8300 performance

What is your comparable amount of ram ? I started with 256 in my 8200 and when I went up to another 256 (512 total) the system was much faster. I wouldn't run anything less than 512 in a windows XP system.

I agree... the drive wouldn't normally be a performance bottleneck unless your paging file is seeing a lot of use.  If that's the case, additional memory should solve the problem.

Look at it this way:  even thought both machines have the same amount of RAM, most of that is taken up by just WinXP in the new machine, meaning there is actually less for applications.

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying.

Are you saying that a 350MHz machine isn't appericably faster than a 2.6GHz machine?
I find that hard to believe. If the new one doesn't completly blow the PII away  from the get go.
You got robbed. Or something else is wrong. I noticed a difference not a big difference but a
difference none the less from a 1.9GHz to a 2.6GHz processor.

You should go to Pitstop.com and test the new machine. You should expext numbers in the mid to high 1400's.

If you don't then send it back immeditaly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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@sphinx9999 wrote:

I recently purchased a 8300 2.66GHz for my parents, to replace a dead PII/350.  I was surprised that, with both machines running comparable amounts of RAM and similar HDs (WD400BB on their old PC, a WD600BB 60GB that came with the Dell) and video cards, the Dell wasn't particularly faster in most cases.  It quite clearly was being bottlenecked by the disk which, honestly, seemed slow as dirt for a "performance" desktop.

This is frustrating enough that I'm tempted to pick up a Raptor and see how it fares.  Questions -

1. Should I expect a meaningful difference?  (I say yes but...)

Between a WD and a Raptor, yes. In certain situations.

2. SATA vs ATA?  Thoughts when it comes to a 8300?  Is the 8300 SATA on the PCI bus or not?

Todays 7200rpm drives won't make use of the extra bandwidth of SATA. ATA is fine. The SATA is not on the PCI bus, it's right on the southbridge.

3. Has anyone put a Raptor in a 8300 yet?  What's it like?

4. Am I the only one horrified at how slow previously "fast" Western Digitals now feel in a 8300?  I've done everything - switch the drive to 'performance' mode, confirm UDMA-5, defrag, try 2k vs XP, etc.

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Let me clarify - the PC certainly is pretty quick.  Between the old P2 and new P4, a number of things are similar: similar WD drives, same amount (512) of RAM, and both have run both XP and 2k.  I'm noticing that many of the quirks or problems with the old PII carry on to the new Dell... XP boot-up time is about the same, just three or so seconds faster.  Ditto 2k.  Starting IE (home page = about:blank) continues to sort of pause for a couple of seconds of disk chugging the first time.  Burning discs, about the same speed considering the old P2 had a 44x and the new Dell has a 48x.  Jumping between cached web pages--same.  Opening large spreadsheets - same.  Starting the massively bloated MS Money - same.  Starting Photoshop and opening a large image--same.  A few things are considerably better (the old PC couldn't play DVDs would struggling; the new one doesn't even break a sweat; applying filters in Photoshop also is pretty darn snappy) for sure.  Overall though, I was surprised at this feeling that processor and RAM bandwidth probably aren't even in the top five these days when it comes to identifying bottlenecks on normal non-encoding non-gaming day-to-day use.

So, I'm trying to figure out what I'd need to do to get this PC to the point where it feels truly snappy compared to the old one.  There's no shortage of RAM for what I'm doing, processors and RAM speed don't get a lot faster than this, and video shouldn't matter much here.  The hard drive is the only truly mediocre part of this computer.  So, I'm wondering, how would a truly high performance drive fare?  The Raptor seems like a good attempt to find out.

 

"Todays 7200rpm drives won't make use of the extra bandwidth of SATA. ATA is fine. The SATA is not on the PCI bus, it's right on the southbridge."

Can someone verify this?  Dell?

I do understand the SATA setup on the 875P, but I also know that the 8300 has a somewhat castrated implementation of the 875P.  RAID for example got cut.  So, how do we know that it's not on the PCI bus?  Has Dell commented on this?

If you were to open up the case of your 8300, you would see that there is Serial ATA support ( 2 connectors ) on the mobo.  I do not believe that it supports a RAID set-up though.

 

Cheers!

 

I put a raptor in my 8300. It is much quicker than the cheap 60gb hard drive I got with the dell.

Have you tried IAA?  Go to intel website and install IAA.  It should improve your hard disk performance.

Also, I'm guessing that you have anti-virus up and running.  If you really want to improve system response, turn it off.  Yes there are a lot of threat out there and I would not recommend this if you don't know much about computers and don't know how to take other precautions.  I can't stand the way my system boggs down when anti-virus is running.  You can always go online and check your system for virus if you decide to uninstall it like I did.

I have a 8300 that came with a seagate 120Gb disk, this disk was VERY slow and has only 2Mb cache. I replaced the drive for a 36.7Gb WD Raptor (10.000rpm 5.2ms 8Mb cache) and now the system boots in half the time! The Raptor is VERY fast and it really enhance the performance of the 8300. (you can use you current drive for storage and boot your system from a Raptor). The very BIG drives with low cache are very bad for performance.

I would not advise turning-off your Anti-Virus software.

However, I do have a problem with these Firewalls that everyone rants and raves about! They really do slow things down, and installing a simple ROUTER can help hide your IP.  Anti-Virus combined with a Router really does the trick.  These firewalls that all the PC magazines talk about are total overkill for most people!!!

 

 

 

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@wags94596 wrote:

I would not advise turning-off your Anti-Virus software.

However, I do have a problem with these Firewalls that everyone rants and raves about! They really do slow things down, and installing a simple ROUTER can help hide your IP.  Anti-Virus combined with a Router really does the trick.  These firewalls that all the PC magazines talk about are total overkill for most people!!!

I don't agree.  I would suggest the installation of ZoneAlarm and running with and w/o it and judge for yourself.  A router is NOT adequate protection, it does nothing to prevent rogue programs from sending info out.  As far as speed, my high speed cable connection works just fine with ZA installed.

I have an 8300 with a 60Gb 7200rpm drive. I agree that it seems to be the hard drive that is the bottleneck on the system.

I heard that enabling file compression could speed up the system, since compressed files (being smaller) can be delievered more quickly, and a fast processor can decompress them in next to no time, giving an overall time saving.

Does anyone have any experience of this?

Also, I tried switching the drive to "performance" mode, but it didn't seem to make much difference. Are there any figures anywhere describing what speed difference there is between the different modes?

how do you even switch it to performance mode??

 

and what does it do?

 

and what is that iaa that someone said to get off the intel website???

I've read this entire thread so I am just going to recommend a few things to everyone having 'slow issues' with there 8300.

1. Ram (512 or better required for WinXP)

2. Quick drives.  (Contray to what some people have said, 80Gig WD 2mb is decently quick)

3. Intel Application Accelerator (IAA).  You can get it from http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/index.htm (My benchmarks improved slightly, but I think because it adjusts Windows cache sizes)

4. Latest Chipset drivers.  You can also get it from http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/index.htm

5. Set IE settings to only use 30meg of cache.  (These files are small and fragment your drive badly)

6. Set paging file to a static size.  (I recommend if you have the space to 1 gig regardless of ram installed).

7. Relocation of paging file to a space where your OS or Games are not. (If you have multiple drives, not partitions, but always on the 1st partion of any disk as the front of the disk is the quickest spot on the disk)

8. Norton Utilites Speed Disk.  (This not only defrags, but organizes your files)

9. Partion size can effect speed of disk.  I personally have my 180gig partitioned 3 ways. 1x10 gig for OS and installed applications, 1x30 for games, 1xleft over for storage.  A drive partioned in such a way keeps your games/applications seperate and on smaller partitions.  Combined with the above Speed Disk program it proves a very nice layout.

I have developed this style of easy optimization over years and years of testing, benchmarking, and owning tons of computers that I have either personally owned, or supported (family members).  Dell does produce a decent product with pretty good components.  I have bench marks to prove it.  While this is my 1st non-personally built computer in around 10 years, it is just as good as the higher end much more expensive component computers I have put together.

-Richard