2 Systems Head-to-Head.. Why is mine losing?

[WALL]

A friend and I decided to buy new systems. They have almost identitical components. We built them over the weekend (neither of us had done this before) and when they were completely installed did some basic head to head time comparisons. Mine was out performed on each one. Is my video card killing me?

My System:
Abit NF7-S MoBo
Barton 2500+
Crucial 512 PC3200
WD 80Gig 8Mb Buffer
GeForce4 MX440 64Mb (128 bit)

His System:
Shuttle An35N-Ultra
Barton 2500+
Crucial 512 PC3200
WD 80Gig 8Mb Buffer
GeForce FX5500 128Mb (128 bit)

The most noticable difference is on booting Win XP. Mine takes 11 seconds longer!?!

I decided to keep my old Video Card and wait for prices to drop a bit... do you guys/girls feel this is the main culprit for my system being out performed?

Also 'Device Manager' says my RAID controller isn't being recognized. How should I fix this?

Any suggestions or comments would be appreciated. Thanks...

Just a note both systems assembled and booted on the first power up... both were very easy to build...

[crusious31]

Did you install the motherboard drivers? Video card is kinda weak for that system.

[WALL]

Yep... installed the MoBo drivers..

[crusious31]

Maybe try HD Tach (http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach) and compare with his. Hard drives are not all exactly the same. I wouldn't worry about it unless the slowness is affecting your normal usage.

Oh, do you have all the same settings in the BIO's as him? Like quick boot turned on and stuff. Go throught the manual portion of the BIos settings one by one and read them as you set it up.. helps the undersanding of things too.

[fishybawb]

If you're not using the SATA RAID, disable it in the BIOS settings - there's quite a delay with it enabled. That could explain the discrepancy in boot up times.

[dajogejr]

My Asus Mobo has a jumper on the boar itself that disables the SATA RAID controller. I'm using it...but, when I wasn't, it'll shave a good 3 to 6 seconds off boot time.

Have you heard of bootvis from Microsoft?

That does a good job of optimizing files, too.

Next...common sense.

Last time you scanned for adware/malware/spyware?

How many processes does he have on start up?

How many do you have?

[WALL]

Thanks for the suggestions...

I disables RAID thru the BIOS. Unfortunately this didn't shorting my booting time.

My system is free of spyware and the like since I just built and loaded the system minutes before the test. (On top of that Norton did an initial scan and found nothing -- similar result after Adware from lavasoft scanned it)

Identical applications were on the systems. Once windows actually starts it races thru adding the necessary applications to complete the boot. It just takes a long time "grabbing" windows to get it to start...

I see the black screen with the windows logo and the scrolling 'block' for a long time... and it hesitates.

[dajogejr]

Ok...did you try bootvis?

[WALL]

I'll check into it later today... thanks for the suggestion...

Today I'm trying to load linux Mandrake 10.0 on one of my HD's...

Frustrating

[Izdaari]

After you get all the tuning and optimizing done, your system will still be slower on anything involving graphics because of the video card. Waiting for prices to drop before upgrading is a reasonable strategy, but you'll just be slow for a while.

[dajogejr]

Well...he's talking mainly about boot time.

The rest, I'm sure will lag due to video...

Doesn't matter what video card you have, boot time isn't effected...(unless the drivers are hosed...:)

[mx808]

I've just been to the MS website and Bootvis came up as "no longer available from this site". Is it available elsewhere?

Thanx

[crusious31]

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664

good read about bootvis
http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/bootvis/

[mx808]

Thanx for the links, 31, speaking of which brings up another question. However, I think I'll do the right thing and post it in the General section so as not to irritate the mods or anyone else.

[Strawbs]

you should also totally empty the "C: \prefetch" folder, yours may be full of old program links that are no longer required. Emptying it will force XP to look for only the files that are current and speed up boot times a little. If you regularly change\optimise your programs listing you should do this every month.