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4 Posts
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6945
February 5th, 2002 14:00
Performance Problems
I'm experiencing sluggish performance on a new Dimension 4400. Two examples:
1) Opening Help from within Word 2000 takes 3 - 4 seconds.
2) The game Descent 3 drops frames.
Overall system response is poor. There are noticable pauses when opening windows in all programs and utilities.
The system is not doing anything special other than serving as the dialout point for two other systems on the home network.
Any ideas on what is wrong?
Installed software:
Norton Anti-virus
Office 2000
Descent 3
Drive Image
Partition Magic
Configuration:
Dimension 440, Pentium 4 1.7GHz
256MB DDR SDRAM at 266MHz
64MB NVIDA GeForce2 MX
80-gig 7200 RPM Ultra ATA Hard Drivehard (Dell supplied)
80-gig 7200 RPM Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive (Western Digital)
3.5 inch floppy
Windows XP Home Edition
Logitech cordless wheel mouse
3COM PCI Remote Wake Up Network Card
US Robotics 56K PCI Soft Modem (V.90)
16X DVD-Rom
SB Live! 1024 Digital Sound Card
16X/10X/40X CD-RW
100-Meg External Zip drive connected via parallel port
Note: An HP xt948 with a similar hardware configuration and the same software exhibits no performance problems.
1) Opening Help from within Word 2000 takes 3 - 4 seconds.
2) The game Descent 3 drops frames.
Overall system response is poor. There are noticable pauses when opening windows in all programs and utilities.
The system is not doing anything special other than serving as the dialout point for two other systems on the home network.
Any ideas on what is wrong?
Installed software:
Norton Anti-virus
Office 2000
Descent 3
Drive Image
Partition Magic
Configuration:
Dimension 440, Pentium 4 1.7GHz
256MB DDR SDRAM at 266MHz
64MB NVIDA GeForce2 MX
80-gig 7200 RPM Ultra ATA Hard Drivehard (Dell supplied)
80-gig 7200 RPM Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive (Western Digital)
3.5 inch floppy
Windows XP Home Edition
Logitech cordless wheel mouse
3COM PCI Remote Wake Up Network Card
US Robotics 56K PCI Soft Modem (V.90)
16X DVD-Rom
SB Live! 1024 Digital Sound Card
16X/10X/40X CD-RW
100-Meg External Zip drive connected via parallel port
Note: An HP xt948 with a similar hardware configuration and the same software exhibits no performance problems.
No Events found!
weatherguy16
5 Posts
0
February 5th, 2002 19:00
bclaremont wrote:
- I'm experiencing sluggish performance on a new
- Dimension 4400. Two examples:
-
- 1) Opening Help from within Word 2000 takes 3 - 4
- seconds.
-
- 2) The game Descent 3 drops frames.
-
- Overall system response is poor. There are
- noticable pauses when opening windows in all
- programs and utilities.
-
- The system is not doing anything special other than
- serving as the dialout point for two other systems
- on the home network.
-
- Any ideas on what is wrong?
-
- Installed software:
- Norton Anti-virus
-
- Office 2000
-
- Descent 3
-
- Drive Image
-
- Partition Magic
-
-
- Configuration:
-
- Dimension 440, Pentium 4 1.7GHz
-
- 256MB DDR SDRAM at 266MHz
-
- 64MB NVIDA GeForce2 MX
-
- 80-gig 7200 RPM Ultra ATA Hard Drivehard (Dell
- supplied)
-
- 80-gig 7200 RPM Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive (Western
- Digital)
-
- 3.5 inch floppy
-
- Windows XP Home Edition
-
- Logitech cordless wheel mouse
-
- 3COM PCI Remote Wake Up Network Card
-
- US Robotics 56K PCI Soft Modem (V.90)
-
- 16X DVD-Rom
-
- SB Live! 1024 Digital Sound Card
-
- 16X/10X/40X CD-RW
-
- 100-Meg External Zip drive connected via parallel
- port
-
-
- Note: An HP xt948 with a similar hardware
- configuration and the same software exhibits no
- performance problems.
-
-
bclaremont
4 Posts
0
February 6th, 2002 18:00
I've already tried disabling all startup programs. This had no effect.
A full hardware diagnostic was clean.
I've re-installed XP to eliminate any possible bulk install problems.
Dell support tells me that Word 2000 performs poorly under XP. I'm working on confirming this independently.
I've downloaded the latest video drivers from both Microsoft and NVidia and tried them. They had no impact of the frame dropping problem in Descent 3. On a -fastdemo test using the secret2.dem file, I get an average frame rate of 34.92, which seems pretty low.
Most of my evidence to date is subjective. Is there any performance benchmark software I could run that would provide definitive measurements?
Anybody out there with a similar Dimesion 4400 and Descent 3 that could run a frame rate test and post the results?
The_Namek
2 Intern
•
2.8K Posts
0
February 7th, 2002 01:00
Have you disabled or set to manual all non-vital Windows XP services?
Custom built Athlon Thunderbird 800MHz, Abit KT7A mobo, 256MB PC133 SDRAM
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40GB 7200RPM ATA 100
MSI StarForce 818 nVidia GeForce2 MX 32MB 4xAGP
Micron 700Mx 17" monitor
E-IDE 50x CD-ROM, Yamaha 16x/10x/40x CD-RW
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz DSP Sound, Altec Lansing ACS-33 speakers
Toshiba PCX1100 DOCSIS cable modem, Linksys NC100 FastEthernet 10/100 NIC
Philips Vesta Pro Scan PC Camera, Logitech optical wheel mouse
Win 98SE