i7 Seems sluggish

[aldernon]

I recently built an i7 rig and its all fully operational. Solid system, really nice overall.


There is 1 problem tho, the computer tasks I do do not seem to fully utilize the processors potential. When im un-raring or un-zipping a file, its not much faster then my old pentium 4...

When im encoding a video in flash, I look in my task manager and I see that only 15% of the chip is even working...

In photoshop when rendering a simple photo its very slugish.

Installing programs takes forever.

Personally I'd rather have 100% of the chip running to make my tasks finish faster... Is there any way to achieve this?

I understand that this probably has something to do with the software im running, but for the most part I use all 64-bit applications...

Ive got an i7 920 @ stock speeds
Asus P6T mobo Deluxe
6 Gigs ddr 3 1600
600 GB sata 2 drive
Vista 64-bit

Any ideas or suggestions? Thank you!

 

[Hefemeister]

Could it be a problem with speedstep being enabled and downclocking your cpu because the extra speed is not needed. Take a look at cupz while doing something and see what speed it is registering at.

 

[veg1992]

I recently built an i7 rig and its all fully operational. Solid system, really nice overall.


There is 1 problem tho, the computer tasks I do do not seem to fully utilize the processors potential. When im un-raring or un-zipping a file, its not much faster then my old pentium 4...

When im encoding a video in flash, I look in my task manager and I see that only 15% of the chip is even working...

In photoshop when rendering a simple photo its very slugish.

Installing programs takes forever.

Personally I'd rather have 100% of the chip running to make my tasks finish faster... Is there any way to achieve this?

I understand that this probably has something to do with the software im running, but for the most part I use all 64-bit applications...

Ive got an i7 920 @ stock speeds
Asus P6T mobo Deluxe
6 Gigs ddr 3 1600
600 GB sata 2 drive
Vista 64-bit

Any ideas or suggestions? Thank you!

As in its only loading 15% of the CPU? That's pretty normal... as its hard to load 100% of 8 cores

 

[aldernon]

These are screens of idle chip speed and un-raring a 3.5 gig file.

Idle:

3 Different speeds while unraring:

 

[baron5]

seems as if the cpu is using speedstep to throttle as required. I would have thought when un raring a big file that the cpu would remain at it's highest clock being a cpu intensive task. I guess you could turn off speedstep but then your cpu is always going to run at 2.66ghz and you will use slightly more power. I haven't as yet owned a i7 so i'm not sure why it would be doing this, It should be at least 4x faster then your p4 at un raring.

 

[SSSlippy]

If the program is not coded for multi CPU support it won't use more cores.

Also you are probally running a classic 7200 rpm drive. This is most likely holding u back.

 

[Pinscher]

Installing programs has nothing to do with your cpu. That is HDD bound. Can you be more specific which HDD you have? Which brand/model?

 

[Gothch1ck]

My i7 definately unzips and all that faster, although I did upgrade to a 1 TB harddrive when I jumped to i7 as well, with over 3x the RAM I used to have.... so I can't really compare that.



ALthough my i7 build is seeming sluggish lately.. go check out my posts on it if you think you can help (in the Performance/tweaking section)

 

[Slaymate]

Did you load the chipset driver for your motherboard? Have you updated to the latest Bios for your motherboard? Along this same line of reasoning I'm going to suggest updating all of your drivers.

 

[baron5]

Maybe you just can't handle the raw speed of your i7 yet