[PLUG] Why is it slower on a P4?

Derek Loree derek at infotects.com
Tue Nov 19 18:43:50 UTC 2002


On Mon, 2002-11-18 at 21:18, Russ Johnson wrote:
> Here's the situation.
> 
> I have a machine at home configured like so:
> 
> Athlon XP 1800+
> Soyo kt333 motherboard
> 512 mb RAM
> 40 gb hard drive
> 32 mb ATI video card
> DVD drive
> Creative CD-RW 12/10/32
> Mandrake 9.0
> 
> At work, I have the following configuration:
> 
> P4 2.4 ghz
> Dell mb (Sorry, it's a dell workstation. work bought it for me...)
> 1 gb RAM

What type of RAM?  I've seen a LOT of Dell's running very fast P4's with
only PC133 (SDRAM) memory (doesn't matter how much there is it is still
slow).  Talk about a huge waste of silicon.  Most of these will have the
stupid integrated video (sounds like yours doesn't though), that uses
system memory as video memory, another huge waste of silicon.  This
combination will make a 200MMX look fast.  This combination sells
because of the P4's impressive clock speed, not because of the actual
performance.

The Athlon is running DDR memory (the only memory the kt333 can use).

There may be more to it, but this is probably a factor.

> 40 gb hard drive
> 32 mb ATI video card
> cd/dvd/cdrw combo drive
> Mandrake 9.0
> 
> Here's the catch... The Athlon can handle more load than the P4. I'm
> writing this message while downloading files, burning a CD, listening to 
> mp3s, and untaring BIG tarballs. No problem at all. 
> 
> If I try this same thing at work, the system is EXTREMELY sluggish. The
> mouse pointer jumps instead of smoothly crossing the screen, I can't
> drag windows around. It's hard to get the mouse pointer to stop on the
> window bar, let alone on a corner...

This could also be a mouse configuration problem.

HTH

Derek Loree





More information about the PLUG mailing list