Is my CPU causing bottleneck for the whole system?

1

I have this old laptop which I have been using for past 2 years. It works well except sometimes when I use programs like Photoshop and Eclipse, it takes a long time load. Also, there are some minor delays here and there as far as I can tell.

So, after researching a while, I thought upgrading it will be more economical than buying a new laptop. So, I went ahead with it. I have upgraded the RAM from 4GB to 8GB and install a Samsung Evo SSD to replace my old hitachi HDD.

After that, I can feel the faster boot time, loading etc. But the loading time for some of the programs hasn't improved much as I originally thought.

So, my question is is my CPU causing a bottleneck for the whole system?

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Chris Aung

Posted 2014-12-18T12:44:18.897

Reputation: 97

Answers

2

Short answer is "most likely yes".

Long answer is:

You should be able to feel quite a big difference from the way it was before having upgraded the SSD and memory.

But seeing as you are having problems with some quite demanding programs specifically (Photoshop and Eclipse) I would guess the CPU could be a bottleneck here. However, loading programs is usually not all that CPU intensive, but more likely to put a strain on IO activity (memory and HDD/SSD).

I would suggest you run through the "optimizer" application that came with the SSD.

Alternatively at least check the following settings manually:

  • Re-run the Windows Experience Index clasification (this also detects your new SSD and changes settings accordingly)
  • Remove indexing from the C:\ drive (or whatever drive Windows is on)
  • Make sure you have set virtual memory to the appripriate size (I would suggest a 8192 MB fixed swapfile)

But the i3 1.8 GHz CPU that's in your laptop is really not that fast, as you can clearly see on this chart and read in this article compared to other Intel CPUs of roughly same generation.

Kristian

Posted 2014-12-18T12:44:18.897

Reputation: 2 982

I agree, the u-series processors are made for low power consumption not processing power. In the future you're probably better off going for an m-series one, for better performance. – Martin – 2014-12-18T12:58:57.320

thanks! I think you are right. If I want my laptop, "Cheap" and "Light", it won't be "Fast" I guess. But anyway, I think with this small upgrade, I can squeeze out may be half a year to a year usage before upgrading to a new laptop. – Chris Aung – 2014-12-18T13:06:20.663

You can have Cheap, Light and/or Fast. Pick whichever two you like. – Kristian – 2014-12-18T13:07:33.120

I would agree with this answer. Its not so much the fact its a i3 and/or u-series processor its the fact its running at only 1.8ghz when other processors are running at 2x-2.5x faster. Individually those programs should not have a problem but both are processors intensive programs. The only thing that is ore intensive with Photoshop or a compiler is the I/O access. – Ramhound – 2014-12-18T13:28:09.193

Asked: 2014-12-18T12:44:18.897

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Active: 2019-07-03T07:25:39.307