Do I need to Upgrade Computer Hardware?

[russellsnr]

Hi, Just looking for some advive please. Had this computer for some time and run only my image editing on it but seems now to be slow especially when launching softwares. The config is as follows (I Hope)


Thankyou, Russ

[george013]

Hi, Just looking for some advive please. Had this computer for some time and run only my image editing on it but seems now to be slow especially when launching softwares. The config is as follows (I Hope)


Thankyou, Russ

People are running slow when getting older. Not computers.
Mostly it's software installed on the pc. If you do a complete reinstall of the os, so on a clean formated disk, then you should have the same speed as when you bought it.
Maybe somebody else can tell you something about how you use the memory modules. That could be a problem too.

George

[DanK]

George is right: the physical components do deteriorate, but slower speed isn't generally that.

Windows 7 does a reasonable job of disk defragmentation on its own, but fragmented disks can badly slow reading of large files, so I would run the OS's optional disk defragmentation routine on all of your physical (NOT solid state) drives. You can find instructions here.

You have four drives listed, which makes it hard to see what is going on. I would check each one to see if any is nearing capacity. I'd be concerned particularly with whatever drive(s) your software uses for scratch files.

Finally, there is one way that age matters: just as new highways generate more traffic, more capable computers allow software companies to add yet more bloat. A computer that was fast with the software of 6 years ago may not be so fast with the current version of the software. I don't know how old your computer is or whether the software you use has had much bloat since.

Still, if the computer is not too old, and if you have sufficient free space on the relevant disks, you may have good results with the approach that George suggested: start with a fresh copy of the OS and rebuild everything. since you use this only for editing, that might not be too big a process. I am currently trying to make the exact same decision about a 4-year-old computer with Windows 7. I may just put on a fresh copy of Windows 10 and see what happens.

[russellsnr]

Thanks for the advice guys, all my drives are ssd's so no fragmenting require as I understand it. The one thing I was looking at was the processor. Thanks again, Russ

[Manfred M]

What I would suggest is that you check your computer specs against the "recommended" specs that your image editing software supplier recommends (not the minimum, but the recommended). See how much RAM your video card has, as that is one thing that is missing from the list. I recently upgraded my video card because it fell below the minimum required to run Photoshop (it was that old).

There are a couple of things that strike me as odd are the RAM configuration; RAM is usually installed in pairs and in specific slots. However, as your machine boots up, it obviously works. The other thing that is a bit odd is the large number and mix of drives. Your system drive is only 256GB, which suggests it is ancient. You have a couple of SSD drives plus another fairly small mechanical drive.

If I were to do one thing is that I would turn your Crucial SSD into your system drive, as that would speed things up tremendously. Upgrading your system drive this way would definitely make an appreciable impact on your system speed; I switched my system drive to SSD a couple of years ago and that really sped up the software load times and system boot time. What's even better is that you can do so for no cost as the components are already built into your machine. Just install your OS and editing software there and change that over to being your system drive in BIOS.

I just checked out your video card; it has only 1GB of RAM; which is what mine was. Photoshop (CC 2017) now requires 2GB minimum, which is why I upgraded my video card, I had a 1GB card as well.

[george013]

I don't believe fragmentation is an important issue for the speed of the pc. It's certainly software running in the background.

George

[proseak]

Thanks for the advice guys, all my drives are ssd's so no fragmenting require as I understand it. The one thing I was looking at was the processor. Thanks again, Russ

The processor isn't bad, but it is quite old - 1st quarter of 2009. Here's a link showing how it compares with other CPUs -

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php...+X4+955&id=368

[DanK]

I don't believe fragmentation is an important issue for the speed of the pc. It's certainly software running in the background.

Microsoft says:

Fragmentation makes your hard disk do extra work that can slow down your computer.

Remember that Russel wrote:

seems now to be slow especially when launching software

Fragmentation matters only when an action requires many disk reads or writes, and one instance of this is launching launching complex software. However, it's a moot point because he has SSDs. For reasons I don't understand (after all, flash drives can become fragmented), I've been told that defragmentation of SSDs is neither necessary nor desirable. I created problems on one computer by defragmenting an SSD.

However, you are implying something that should be on the list: the gradual accumulation over time of software loaded at boot time, which can slow the computer down. It's possible, but time consuming, to identify every running process from the task manager process (not applications) tab, but is slow going, as one has to search for the meaning of all the exe files one doesn't recognize. Windows also provides a list of all files executed at startup, via the startup tab in task manager in Windows 10 but I think via msconfig in Windows 7, which Russell has. You can turn unwanted things off there.

Manfred, your suggestion of checking video memory is very helpful. I'm dealing with a similar situation--I need to reimage or replace the computer on which I do most of my editing--and I checked everything except video memory.

[Manfred M]

Fragmentation matters only when an action requires many disk reads or writes, and one instance of this is launching launching complex software. However, it's a moot point because he has SSDs.

Not necessarily Dan. It depends on where the software resides. If everything is on his mechanical system drive, he will have a slower read rate.

For reasons I don't understand (after all, flash drives can become fragmented), I've been told that defragmentation of SSDs is neither necessary nor desirable. I created problems on one computer by defragmenting an SSD.

The NAND memory used in an SSD drive has a finite life, depending on the number of write cycles it is subjected to. What SSD controllers do is ensure that all of the memory is written to over time so that no single part of the memory gets written too more often and hence fails. The defrag software and NAND memory management software would conflict with each other.


The other possibility that you (and Russell) are seeing is the Windows system using virtual memory, i.e. swapping operations to the HDD to free up RAM. If this is happening and the slow mechanical hard drive is being used as swap memory, the system will slow right down. When one has a SSD as the system drive, the swap drive is fast NAND memory and this use of virtual memory is quite fast when compared to the mechanical drive.

[george013]

Russel wrote

seems now to be slow especially when launching software

I bet that defragmenting the hdd won't change that.

The main problem is software. Antivirus software as AVG, a good peace of software I believe, is placing itself in the OS and is growing in time. After a while I had a slow pc too. Tried to deinstall AVG and CCleaner, another one. That only is quite hard if not impossible. But if you succeed the pc is gaining speed again.

Install ZoneAlarm and find out how many times software on the pc is connecting to the internet.

What you gain with a complete new installation of the OS is that you get rid of them all. Don't forget to format the disk. Windows is using everything that's left on it.

George