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Author Topic: You ask: How fast is my PC?  (Read 6908 times)

dreed

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You ask: How fast is my PC?
« on: April 05, 2013, 06:49:40 am »

There are many times that I see people say "I think my PC is slow" or "X is slow on my PC", followed by "I want to buy a new, fast PC."

A tool that may help you determine whether or not your computer is fast or slow is "CPU-Z".

It can be downloaded here:
www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html
(Available for Windows & Apple)


[Moderator EDIT: Caution! Read the following threads before installing!]

Ok, so now you've downloaded it, installed it and run it, what do you need to look at?

There are X boxes that are important:

1) CPU Panel - Core Speed
Speed of your CPU.

2) CPU Panel - Bus Speed
This is how fast your CPU can receive data from memory, disks, etc.

3) SPD Panel - Max Bandwidth
This is the speed at which your memory can service requests

Whilst (1) is important, it is really (2) and (3) that are most important to applications such as Lightroom. This is because when image applications are making changes to pictures, they need to read and write memory in large blocks.

How do I use this information? It will tell you what you've bought. Most likely if you buy something today, it will be faster than what you bought n years ago so you don't need to worry.

When you're putting together bits on a website such as Dell's, you'll often be asked to choose how much RAM and what type it is. On the "SPD" panel, you will see a rating something like "PC3-8500" or "PC3-12800". This will be similar to what you have in (3) above. Having a higher number to the right of the "-" is more important than a high number for CPU Mhz - (1) above - because the CPU today is always faster than the RAM. So spending $100 extra on going from 8GB RAM PC3-10600 to 8GB RAM PC3-12800 is a better use of money than spending $100 on going from 2.6GHz to 2.8GHz.

Hope that helps.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2013, 08:28:45 pm by Chris Sanderson »
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andyptak

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Re: You ask: How fast is my PC?
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2013, 10:10:45 am »

Did your link just dump a bunch of crapware on my machine?
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dreed

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Re: You ask: How fast is my PC?
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2013, 12:09:48 pm »

Did your link just dump a bunch of crapware on my machine?

If you downloaded CPU-Z with this link:
http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/cpu-z/1.63-setup-en.exe

... then no however if you didn't un-select the "Ask toolbar" when doing the install then you will need to go through the Control Panel to remove it. If you downloaded something else then ...

Always take the time to read what you're doing when installing software - I do.
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andyptak

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Re: You ask: How fast is my PC?
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2013, 01:19:20 pm »

I used your original supplied link and while I have to take responsibility for my actions, it might have been polite to caution your readers about an issue you apparently were aware of.

The strength of Forums like this is in the trust that we can have in each other.
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Rhossydd

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Re: You ask: How fast is my PC?
« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2013, 02:35:50 pm »

...it might have been polite to caution your readers about an issue you apparently were aware of...
Lots of 'freeware' is supported by bundling utilities like browser toolbars into the installer. I wouldn't expect anyone to have to spell out such basic issues when posting a link here.

There's also a trust of people here being reasonably smart too.
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andyptak

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Re: You ask: How fast is my PC?
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2013, 07:40:04 pm »

I already said that I take responsibility for my action.

I was just pointing out that a heads up would have been nice. It's not that it takes a lot of effort.

Infering I'm a moron doesn't advance this thread.
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ErikKaffehr

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Re: You ask: How fast is my PC?
« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2013, 07:45:24 pm »

Hi,

There are a lot of aspects. There is a program called geekbench that uses a lot of real image processing operations and also tests parallellism.

It is here: http://www.primatelabs.com/

Best regards
Erik
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dreed

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Re: You ask: How fast is my PC?
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2013, 10:35:33 pm »

I used your original supplied link and while I have to take responsibility for my actions, it might have been polite to caution your readers about an issue you apparently were aware of.

Apologies for not mentioning it - as someone that regularly uses free software, I've become used to looking for such sneaky things and it doesn't even register to me as something to look out for any more.
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dreed

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Re: You ask: How fast is my PC?
« Reply #8 on: April 05, 2013, 10:41:18 pm »

There are a lot of aspects. There is a program called geekbench that uses a lot of real image processing operations and also tests parallellism.

Bench marking your system isn't really useful when thinking about buying something new because it doesn't tell you what you've actually got already in terms of hardware.

The above mentioned "CPU-Z" gives you an inventory of CPU, RAM, graphics chip and motherboard, pulling out or calculating the speed at which various parts of the system run. This empowers you by allowing you to say "Ok, component X of my computer runs at speed Y, so when buying a new computer, I need to make sure that component X runs at a speed greater than Y."

In most circumstances, just buying the latest PC from Dell/HP will always get you something faster than what you already have.
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Craig Lamson

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Re: You ask: How fast is my PC?
« Reply #9 on: April 06, 2013, 01:02:46 pm »

Hi,

There are a lot of aspects. There is a program called geekbench that uses a lot of real image processing operations and also tests parallellism.

It is here: http://www.primatelabs.com/

Best regards
Erik

I like geekbench too...because it is cross platform and I have both platforms.
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John.Murray

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Re: You ask: How fast is my PC?
« Reply #10 on: April 06, 2013, 02:15:05 pm »

+1 Geekbench.

The ask toolbar is particularly nasty, besides the rather innocent toolbar, the installer thoroughly hijacks your browser.  Just un-installing the application does nothing to remove the additional compromised browser / search settings.  How nasty is this malware?  Take a look at ask.com's own description of removing:

http://about.ask.com/apn/toolbar/docs/default/faq/en/ie/index.html#na4
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