Member Avatar for TrustyTony

We have here at our home my wife's work computer. While not today's hottest iron, it is still Centrino Duo machine, runningn WinXP Professional with 1 GB RAM. Our home machine is aged AMD Semptron 3100+ (1.81 GHz) and has 2 GB RAM running WindowsXP Home.

While running my Mandelbrot program, that I have posted to Python forum (it has critical modules compiled with Shedskin compiler through C++), however our Sempron typically does 640x480 Mandelbrots with max 240 iterations in 0.5 seconds, while the Lexmark takes whole second. How can this newer laptop be so slow?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by tigerbright
Member Avatar for TrustyTony

We have here at our home my wife's work computer. While not today's hottest iron, it is still Centrino Duo machine, runningn WinXP Professional with 1 GB RAM. Our home machine is aged AMD Semptron 3100+ (1.81 GHz) and has 2 GB RAM running WindowsXP Home.

While running my Mandelbrot program, that I have posted to Python forum (it has critical modules compiled with Shedskin compiler through C++), however our Sempron typically does 640x480 Mandelbrots with max 240 iterations in 0.5 seconds, while the Lexmark takes whole second. How can this newer laptop be so slow?

Actually the laptop is IBM still, not Lexmark.

Member Avatar for Rik_

What graphics has it got and how much graphics ram is it using? Dxdiag in the run command will tell you this information.

Member Avatar for TrustyTony

System memory 1022 MB RAM, using 714 MB of page file (2208 MB usable),
Graphics. ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 memory (estimate) 512 MB. Display resolution 1400x1050 (which I asume to be the native one for the LCD).

Member Avatar for TrustyTony

Excuse an oldie mixing up the Lexmark printer brand with Lenovo computer brand.
The computer is actually lenovo R50, still with IBM-name in addition fot the ThinkPad logo.

Member Avatar for tigerbright

Hi, Thinkpad R50 laptop appears to be a max 1.7GHz pentium-m which is competing against an AMD 3.1GHz (benchmarked rating) desktop using 2x more ram memory capacity and probably a faster hard disk drive hence quicker virtual memory

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-58525.html

also the laptop being company owned may include more resource intensive real time security programs which may slow down the process of executing high resource task

You can ascertain system specs within Windows via freeware cpuz utility
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Member Avatar for TrustyTony

Validation does not change the type of CPU to Pentium-M, but stays Core2 Mobile.

Member Avatar for tigerbright

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:R50

Hi, validation as a process within cpu-z system spec utility relates to recording video specs online and access to cpu-z chatrooms
Cpu-z default page displays cpu- specs in real time.
Clicking on mainboard tab displays computer model/chipset/bios specs
re AMD desktop , I suggest access windows update and consult both update options for additional cpu/chipset related driver updates as somethimes they are not installed by default Windows XP recovery and unattended online updates

Under the laptop there will be a model id label that can be consulted for the model/machine number
Hope this helps
regards

Member Avatar for caperjack

it quite possible that some upgrade the cpu in the laptop ,if you google the motherboard model # it will take a duel core according to some of the results i read .

Member Avatar for tigerbright

be an interesting challenge to upgrade from a pentium-m cpu laptop to core-duo with both using the same socket 479 (however needs a particular version)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M

Would be a matter of BIOS support for revised cpu microcode and FSB speed upgrade, but as noted by you caperjack, could be possible and maybe subject laptop has been upgraded and if so may further explain performance issue if subject laptop is still running with a processor bus speed of 400MT/s as core duo cpu's rated processor bus speed is 533MT/s or 667MT/s so without BIOS support and configured for the faster FSB , running at oem spec 400MT/s FSB the core duo cpu will run at reduced internal speed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_M_microprocessors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_microprocessors

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-58525.html

Edited by tigerbright because: clarify referencing FSB speed not cpu speed
Member Avatar for tigerbright

well I know what to do if I ever find a low cost R50 Thinkpad

Member Avatar for tigerbright

Hi the R60 should reasonably be expected to outperform at least an early sempron desktop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sempron
but without more details about your sempron desktop spec I really cannot speculate as to why it is 100% quicker to execute noted task than the Thinkpad unless is ram memory capacity related
To test you could if possible remove 1GB of ram memory from the desktop and rerun the task and note the time to complete
- if the time to complete task has increased to what might be expected relative to your laptop then is the extra ram memory capacity
With only 1GB total installed ram memory of the Thinkpad , some of the task program might be paged out and if so those parts will process often up to 10x slower than if located in ram memory space, and so slow total processing
current : laptop 1GB vs desktop 2GB

Member Avatar for caperjack

well I know what to do if I ever find a low cost R50 Thinkpad

no, that site was about a R60,poster said they had a R50 and didn't ,so in fact we don't know if the R50 has the same board as the R60 ,confused !!!

Member Avatar for tigerbright

@ caperjack re subject laptop model : OP corrected id from Thinkpad R50 to R60 due to incorrectly reading the model label on the base of the laptop

R60 has support for many R50 pentium-m cpu's but also has support for core-duo and dual-core models, so is not likely to be a R50 with a R60 mainboard, however accessing BIOS setup for the mainboard stored serial number and comparing with the serial number on the case would confirm positively

@ pyTony , an interesting issue but more spec details are required of the desktop
refer using cpu-z utility as a start
also run HDtune utility to benchmark the disk drives and confirm health - laptop might have a bad disk drive
Disk drive stores the page file which is an extension of ram memory, so disk drive speed will influence computer performance besides launching new programs

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

pc wizard > global benchmark
might be useful to compare sub-system speed charts

http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/pc-wizard.html

you might have to go offline and disable security to run this program benchmark

Member Avatar for tigerbright

Hi , with 2 x ram modules you might have dual channel architecture enabled if supported , just check under the memory tab > channels
If supported this is a cost effective 5% - 15% performance increase, as noted depending upon who you consult

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture

not much but every performance increase helps

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