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

I picked up a higher end gaming laptop a couple months ago 16GB RAM, i7-9850 - 6 core/12 threads, 2.6GHz, (4.6Ghz OC'able), 12MB cache, 2666Mhz DDR4 , GTX 1070 (Ti??) 6-8GB GPU, 512GB NVME SSD, 1TB hard drive, Sick screen IDK what it was - and Windows 10 Pro. I was going to install Linux but after 2 days of use I gave up on the machine.

Now people always say "it's the bloat ware", well I did a fresh install w/ nothing but the manufacture's utilities (UEFI/BIOS related type stuff basically). I have a Hp 8730W elitebook that is from 2005-6 w/ core 2 duo, 2.6Ghz and 4GB ram and an anemic 160GB 2.5" mechanical drive (5400rpm) and it has onboard video & sound - it's basically a portable low end workstation for workers to use internet and Office back in the day and it did a great job back then with Vista. I have Win 7 64bit on it and it was JUST as fast on almost every category/application than the new $2400 laptop. (Now you can get my old one for $100-250 depending on CPU, RAM & video). The only problem I have with this is loading like 10+ internet tabs (that is b/c new browsers have so much bloat - memory leaks/holes, but slim browsers are QUICK and fine).

Boot time between the two was a difference of 5 seconds on average (newer one faster). Except for ~1/3 of the time boot time for the new one would be 20mins to 4 days b/c the screen would go blank and no keys woudl work. Even after complete resets, bios/uefi flash and everything else, still slow as molasses and it ran HOT, the battery couldn't be removed (and was only 3 lithium cells where old machines had 9).

I've decided to upgrade my old 12 year old system to top of the line everything that it can handle, all used parts and see how it works out. Shold be about $150-200 depending on type of SSD I get (I also can replace the DVD drive with a hard drive insert to handle 2 SSD's or a large HD (should take 2-4TB so lots of space), and I can plug in a PCMCIA DVD in if I need that while both drives are in.


I'm tired of getting more cores, quad core was OK for home power users, REAL power users like graphic/video editors, system admins (running many VM's at once) but a home machine with 6, 8, 12 cores and processor speeds of 1.6 - 2.4Ghz!? You might as well run your system on a tablet with those speeds, not many people will EVER have use for more than 4 cores, and most will be better off with 2 - and while you are at it, make then FAST like 3.5-5+GHz for each core. We've been being told that "software is being developed for multicore/threads" but 15+ years and I'm still waiting and that is all BS from the hardware (CPU) manufacturers spreading lies to the average consumer. Maybe special software like Pixar rendering apps & other top of the line specialty software can make use of the 6, 12, 18, 28, 42, 56 cores (yes servers with multi CPU's ) but home machines are stuck utilizing one core for one program at a slow azz speed of 1.6Ghz to 2.6Ghz which is speeds from 12-18 years ago.


This is one interesting article, Intel has reached 4.5Ghz, normal clock speed (5Ghz may be possible normal clockspeed)

www.forbes.com...

I think we need to re-evaluate computer architecture and take a look back at RISC AISC and obviously CISC and maybe a system that integrated one of each on a motherboard/system (daugherboards maybe, similar to GPU's & RAID cards?) to allow for faster performance in various areas.

I haven't been able to justify buying a new machine for over 8 years thought I did build one 5 years ago, but it was a very specific build and it has been rock solid, but it was MUCH slower than I thought it would be. Maybe it's time to OC my 3770K as I should be able to get 4.8-5Ghz with my cooling setup (can dissipate over 500w if necessary). Maybe that will relieve some tension...

edit on 5 24 2019 by DigginFoTroof because: (no reason given)

My wife and I have refurbished Dell workstations, with Xeon CPUs. We have had ZERO issues, even with processor hungry programs. The Xeon CPUs seem to utilize the multi-core configuration better than the consumer class i7.

Buying commercial grade, refurbished machines is the way to go. I built computers for years, so I speak from experience. Our current machines are 4 years old... 3.3GHz quad core Xeon/16GB RAM. We are at least a year or two away, from even considering upgrading.

I paid $1000 for both, at the time.

I would benchmark your system and see where the choke point is. Once you see where the problem is you can address the problem. I always benchmark new systems even if I build them. Sometimes components are just not functioning like they should due to drivers, software, or some BIOS settings. Even new hardware can be faulty out of the box. Check out this site as it lists 10 of best free benchmark utilities.

10 Best Free Benchmark Programs for Windows

Hope this helps you figure out your issues.

I spend about $4-5000 every 5 years or so to rebuild my system (parts monitors, mouse, keyboard etc.). I have a friend Who loves to build me a system he cannot afford.

From what I have seen in my upgrades it's not "bloat-ware" it's windows not keeping up with processing power.

For the casual user quad core should be fine.
For myself, I have Photoshop open working on recent shoots, and CADD programs open working on work related stuff.
Plus internet browsers, and a dedicated monitor for my children, when I need to distract them with youtube while I finish my work.

You have a good graphics card. It may run a little slow on low resolution and older rendering packages, but takes it to the next level in 3D and other processing jobs. They where used to mine bitcoin, probably still can but the cost / return is diminishing.

Many newer games do use multithreading, so on that front your new one should perform better than your old one, that is what it was made for. Programming multithreaded is tricky, can introduce timing issues and uncertanity as not all threads are processed equally. Get it tunned though and it can churn through things exponentially quicker.

One problem with buying the latest and greatest can be getting it tunning right.

originally posted by: randomtangentsrme
I spend about $4-5000 every 5 years or so to rebuild my system (parts monitors, mouse, keyboard etc.). I have a friend Who loves to build me a system he cannot afford.

From what I have seen in my upgrades it's not "bloat-ware" it's windows not keeping up with processing power.

For the casual user quad core should be fine.
For myself, I have Photoshop open working on recent shoots, and CADD programs open working on work related stuff.
Plus internet browsers, and a dedicated monitor for my children, when I need to distract them with youtube while I finish my work.

Most of us don't have that sort of IT budget. For the rest of us... buy commercial grade workstations. You can find them either refurbished, or off-lease for great prices. You get a far more reliable machine, for much less money.

Take that money you save, and get those high dollar graphics and sound cards... you will be better off in the long run. Workstations are built for upgrades... desktops, not so much.

Spending a lot of money, doesn't guarantee performance or reliability... ask any taxpayer.

Spectre / Meltdown mitigation patches - OS, CPU and chipset , most devices.
Bloatware

I picked up a higher end gaming laptop

Laptops will never perform with the custom built PCs (most use shared RAM for the video)
Word to the wise , never buy a PC meant for gaming. BYO
If you do buy one ? Do yourself a favor and buy a Windows 10 version from Microsoft . Add drivers yourself

Boot time means nothing at all .

Speaking of Specs :
AMD Ryzen 5 2600x
16 Gb DDR4 3000mhz RAM
2Tb Seagate Barracuda 10,000 rpm actual HDD
Nvidia Gigabyte 1060OC

This is just the one I am on now.


I will not spec my gaming system
That would be bragging
It is a Threadripper and has an M.2 drive

originally posted by: madmac5150

originally posted by: randomtangentsrme
I spend about $4-5000 every 5 years or so to rebuild my system (parts monitors, mouse, keyboard etc.). I have a friend Who loves to build me a system he cannot afford.

From what I have seen in my upgrades it's not "bloat-ware" it's windows not keeping up with processing power.

For the casual user quad core should be fine.
For myself, I have Photoshop open working on recent shoots, and CADD programs open working on work related stuff.
Plus internet browsers, and a dedicated monitor for my children, when I need to distract them with youtube while I finish my work.

Most of us don't have that sort of IT budget. For the rest of us... buy commercial grade workstations. You can find them either refurbished or off-lease, for great prices. You get a far more reliable machine, for less money. Take that money you save, and get those high dollar graphics and sound cards. Workstations are built for upgrades... desktops, not so much.

Spending a lot of money, doesn't guarantee performance or reliability... ask any taxpayer.

That is very true, and now that my eldest child is soon to be 5, and my youngest less than 2 weeks old. I do not have the money either. Priorities.
And yes, there has been issues in the past.
As far as " commercial grade workstations,": a long time ago my friend suggested I move to the server class, because of the storage I need, plus the movies and music he adds to my hard drives.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

I cannot understand if this is a question or rant, but the answer is your hardware is getting smaller. Consider this a power-to-size ratio.

originally posted by: randomtangentsrme

originally posted by: madmac5150

originally posted by: randomtangentsrme
I spend about $4-5000 every 5 years or so to rebuild my system (parts monitors, mouse, keyboard etc.). I have a friend Who loves to build me a system he cannot afford.

From what I have seen in my upgrades it's not "bloat-ware" it's windows not keeping up with processing power.

For the casual user quad core should be fine.
For myself, I have Photoshop open working on recent shoots, and CADD programs open working on work related stuff.
Plus internet browsers, and a dedicated monitor for my children, when I need to distract them with youtube while I finish my work.

Most of us don't have that sort of IT budget. For the rest of us... buy commercial grade workstations. You can find them either refurbished or off-lease, for great prices. You get a far more reliable machine, for less money. Take that money you save, and get those high dollar graphics and sound cards. Workstations are built for upgrades... desktops, not so much.

Spending a lot of money, doesn't guarantee performance or reliability... ask any taxpayer.

That is very true, and now that my eldest child is soon to be 5, and my youngest less than 2 weeks old. I do not have the money either. Priorities.
And yes, there has been issues in the past.
As far as " commercial grade workstations,": a long time ago my friend suggested I move to the server class, because of the storage I need, plus the movies and music he adds to my hard drives.

Stick with a workstation. Servers just aren't built to push hi-res graphics... they are built primarily for data storage/transfer. It's in their DNA (or BIOS in this instance). The prices between the two aren't far apart.

You simply don't understand multicore processors.

They don't all work at the same time for all applications, most software only use 1 core. Unless the software is written to use them all..

And doze 10 runs like a dog chasing it's tail, regardless..

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

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

It is neither - it is design over functionality, and it has nothing to do with architecture either.

It almost only happens on laptops.
It is down to thermals.

It is super comom to deliberately neuter a component (be it chipset, cpu or gpu) for the sake of the device not being too noisy or too large, and to conserve battery.

And it is not a bad thing either. For most use cases of many devices it makes sense to underclock or throttle rather than to make them bulky and whiny.


By a workstation and you will almost never have the issues you have.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

Gaming and laptop typically do not go well together. Gaming = lots of heat. Laptop = harder to disperse heat.

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.

Yeah, something doesn't sound right here. I just bought a Lenovo Flex 5 with i7 cores and a NVIDIA GEforce card in it and this thing takes less than 5 seconds to boot from a cold start (no lie either, more like 3 seconds). It's lightning fast! I can't even believe how fast it is!

Running Windows 10.

I run REVIT and AutoCAD (design software) on it and it just gobbles up 3D models which would choke most machines like candy.

I can boot the machine, start REVIT and have a complex 3-D model loaded up and ready to rock in less than 15 seconds.

So something isn't right with the OP's machine.

Noting that diagnosing an issue via text is dodgy at best, something you posted seems relevant:

Boot time between the two was a difference of 5 seconds on average (newer one faster). Except for ~1/3 of the time boot time for the new one would be 20mins to 4 days b/c the screen would go blank and no keys woudl work. Even after complete resets, bios/uefi flash and everything else, still slow as molasses and it ran HOT, the battery couldn't be removed (and was only 3 lithium cells where old machines had 9).

Based on just those symptoms my guess would be thermal failure / overheating. A few things could be to blame. A fan not working properly or configured incorrectly, the CPU or GPU not making sufficient contact with the cooling plate, a bad application of thermal compound during assembly... Or maybe just bad luck in the silicon lottery resulting in a CPU or GPU that naturally runs hotter than specs.

As for whether or not more than 4 cores are needed? A few years ago I'd have said something like "For most people, probably not. But for some applications, yeah". But now we're at a point where things are changing and more software ( games, web browsers, basic utilities ) are being coded to take advantage of multicore configurations and in a scalable way - utilizing as many cores as one has.

Both Intel and AMD are soon to release product lines where 4 core / 8 thread chips are in the low-end / budget categories and 6 or 8 core / 12 or 16 thread chips will be mid-range - and all will presumably tease or reach 5 GHz ( even if just in turbo mode ).

More importantly the next Xbox and Playstations will also be built upon nearly identical 8 core 16 thread AMD chips. That matters because developers tend to develop for consoles, meaning PC ports will require equivalent specs to achieve equivalent performance.

Summarizing: More cores? More necessary than it used to be and soon to be more so.
Your specific laptop issue? Possibly thermal issues. Definitely defective or performing below specs.

a reply to: Hefficide

Could also be a memory issue, I have had that happen before.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

Get rid of the UEFI and security, boot legacy into an ssd. My little i3 that runs my bitcoin pod miners starts up in less than 7 seconds into windows 7 pro and less than 4 seconds into ubuntu.

Cheers - Dave

Screen taking 20 mins to pop up normally is a driver problem which can be solved with a bit of google-fu and some arcane usage of the command line in linux but is no biggy for those of us who know what we're doing but for the novice its a killer but normally is down to some drivers being propriatry and with so many distro's and window managers etc its a royal pain in the bum sometimes.

More cores can be good for some tasks but like everything its trade offs and these days monolithic single cores just wouldn't cut it even if you could get it to run at 10ghz.

Theres always tradeoffs between thermals/power consumption/space/price/looks etc.

I'm an industry insider on this advice, I've worked for two of the top computer OEM's in the world. (Usually they are the top 2) I've been in multiple levels of tech support, OS support, tablet and phone support, laptop, desktop, and workstation support, and international commercial grade server support. I have also worked in the back end side of retail sales and distribution.

There are many issues with your criticisms of modern CPU performance.

2GHz CPU of today will kick a 5GHz Pentium 4 in the teeth.

Clock frequency is not a measure of performance that is applicable across differing CPU core architectures. The bigger number means nothing, if you are not comparing two processors made with the same transistor size node, low level logic functions, and internal computational structure.

It's like comparing higher engine RPM on cars, to determine which will win a race, but you're comparing diesel pick up trucks against corvettes, VW Beetles, and hybrid Priuses.


As for your issues, you are buying a system near an enthusiast margin. You will have issues, with this type of system purchase, every time. Let me explain:

Few users buy a laptop with relative specs as high as the one you purchased. Ergo, compared to a top seller laptop with high market distribution, it hasn't had as much "field testing".

They may sell like 10,000 of those. But the mainstream units, with typical parts? Probably sell a few million.

You're less likely to have issues, with a mainstream model. Those edge/margin models are not a priority for driver updates, they are not as widely tested by the public and even if product specific issues arise, they may take back seat to the bread and butter sale units.

Don't buy technological products at the margins.

High end hardware has high end compromises. Power usage, heat, driver issues, software compatibility issues, etc...

By the specs, your new system should destroy any system from 4-5 years back, on the same software. However, that is workload dependent.

There must be some issue there.