XP performance

[rassm]

I have a windows problem that I am not sure where the issue should be taken to.

I have a Dell Intel P 3 running at 850MHZ, 20GB disk drive, Nvidia 256 graphic card, 512MB of PC 133 memory, running Windows XP professional. Your basic 3 year old technology that runs well. The system has all of the current Windows drivers and OS updates.

I have a new system consisting of Intel P 4 running at 2.26 GHZ, 533 bus, 80 GB 7200 disk drive, NVIDIA m200 graphic card, 512 MB of DDR 2600 memory on a new Intel mother board. This system is running XP home installed by the manufacture. I loaded all of the standard drive updates off the web.

Comparing the two systems, the P4 should scream and beat the P3 hands down. That’s where the wrinkle comes in.

I wanted to kick the tires so to speak and see how fast the P4 runs. I am an avid SETI@home fan, so I loaded up the Seti application and let the two systems run side by side. With Seti running as the only application active, running the same version, I get the following results.

P 3 completion time for Seti unit: 10 to 12 hours.
P 4 completion time for Seti unit: 26 to 30 hours

Not the results I would expect. The only obvious difference is the P 3 is running XP professional and the P4 is running XP home.

I have asked around various IT groups and hardware gurus without getting an answer. An idea why?

Ray

 

[btvillarin]

Sorry there hasn't been a reply. I think some of us are stumped as well. The things I can think of are if you're running other programs/services in the background at the same time, to hinder the P4 more than the P3.

Use MSCONFIG to see if things are starting up that aren't needed. Also, go through this page and see what you can tune: <A HREF="http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm" target="_new">Black Viper's Windows XP Services Configuration</A>

Bryan
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[nja469]

It's not the OS, but the P4. WinXP might account for a slight slow down (minimal), but the overall reason you're getting much slower completion times is actually your CPU, with its questionably flawed architecture. The P4 has a deep piepline and it was designed by Intel engineers with one thing in mind, SPEED. Intel has made their mint and has it etched into the general publics mind that speed is king. So when doing this they had to make sacrifices to make a chip that would scale to extreme clockspeeds. One of these sacrifices was FPU power.

Your case is nothing new. A simple search of the boards will show other posts like yours, where peoples old P3 runs certain programs that are FPU intensive way better than a P4. This is why the first pentium core was rapidly replaced with a version with more cache because the first P4 willy's were barely outperforming P3's and not performing anything near Athlons at the time.

If you want a FPU monster get an Athlon XP, plain and simple.

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