E8600 or Q9650 for snappiest Vista experience ??

I need some advice..

I was using an AMD X2 6000+ overclocked to 3.5 GHZ with XP home.
I just bought a new PC with an E8600 running Vista. I haven't OC'd
the E8600 yet.

I am so disappointed in the sluggishness of Vista. I notice the Vista
Experience score is only 5.7 and not 5.9 like some people seem to report.
Is 5.7 correct for an E8600?

I am a non-gamer. I email, surf the web, make music CD-Rs,
create documents in OpenOffice3.0, and play old style games with
the MAME emulator. I don't have nor play any of the newer games
at all so I kinda feel this qualifies me as a non-gamer.

I like the look of Vista but it feels so slow next to the XP
system I have.

Did I buy the wrong CPU? Knowing how I use the computer, would
a Q9650 make vista snappier and more responsive? Nothing I do is
CPU intensive so I feel it's VISTA that is making me feel like the system
is such a dog. XP just seems so much snappier..

Will a Q9650 make any difference over the E8600 or do I just need to
reload the machine with XP home?? If a Q9650 is only marginally
more responsive with VISTA (if at all) I'll just give up on it and reload
with XP home.


Thanks!!
Tom

E8600 should be more than enough. What are the rest of the components in your system? I had a E8400 which got about a 5.7 and upgraded to the Q9650 which gets a 5.9. I noticed a few programs are faster but overall there is very little noticeable difference in performance.

The first thing I would do is make sure you have the latest drivers and updates for everything. The E8600 is a more recent chip, your motherboard manufacturer may have come out with a more recent BIOS that could increase performance. Also you could check your power management settings. My brother's system was super slow and I played around with it and found that it was setup as if it were a laptop. It is an older system with a Athlon 64 2.2GHz but it was running at 900MHz and nothing I ran would make it speed up. I turned all the power management features off and the system is much more responsive now.

It's a brand new Dell Studio Slim. It came with some slow dual core so
I bought an E8600 from NewEgg and popped it in. Windows experience
CPU went from 4.1 to 5.7 but the system seems like a DOG compared to
my old AMD X2 running XP. Maybe I need to reinstall Vista SP1 since I
changed out the processor??

System had 2GB DDR 800 Ram. Memory and Disk score 5.9 Graphics scores 4.5.

Thanks for the help guys!!

I certainly feel that the 64 bit version is snappier but either way you won't really be hampered by either of those CPU's. You'll feel the biggest difference depending on your harddrive. Are you still using an old hard drive from your last system?

1) Install 4GB ram (if you haven't already)
2) Make sure your processor is running at stock speed.
3) Remove all the bloatware (reload Vista if need be)

There is absolutely no way you need to upgrade your processor, it's not your hardware that's holding you back, that I am certain of.

Right now the system only has 2GB

The CPU idles at 6x multiplier and 2 GHZ at idle but jumps to 3.33 GHZ + 10x multiplier under a load.
I haven't been able to disable the speedstep thing even though I disabled that option in the BIOS.

I will try reloading Vista SP1 tonight.

Is Vista SP2 mature enough to try out or will I just make matters worse for myself??


Does anyone know of a CPU overclocking program that works in Vista? On my other Dell with XP home
I used Clockgen and pushed the CPU from 3 GHZ to 3.5 GHZ. But Clockgen does not work in Vista.

Where can I find a copy of Vista OEM? I don't want to spend another $100
for something I already own a license for..??

Harddrive scores 5.9 in Vista Experience so could this really be a hard disk issue?

Is Vista SP2 solid yet or should I stay with SP1??

Vista compatible OC software like "clockgen for XP"??

Thanks, you all are great...!!!

Thanks for the tip on HD tune. I'll download it tonight.
*What is a good HD score? What is an excellent score?

Clockgen works great with XP. Allows me to OC quite a bit and I never crashed.
What makes it so bad to do?

I really like Dells because they are so quiet and the cases feel very solid.
My Dell Studio Slim in black is not only super solid feeling but it also looks ultra classy.
So that's why I keep buying dells..

*Anyone using Vista SP2?? Is it solid yet??
*Will my Vista License work with Vista 64??
*Will Vista 64 show more compatibility issues over Vista 32bit??


Thanks!!!

Clockgen didn't increase the voltage at all. It would only allow you
to boost the CPU speed to the highest stable GHZ at the stock voltage.
I loved that program!

Regardless of Vista being slow I intend to overclock if I can
find software like clockgen that works in Vista. The E8600
can to 4 ghz easy so I'd be stupid not to overclock and take
advantage of the extra speed.

ausch30:

You make a lot of sense. I have noticed lot's of garbage pre-installed on my machine.

What do you mean by this comment:
"All Vista disks, with the exception of Basic I believe, contain all the versions of Vista"

My install CD from Dell Says "Vista Premium SP1". My machine came with about
5 other cds as well. Is there a way I can just re-install with this "Vista Premium SP1" and specify during the install only to install the OS and none of the bloatware?
(I never installed Vista before) On my other dell I just re-installed with the XP Home SP2 CD and the machine was clean with only the basic XP OS components.

I think Dell is different. My other machine had a full "XP home SP2" disk that
took you through the whole Microsoft install process. I was not a restore CD
at all. If after I reinstall vista SP1, the machine is still slugish I may just install
XP home SP2 on it. Would you say XP SP2 is snappier than Vista no matter
what you do? Maybe I am just expecting too much from Vista after living
with XP home for 7 years?

I'll be trying out the Vista SP1 CD this weekend but I bet it's an install CD as well.
I bet the other 5 disks that came with the machine is where all the bloatware is.

Also, I yanked out the original intel dual core CPU the first day I got it and put in
the E8600 so maybe there are different intel drivers that I need which will get
rectified when I reinstall Vista SP1..??

I checked and I have the very latest BIOS from Dell already.. :-)

Your best bet would be to just get a video card. You can buy a decent card for about $50 that would take the pressure off your CPU and give memory back to your system rather than being sectioned off for use by your on board video.

This would be my suggestion
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102829

It's too bad you need low profile because Newegg has a MSI 4650 for $35 after rebate but it's not low profile.