spec vs spec not equal...

Hi All,

I work in IT for few years now but the're something I can't understand...

Lets say i have to PCs - 2 years old Dell D430 and brand new Dell Inspiron 1545. Spec as follows:

D430:
Intel Core 2 Duo ULV 1.2 Ghz (U7600, 533 FSB, 2MB cache), 2 GB RAM 533MHz, 80 GB 4200 RPM HDD, Intel GMA950.

Inspiron:
Intel Core 2 Duo T6400 (2.00GHz/800Mhz FSB/2MB cache) , 4 GB RAM 800 MHz, 250 GB 5400 RPM HDD, Intel GMA 4500MHD graphic .

Now, I installed clean Vista Home Premium on both (Retail), lates chipset drivers from intel, and hardware drivers (MS where possible, I tried not to install bundled with drivers software where possible).

I installed all Windows Update and I let both computers to "sit down" like that for about 30 minutes (until initial indexing completed, so that HDD activity stopped). THen full HDD defrag on both machines.

Inspiron has a clearly better specification than D430, what I can't understand is that the Inpiron seem to be more sluggish, less responsive, than old D430... I tried to look for bottle necks in Performance monitor, but with no luck...

Am I missing something here? Is there anything I can do?

 

This is interesting.

Would you be able to run some benchmarks/tests?

Things like WPrime, memory tests, if you have a HDD product, use that?

Provided that no driver is buggy, it may be a faulty component.

 

Define more sluggish in the best way you can..

Also, try take out 2GB of RAM out of the Inspiron and see if it is any more responsive.

 

Will do tonight and post results.

 

Well, let say I try open IE on both machines at the same time - it will take longer on Inpiron. When i type in CMD in search field in Start Menu, D430 wil return result faster. UAC popups are instant on D430, takes about a second on Inspiron. I also add that both are running Aero.

Will try tonight. However I should probably mention that laptop came with 1x2GB and 1x1GB modules (3 GB) and was exactly the same. I bough a pair 2x2GB hoping that would make a difference... well, it didn't

 

don't bother with that then.. I was just thinking that some computers might not handle more than 3.5GB of RAM very well if it is a 32-bit system. But if the computer was slow like that before then it's not that.

 

It would be strange if 4GB were resulting in a performance decrease.

No change is what you'd expect....

 

Actually, there were some systems that developed hiccups when a full 4GB was installed in them - I recall some of the resellers in the Clevo/Sager forum mentioning that there was an issue one of the Clevo systems had when 4GB were installed that had to be worked out (included a revision to the BIOS if I recall correctly).

Although I think it unlikely, there is still a slight possibility that the OP's system has a similar problem; however, I would expect that such a problem would have been flagged by _Dell and a work-around or BIOS revision provided to fix it. Just to make sure that isn't an issue, I would just check on the _Dell support page for that system to see if there's a 4GB problem, and if a work-around/solution has been posted. That would also be a good time to make sure that you've got the other _Dell-specfic updates, such as the latest BIOS update.

 

Thanks for that, however as I mentioned, this system came with 3 GB of RAM, when I noticed performance problem I upgraded to 4 hoping that would make things better, with no luck

 

Fair enough; however, you might have had the same symptom arising from two different causes in that case - in particular, with a set of unmatched RAM sticks, you would have lost some or all of the benefits of the dual-channel architecture in the motherboard, which could have slowed the system down for that reason, while - assuming arguendo that the system has a problem with 4GB of RAM - you might have seen a slowdown with 4GB of RAM on account of some other issue.

 

good point, will try to take one of the sticks out.

However, I wouldn't expect difference between signle- and dual- mode to be noticable during regular computer use (as oposit to artificial benchmarks).

 

I'm with Namaiki here. Define sluggish. It would help to see benchmarks. I personally just set perfmon on for a day of usage and export it into an excel spreadsheet. Helps to chart performance metrics like disk usage, disk queue lengths, etc etc etc.

 

As I already said:

Well, let say I try open IE on both machines at the same time - it will take longer on Inpiron. When i type in CMD in search field in Start Menu, D430 wil return result faster. UAC popups are instant on D430, takes about a second on Inspiron. I also add that both are running Aero.

There is basically clear 0.5 - 1 sec delay on random actions every now and then, comparing to the D430.

 

while hugely flawed - what are the Windows Experience Index scores on both laptops? (all categories)

 

Ok, here we are. I ran PC WIzard 2008 benchmark with following results:

D430:
Processor: 4525.766
Cache: 8799
Memory: 2202
Video: 113
HDD: 43

General rating: 1567.28


Inspiron 1545:
Processor: 13308.1
Cache: 14455
Memory: 4794
VIdeo: 288
HDD: 71


ALso, Vista Performance Index:

D430:
Processor: 4.4
Memory: 4.2
Graphic: 2.3
Gaming graphics: 2.8
Primary HDD: 3.7
BASE SCORE: 2.3

Inspiron:
Processor: 4.9
Memory: 4.8
Graphics: 4.1
Gaming graphics: 3.8
Primary HDD: 5.3
BASE SCORE: 3.8



As you can't see I can't get how is it possible it's slower... User experience is simply more smooth on D430... :/

 

Now I dn't know my ways around benchmarks - so I can't compare the values with other values for similar hardware, but t looks liek it should be.
Aso for deeply flawed WEI (Windows Experience Index)

Just thinking - are the Vista "Vanilla" o SP1?
Istal SP1 on both and then compare. It ma be that there are some issues due to the lack od SP1 - Vista was "odd" befre the Service Pack...

 

they both are running SP1 already

i know it's odd...

 

This makes it even stranger as SP1 removed most issues...


It would be interesting to see what happens if you format the HDDs with say DBAN or something like that so that absolutely nothing remains and then reinstal the OS - but that would take time...

 

Are they both on "high performance" mode?

 

make sure that the system bios are up to date and that all updates and drivers are current.

I'll bet it's the hard drive.

 

no, they both on "balanced" mode.

They are laptops, so power efficiency is important.

 

All BIOS updates and Windows Update are installed.

I would think it's a hard drive, but (again ) laptop came with 160 GB HDD (problem was visible from the begining) which I replaced with faster 250 GB HDD hoping to improve performance...

 

Do they both have wireless and/or bluetooth?

 

Both have wireless, D430 has a bluetooth.

 

Ok, so it cannot be network/bluetooth polling that's causing the difference, because if it was, the D430 would be suffering, not the Inspiron.

Try this, d/l a little utility called DPC Latency Checker and run it on each machine to see if the Inspiron shows any significantly greater amount of deferred procedure call latency. If it does, that would probably indicate some sort of driver conflict somewheres.

If you do find that the Inspiron has significantly greater DPC latency, then d/l Sysinternals' Process Explorer and see if you can use that to hone in on what driver(s) is causing the undue latency.