Windows 7 Tale of 2 Computers

[wgrimsley]

Tale of 2 Computers

Dell Dimension 4700
Pentium 4
4gb Ram
Windows 7 Home Premium 32-Bit.
Boot Time: Power on to Starting Windows Screen 8 seconds
Power on to up and running 38 seconds

Home Built System
ASUS P7H55D-M EVO Motherboard
Intel i5-750 CPU
4gb G-SKILL Ram
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Boot Time: Power on to Starting Windows Screen 20 seconds
Power on to up and running 52 seconds

Both computers are set up same way with the same software.
Based on the above data the Home Built computer is slower to boot up than the 5 and ½
year old Dell (disregard the difference in POST time).

I ran a test using 13 gb of avi files using Nero Vision to make a movie.
Dell Dimension took 77 minutes
Home built system took 18 minutes and 30 seconds

Now it is very obvious that my Home Built System is 4 times faster than my Dell Dimension so why does it take longer to load Windows 7?

Suggestion appreciated

 

[Mike]

I would highly suggest you check for any driver problems if you have not already done so. For instance, check to see if you could use a newer driver. This could include devices like the video card, NIC, audio, and so on. It could be that some of the drivers required for the hardware on the newer system are significantly slowing down the boot-time.

Benchmark the Hard Drives?

Try doing a quick benchmark of the hard drives on both systems using HDTach and see if the P4 system is faster. If thats the case, you most certainly have a problem with the drive on the new system.

Check CPU and motherboard temperatures on the new system using SpeedFan.

 

[Highwayman]

Why is the old PC faster at booting up...well since it has older tech there are less features that it can use thus loads up faster by skipping the extras, where as the newer built one has better tech so takes longer to load all the extras. For example 32bit cant use the 4-gig of ram (usually about 3gig max) so that's far less buffering ram to load up, and there's likely a huge difference in the GPU in both rigs though you havent mentioned what they have.

It's a pretty much pointless test comparing boot up time between specs as this rarely has any "real world" benefits, considering Windows 7 buffers up as much as possible to increase response times of launching applications and games, it's no issues really to have a slow boot if the actual usage once loaded performs much better.

 

[wgrimsley]

I would highly suggest you check for any driver problems if you have not already done so. For instance, check to see if you could use a newer driver. This could include devices like the video card, NIC, audio, and so on. It could be that some of the drivers required for the hardware on the newer system are significantly slowing down the boot-time.

Benchmark the Hard Drives?

Try doing a quick benchmark of the hard drives on both systems using HDTach and see if the P4 system is faster. If thats the case, you most certainly have a problem with the drive on the new system.

Check CPU and motherboard temperatures on the new system using SpeedFan.

Home Built System
ASUS P7H55D-M EVO Motherboard
Intel i5-750 CPU w/stock cooler
4gb G-SKILL Ram
Asus 9500GT Graphic Card
Dell 22” E228WFP Monitor
Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
In-Win BK-623 Micro ATX Case
SilenX iXtrema 400W Power Supply (That’s more than adequate for this computer since I am not a Gamer)
This computer is cooled by the Stock CPU cooler, fan on Graphic Card and the 2 fans on the power supply.
Idle Temperature CPU 32° C Motherboard 32° C Hard drive 42° C
The most intensive thing I do is render video and then the CPU temperature is 67° C
The Motherboard temperature is 67° C
Hard drive temperature is 42° C

Ran HDTach Random Access 12.2 ms CPU Utilization 7%
Average Read 78.8 MB/s Burst Speed 217 MB/s
(Did not test Dell computer as it is currently unavailable.)

Drivers were downloaded from ASUS Website for Motherboard and those applicable were installed.
Drivers for printer, scanner, mouse and keyboard are the correct ones

 

[Highwayman]

The idle temperature for your hard drives is quite high, I don't often see peoples that I work on going beyond about 28C, even the motherboard seems pretty hot...it could be just airflow related issues.

 

[sgtryan]

it's the processors. Pentium 4 is crap compared to the i5.