New computers/CPU's are just NOT FAST anymore - is it OS bloat, too many cores? what?

by an 4 core proccesor there's 1 for youre activities 1 for the nsa /1 for Russia and the last one for china XD

originally posted by: ArMaP
a reply to: DigginFoTroof

It sounds like something is wrong somewhere, the performance should be better.

As suggested by other members, benchmark your computer and compare it with similar systems, to see if you can pinpoint the differences.

As for multicore CPUs, even if the software doesn't run on multiple cores you can tell the OS which core it should use for specific programs, so you can have your Internet browser using one core while Word, for example, uses a different one.

Look here, for example.

PS: my computer has only two cores, so there's not much I can do about it.

I should have mentioned that the laptop WAS NOT for gaming, but mainly a portable computer for movies (portable HTPC), internet and MAYBE low end gaming like pong, lol... (NES/SNES emulator stuff). I wanted the sweet screen, the high end NVME port/drive, 2.5" bay USB type-C & lots of 3.1 ports, CardExpress (newer PCMCIA) AND a charging port! (not built into the Type C connection!

This was never to replace my desktop, just something I could do some work with while traveling, at library, etc. 95% use is Open Office and Opera/Firefox/Chromium/Chrome, email app & movies/music & GIMP (opensource similar to Photoshop) - no other social media. Only browsers are open all the time and mabye a movie. This should have taken about 15-25% of the resources of 16GB RAM even with like 10-20 tabs open in a browser (static pages, not video's). But I was getting 70-100% utilization of CPU and about 60-85% utilization of RAM, even after ending as many processes as I could (many denied even I was the software owner and system AMINISTRATOR!

It really felt like the the computer was trying to run 1-3 other sessions in the background at the same time. Loading a 5mb jpeg in GIMP, Paint.net or Pinta would take 5-15 seconds from samsungs fastest NVME SSD! Trying to install VMware workstation/player was impossible - I could never get through the install let alone build or import an older VM!

As far as experience my first build was a 386SX 33 (5th-6th gr) before I took the leap to 486 DX2 66mhz (later in 9th grade upgraded that to a Cyrix 166 which was very nice & 40% less than a slower Pentium!).

Not long ago I had a Linux HPC cluster with over 68 Xeon processors at home (dual & quad CPU socket servers w/ dual/quad core CPU's) - power management was the toughest, (needed 3-4 UPS's - of 7.5KW each...) all running Cisco enterprise switches and fiber HBA's & 4 port bonded (&/or teamed) NICS, home baked router/firewall/IDS/IPS, customs AP's/extenders & dual bonded DSL ISP connections load balanced with single cable ISP and 2 4G failovers. Then laptops for a class of students. So I have a little experience with some computers


I've used high end servers for workstations and they work fine for 90% of what you want to do, especially if they have a PCI-e x8 (or x16 ideally) for graphics. I've yet to find something they can't do, even gaming they can blow real gaming systems away but that was 7-10 years ago I tried that. There's nothing like 512GB of ram with 4 quad cores running redundant 2KW PSU's. that thing was amazing at Folding@home when I tried it, so was the HPC cluster.


SO I know a laptop doesn't replace a desktop for speed, but with the specs I got, browsing the internet while I wrote in Libre Office and played a movie in the background (wireless was even off, BT disconnected), the machine was slower than 12 year old laptop with 2GB of ram and 2.4Ghz! I've tried a number of other systems in the last 2-3 years and they are all utterly slow compared to previous systems. The thing is that most people can't go to their basement office and pull out 20 different laptops, or old servers or desktops and compare them side by side. I can.

I didn't even mention the keyboard was the biggest POS I've ever used, I went from typing 90-100 WPM (1-2 errors /min) to about 40 WPM with about 10-30 uncorrected errors. This was after 3-4 hours just typing to see if I could adjust (yes I went through the control panel and all the adjustments for those who ill ask), I typed a report on the laptop instead of my desktop and it was horrendous - as well as the touchpad. If those two things were this bad I'd never be able to keep the device, those are SIMPLE must's.


AS far as heat, I didn't notice any heat buildup but on the 3-4th day when I closed the lid, the machine never came back on for like 14 days. I found this is a common problem with these and it was IMPOSSIBLE to find in any reviews until I searched the specific model. Sites hide bad reviews as the same thing appeared with the keyboard and touchpad. Not a mention on any YT video reviews or Amazon reviews, nothing. When I found the specific problem and searched google for those, I found hundreds of thousands of results - tons of people in forums complaining of the same thing - but NON on the review sites - SUPER SHADY actions by the manufacturer (they can edit their reviews on Amazon) as well as on the manufacturer's forum!

I'm just trying to tell people they think they are getting faster machines and while the test they run might show its XXX% faster then processor BCX, well, take that with a grain of salt. I've seen this going back to 2000 when I sold PC'/laptops at circuit city, people upgraded and they would complain of simply no speed increase - happened in about 1/2 of all sales. We were told to tell them it was "software" issues (bloat) as well as OS "bloat".

We are getting the wool pulled over our eyes in many cases. Building your own is still the best, if I could build a laptop that was as nice as those you can buy, I'd build in a second. We need to come up with a modular laptop and make standards.

There's much more to this, I've kept notes for almost 20 years on most all my hardware, power ratings/draw/speeds, testing scores, etc and I always saw the advertised speeds were WWWAAAAYY off of what you really got in performance. It's like buying a 7CFM @90 air compressor for $69 from (China direct) but it only does this if the input air is already at 60PSI and you are over volting the motor by 2x ( running a 120v on a 240 outlet)...

originally posted by: DigginFoTroof

originally posted by: ArMaP
a reply to: DigginFoTroof

Well, when I was doing product setups on Amazon for a major manufacturer, we couldn't actually edit reviews directly.

There's something like a consumer advocate position, but those people are not employed by the manufacturer. Those people are part of Amazon's structure, similar to how Google Guides works. They're just regular people, that Amazon allowed to work with manufacturers. Manufacturers do send them free stuff, but they are supposed to be impartial. They had the ability to edit reviews, but no OEM could directly do that, when I worked in the involved departments.

Also, there are actually many different ways to build a from scratch laptop now, it's not as complex as you'd imagine.
Individual laptop parts are very easy to access, such as (cheap display panels). Thanks to raspberry pi's. Portable sized keyboard options exist. There are off the shelf desktop CPU's/APU's now, that have power drain so low they are just fine in a laptop, even though they were designed for desktop builds. Battery standards exist, 18650's are cheap. Tons of high capacity USB power banks exist now, as well, for battery options.
There are desktop motherboards that CAN be run from a laptop power charger, and do not necessarily require a dedicated PSU.
(ASRock had an AM1 motherboard, with a dc-in jack. I built a system using that exact board. I even tested it with ONLY passive cooling. No CPU fan, and it was a quad core APU. I ran it with Furmark going and prime95, (not at the same time, of course.) And it ran for 3 hours with those stress tests running, and still didn't have a heat crash.

You might want to check out mini-box.net
Combine that type of stuff, with a display panel (low power HDMI panels exist for raspberry pi's, but will work for these projects as well easy search on Amazon will turn those up) Add a chargeable battery backup, and you essentially have your own homebrew laptop, rolling with desktop parts.

originally posted by: DigginFoTroof
This was never to replace my desktop, just something I could do some work with while traveling, at library, etc. 95% use is Open Office and Opera/Firefox/Chromium/Chrome, email app & movies/music & GIMP (opensource similar to Photoshop) - no other social media. Only browsers are open all the time and mabye a movie. This should have taken about 15-25% of the resources of 16GB RAM even with like 10-20 tabs open in a browser (static pages, not video's). But I was getting 70-100% utilization of CPU and about 60-85% utilization of RAM, even after ending as many processes as I could (many denied even I was the software owner and system AMINISTRATOR!

Which processes were using the CPU? That would be the best place to start trying to understand what is happening.

It really felt like the the computer was trying to run 1-3 other sessions in the background at the same time. Loading a 5mb jpeg in GIMP, Paint.net or Pinta would take 5-15 seconds from samsungs fastest NVME SSD! Trying to install VMware workstation/player was impossible - I could never get through the install let alone build or import an older VM!

Another sign that something is wrong with your system, I have never used a computer where I couldn't install modern software from a major vendor.

As far as experience my first build was a 386SX 33 (5th-6th gr) before I took the leap to 486 DX2 66mhz (later in 9th grade upgraded that to a Cyrix 166 which was very nice & 40% less than a slower Pentium!).

Not long ago I had a Linux HPC cluster with over 68 Xeon processors at home (dual & quad CPU socket servers w/ dual/quad core CPU's) - power management was the toughest, (needed 3-4 UPS's - of 7.5KW each...) all running Cisco enterprise switches and fiber HBA's & 4 port bonded (&/or teamed) NICS, home baked router/firewall/IDS/IPS, customs AP's/extenders & dual bonded DSL ISP connections load balanced with single cable ISP and 2 4G failovers. Then laptops for a class of students. So I have a little experience with some computers

Good for you.

I didn't even mention the keyboard was the biggest POS I've ever used, I went from typing 90-100 WPM (1-2 errors /min) to about 40 WPM with about 10-30 uncorrected errors. This was after 3-4 hours just typing to see if I could adjust (yes I went through the control panel and all the adjustments for those who ill ask), I typed a report on the laptop instead of my desktop and it was horrendous - as well as the touchpad. If those two things were this bad I'd never be able to keep the device, those are SIMPLE must's.

A good keyboard is one of the most important things to me, that's why I am writing this in a old keyboard, much better than the original keyboard that came with my HP computer and that looks more like a laptop keyboard than a real keyboard.

AS far as heat, I didn't notice any heat buildup but on the 3-4th day when I closed the lid, the machine never came back on for like 14 days. I found this is a common problem with these and it was IMPOSSIBLE to find in any reviews until I searched the specific model. Sites hide bad reviews as the same thing appeared with the keyboard and touchpad. Not a mention on any YT video reviews or Amazon reviews, nothing. When I found the specific problem and searched google for those, I found hundreds of thousands of results - tons of people in forums complaining of the same thing - but NON on the review sites - SUPER SHADY actions by the manufacturer (they can edit their reviews on Amazon) as well as on the manufacturer's forum!

And what specific problem is that?

I'm just trying to tell people they think they are getting faster machines and while the test they run might show its XXX% faster then processor BCX, well, take that with a grain of salt. I've seen this going back to 2000 when I sold PC'/laptops at circuit city, people upgraded and they would complain of simply no speed increase - happened in about 1/2 of all sales. We were told to tell them it was "software" issues (bloat) as well as OS "bloat".

We are getting the wool pulled over our eyes in many cases. Building your own is still the best, if I could build a laptop that was as nice as those you can buy, I'd build in a second. We need to come up with a modular laptop and make standards.

It looks to me like you are more interested in just ranting about your problem than in solving it.

What have you really done to try to find and solve the problem?

Why would anyone who is a serious gamer ever use a laptop of any type for gaming? That's problem # 1.

I've literally never built a newer desktop PC that was not faster in every way than the previous computers I have built. If gaming, why in the world are you using a laptop?

I've been getting laptops for Pix4D for our company, and those are beasts, but I'd still never use it for gaming. I have at home, NEVER had a primary computer that was not a desktop I built. I have laptops aplenty, but they are for work in one way or another. Mac, EliteBooks.. whatever, they have a purpose. And it's sure as hell not for gaming. : )

a reply to: Deafeyes

You just have to pay them, and, probably, give them some information about you in the process.