Why is the fetch usually the cause of delay in old computer?

[Ariel Josue Dapar]

Why is the fetch usually the cause of delay in old computer?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Assuming you're talking about fetching data from the HDD, this applies to almost all PCs.

Hard drives have moving parts, and it takes lots of time (relatively) for the platter to spin around to where the data is, and for the head to get there. Other parts of the computer don't need anything beyond electrons to move, and they don't care too much about acceleration.

SSDs fix this issue - they can return requests for data hundreds to thousands of times faster.

 

[ssddx]

to add to this:

-some of the older drives (such as on 8year old computers) do run a bit slower in terms of performance levels than current drives of the same rpm speed. it may be that you are even using a slower rpm speed drive in the pc as well. basically a slow drive is going to mean slow loading.

-over time the OS can become cluttered with unnecessary files which can cause slowdown. this was very prominent in windows xp and clearing out such things improved performance (a reinstall every few years also helped).

-as the drive is filled up there is a slow loss of performance gradually. generally not too noticible though.

-having many startup tasks on an older pc may slow it down quite a bit due to the slower, lower performance processor and hardware.