What Minimum Computer System Configuration Will Make The....

Michael Knight · Joined: Jul 24, 2003 Posts: 92

...internet fly like the wind? Year after year I upgrade internet speeds or computer systems and I'm still annoyed by those content heavy sites slow loading line of you know what. I currently have the fastest broadband speed from my cable company and I've used msconfig to disable all unnecessary background programs in my XP system. I also perform regular maintenance on my system(disk cleanup, registry mechanic, and disk defragmenter). What is the minimal computer configuration(RAM, processor speed, etc) needed to get sites like the Netflix Queue, Amazon, and ebay to load nearly instantly? This time when I buy a new computer I want to finally see some results! Also I plan to avoid Vista at all costs and stick with XP which has caused me the least problems compared to the previous Windows operating system train wrecks.

zlim · Joined: Mar 11, 2005 Posts: 2636

1. What browser are you using?
2. Have you tried AdMuncher or installed AdBlock+ in FF?
3. How many things do you have loading at startup?
4. What do you use for security? firewall, anti-virus, anti-malware detector

I just installed XP on my desktop computer, new in January 2005 so we aren't talking cutting edge here. The speed (AMD chip) is 2+GHz and I have 1MB RAM. I don't appear to have any bottlenecks.

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

Z,
You actually do have an invisible "Bottleneck".....it's the ram.
(and if you're using an IDE hard drive....that's another huge bottleneck)

I thought I had a great running AMD X2-64 3800+ system when I first built it three years ago.
I built it on a shoestring, just to test Vista (beta).
It actually ran the Vista beta pretty good.
Then I had to press it into full service, as my main system, to run XP-Pro.

After all my tweaks and tuning, XP-Pro ran really good. I didn't think it could run any better. Then one day I got this great deal on another stick of ram (one gig).
That brought the total ram up to 2 gigs. I didn't expect to see any difference, but WOW was I ever surprised!!!! The difference was immediately seen and greatly appreciated.

Since then I've upped the ram again, to three gig's and as expected I saw no real increase in performance.
But now, I'm also running Vista Ultimate 64 on this PC and I know it really appreciates that extra ram.

So don't hobble your systems performance with just one gig of ram.

happy Super Bowl Day Very Happy

Doc

donrc · Joined: Feb 16, 2003 Posts: 882

Michael,
I have been upgrading computer systems for 25 years now starting with an old Radio Shack Model I. Doc that one had 48K of memory. Whoo. Smile

One thing I have noticed thru the years is that you notice the increase in performance for about three days. Then you become used to it and start saying,"What's making this damned thing so slow?"

Also keep in mind that it is not just the speed of your computer that is involved here. It's also the computer on the other end. And they may not have just upgraded as you have. Wish I had better news for you Michael, but that's just the nature of the beast. Cool

drc

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

I don't care how much you clean your computer, or what hardware you have,,,,
Windows XP, the way it comes out of the box, runs at about 30% efficiency.
That's due to all the defaults built into the OS.

With all the tweaks and tuning I do to a PC, I increase the performance of the average PC by about 100% without ever adding or modifying any hardware.

There are also some tweaks you can do to Firefox to greatly increase its performance. I even posted that, once, right here in the LG forums.

But if you don't give your OS enough ram to use freely, you'll never get the maximum performance out of it.

I was using a SATA hard drive for over a year, before I finally got my current mobo, that would directly support a SATA2 HD.
I ran my SATA HD off of a PCI sata controller card.
By going from an IDE HD to a SATA HD, I cut down my C: drive backup time, from about a half hour to about 6 minutes using Ghost 2003 in DOS.

You cannot optimize your internet performance till you first optimize your PC hardware and then the OS.

Cheers!
Doc