palladin9479]

When you say chugging along, is there HDD activity?

What your describing are the signs of a slow HDD that is under excessive read activity. This can happen if the kernel is constantly paging in / out system files or just badly managing memory in general. I'd suggest looking at upgrading the memory or manually setting the paging file.

A Pentium-M 1.6Ghz should easily be able to do all common activity inside windows and you shouldn't notice any slowdown at all.

 

[pepsibottle1]

Well, I even though my virtual memory was already at 4000, I went ahead and adjusted it to 10000. Definitely snappier and more responsive, but that seems odd because 4000 should be plenty. After all, I do have 2GB of ram.