Thread: I feel the need, but how much speed?

Originally Posted by Tools

The time has come for me to 'upgrade' my computer as I am getting tired of the dial-up speeds it often gives me. The old system must be well over 10 years old and is incapable of running modern software.

I am only going to buy a second hand unit and was looking at what speeds are available. There doesn't seem to be much available that has a clock speed of greater than 3.2G, but my current dinosaur is already 3.2. Have clock speeds not advanced, or do they not have too much bearing on speed?

I am also looking for SSD rather than HDD, Win 10 (still running XP at the moment). What else should I be looking for in a speedy machine? Minimum RAM needed?

I possibly need to be looking at replacing my modem as well. I still have the Thompson 530 that Telstra gave me back in the day when I first signed up for ADSL. Don't even recall how long ago that was. Any suggestions for a better and speedier modem compatible with Telstra?

Tools

Clock speeds only matter within the same generation of CPUs these days. Think of it as newer CPUs will have more efficient architectures and can do more work per Ghz. Also, the more 'cores' a CPU has the better it can multi-task, provided that the software is designed to utilise more cores.

SSD for windows and HDD for storage. Minimum ram I would go is 8Gb

A new modem may or may not improve your internet speeds as it could be limited by your copper line. Leave the modem for now until you upgrade your PC. If your internet is stable the slow speeds you are noticing is likely from the PC.

You should see an improvement in speed with newer PC. From memory the 2 core pentiums were budget CPUs at the time as the 'Core' line of CPUs were released. Also, windows XP is old with security issues and 32bit only (thats why you have 3.5gb of ram when physically you likely have 4gb of ram).

FYI: Have had two SSD drives for years in my PC, just got new PC or should I say NUC, that part was a present, the other bits I had to add were 16 GB ram and SSD. So I just installed a Samsung 970-EVO m2 SSD, I'v got a Samsung 860-PRO from my old system and I thought over 500 Mb/s read write was pretty dam good, but this m2 peaks at just over 3 Gb/s read and 2.4 GB/s write . Amazingly it maintains over 1.2 GB/s R/W down to quite small block size.

But in the real world, yes some large apps open quicker than on the 860-P and Windows resumes from Hibernate in a flash (have been using Hibernate dozens of times a day for YEARS on my old SSD wear diags still shows it like new, and the new PC cold boot is under 9 seconds, but I got 970-EVO m2 on special (it was cheaper that a new 860) SSD.

Just migrating all the needed data and reinstalling programs across to the new PC. Like cleaning out a hoarders house - 8 years of gathered "stuff ".

The 970-EVO m2 SSD drives are astounding. They are so fast its crazy.

A cracking price too! 500GB for $149.

Could not agree more, I got one for $132, just couldn't go past it, my old 860-PRO fitted inside the small palm sized case as well.

Something I noticed on the subject of how much CPU speed / power you really need in real world PC tasks. When doing an image backup using Acronis TI, the CPU usage and backup speed is usually limited by the write speed of the backup drive, however even using my my older Samsung T3 SSD backup device, the write speed with USB 3.1 (Gen 2) is getting close to 430 MB/sec (the NUC also has Thunderbolt (V3) and type C USB 3.1 G2). As the 970 EVO M2 has a read speed of over 2400 MB/sec, the limiting factors in this system are surprisingly, the CPU "to some extent", and obviously the 430 MB/sec write speed of the tiny external T3 SSD. What is interesting is that the CPU runs constantly at over 4 GHz during the backup with the displayed system performance transfer graph sitting at around 400 MB/sec to the T3. The T3 disk process usage is pinned at 100%, backup transfer speed only drops slightly if the CPU throttles back (heat) after a sustained period of time. Backups are very fast though.


On the typical current (WD passport) small external HDD drives, the "write" speed is only around 90 MB/ sec or less, so the CPU runs at around 800 MHz to 1.2 GHz, disk process usage of the INTERNAL 860-PRO SSD is around 8%, disk process usage of the external HDD is pinned around 96%.