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Homebuilt computer has slowed noticably.... why?



 
 
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  #11  
Old September 4th 18, 11:45 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
John B. Smith
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 163
Default Homebuilt computer has slowed noticably.... why?

On Mon, 03 Sep 2018 16:13:21 +0100, Peter Johnson
wrote:

On Sun, 02 Sep 2018 10:51:53 -0500, Charlie Hoffpauir
wrote:

My home built is getting a bit old, but within the last weeks has
noticable slowed in many operations. For example, in Photoshop, using
the erasure tool; before, erasures were instanteous. Erased materal
instantly disappeared from the scene. Now, it sometimes disappears,
and sometimes the dissappearance lags the erasure in what seems an
erernity, but is probably a second or so. The same lag appears in
simple operations in other programs as well, Thumbs up, my program for
cataloging images, and Rootsmagic, my genealogy program.

Here's my system. I'm guessing it has to do with the Intel microcode
"fixes". If so, is there any way to improve performance? Perhaps a
more modern processor? If it's the microcode, can the fix be removed?

Windows 10 Pro ver 1803 Latest update KB4100347 included the Intel
microcode fixes (8/26/2018)


EVGA GeForce GTX 960 04G-P4-3962-KR 4GB SC GAMING (8/7/2015)

Intel Core i5-4690K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 3.5 GHz LGA 1150 88W
BX80646I54690K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600 (7/10/2015)

GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK (rev. 1.0) LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s
USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard (7/10/2015)

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
(PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-16GXM (7/10/2015)

Intel 730 Series 2.5" 480GB SATA 6Gb/s MLC Internal Solid State Drive
(SSD) SSDSC2BP480G4R5 (12/3/2014)(The Intel SSD is a carryover from
the drive in my previous system... do SSD's slow down? Computer
Management says it's 446.668 GB with 288.85 GB free)

I also have 2 3 TB spinning drives for data and backups. I don't think
either one is a factor in this, as they've been in the system long
before this started.


You have made sure that the drives aren't full?


I guess this can't happen in Win10 (I'm in XP) but here's Paul's take
on mine:

"You're in PIO mode.

This shouldn't happen.

When there is a measurable error rate, the driver scheme
changes transfer rates, in an attempt to reduce the error
rate. But it doesn't take that many "gear down" attempts
by the driver, until it's in polled transfer mode,
a word is transferred at a time by the CPU. That
destroys transfer rate performance.

When you look in the appropriate dialog, you'll see
that DMA is no longer listed, and it's changed to PIO.
But I can tell just by your transfer rate, what just
happened. "4" is a popular number - that's what I'm using
as evidence."

You look for it in Device Manager IDE controllers. My HD Tune transfer
rate was down to 4.

  #12  
Old September 4th 18, 01:39 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Paul[_28_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,467
Default Homebuilt computer has slowed noticably.... why?

John B. Smith wrote:
On Mon, 03 Sep 2018 16:13:21 +0100, Peter Johnson
wrote:

On Sun, 02 Sep 2018 10:51:53 -0500, Charlie Hoffpauir
wrote:

My home built is getting a bit old, but within the last weeks has
noticable slowed in many operations. For example, in Photoshop, using
the erasure tool; before, erasures were instanteous. Erased materal
instantly disappeared from the scene. Now, it sometimes disappears,
and sometimes the dissappearance lags the erasure in what seems an
erernity, but is probably a second or so. The same lag appears in
simple operations in other programs as well, Thumbs up, my program for
cataloging images, and Rootsmagic, my genealogy program.

Here's my system. I'm guessing it has to do with the Intel microcode
"fixes". If so, is there any way to improve performance? Perhaps a
more modern processor? If it's the microcode, can the fix be removed?

Windows 10 Pro ver 1803 Latest update KB4100347 included the Intel
microcode fixes (8/26/2018)


EVGA GeForce GTX 960 04G-P4-3962-KR 4GB SC GAMING (8/7/2015)

Intel Core i5-4690K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 3.5 GHz LGA 1150 88W
BX80646I54690K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600 (7/10/2015)

GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK (rev. 1.0) LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s
USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard (7/10/2015)

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
(PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-16GXM (7/10/2015)

Intel 730 Series 2.5" 480GB SATA 6Gb/s MLC Internal Solid State Drive
(SSD) SSDSC2BP480G4R5 (12/3/2014)(The Intel SSD is a carryover from
the drive in my previous system... do SSD's slow down? Computer
Management says it's 446.668 GB with 288.85 GB free)

I also have 2 3 TB spinning drives for data and backups. I don't think
either one is a factor in this, as they've been in the system long
before this started.

You have made sure that the drives aren't full?


I guess this can't happen in Win10 (I'm in XP) but here's Paul's take
on mine:

"You're in PIO mode.

This shouldn't happen.

When there is a measurable error rate, the driver scheme
changes transfer rates, in an attempt to reduce the error
rate. But it doesn't take that many "gear down" attempts
by the driver, until it's in polled transfer mode,
a word is transferred at a time by the CPU. That
destroys transfer rate performance.

When you look in the appropriate dialog, you'll see
that DMA is no longer listed, and it's changed to PIO.
But I can tell just by your transfer rate, what just
happened. "4" is a popular number - that's what I'm using
as evidence."

You look for it in Device Manager IDE controllers. My HD Tune transfer
rate was down to 4.


The original behavior came from another OS. There is
some sort of "SCSI domain validation" process, where the
bus speed (SCSI cable) rate is reduced, until the CRC
errors stop.

Microsoft apparently thought this was wonderful, and added
the behavior to the IDE ribbon cable interface. The
rate would "gear down", until it dropped all the way
to PIO (polled input/output) rates of 4MB/sec to 5MB/sec
or so. In WinXP, there was a procedure for restoring the
speed. "Rediscovering" the hardware, can bring the
speed up to normal.

That sort of thing is likely still supported on SATA
(which is Serial ATA), but the thing is, the error
condition that causes gear down won't be happening,
and also, the "ATA transfer rate thing" has no meaning
in SATA. SATA simply transfers at the cable rate.
If the drive and mobo negotiate SATA II rates, then
data is transferred at that rate. If a utility reports
the ATA information for a SATA interface, in might say
"Ultra100" or "Ultra133" but these are meaningless to
the physical process of transferring SATA data. And thus,
if it dropped to PIO, you might never notice. It may not
be possible to actually pump a word at a time, across a
SATA cable. I don't know if the packet format supports
single word transfers like that or not. I don't think
I've ever seen SATA do such a thing (drop to 4MB/sec
as a domain validation response).

Even if SATA dropped to 4MB/sec, the packets themselves
still transfer at 3Gbit/sec or 6Gbit/sec, so "gearing down"
would be useless. Whereas on a ribbon cable, the actual
clock rate on the cable is dropping when these things
happen, which improves the odds of error free cable
transfers. Running at 4MB/sec, the clock for the ribbon
cable would be molasses-slow, leaving plenty of settling
time before each data transfer.

*******

If there are enough sector reallocations on a hard drive,
on a section of disk in current usage, you might notice
the read rate drop to speeds like that. SMART will warn
you about this condition. However, SMART works best if
the reallocations are spread evenly across the disk - if
that happens, the SMART warning appears around the same
time you notice the read performance is bad.

If, on the other hand, a massive number of sectors
are reallocated in a small strip of the disk drive,
then you suffer a performance problem, and SMART
reads "0" for reallocations. I had that happen here
on a Seagate 500GB drive. I ended up retiring the
drive, even though the SMART was "clean". An HDTune
benchmark run can show you the drive has problems
of that nature.

Paul
  #13  
Old September 4th 18, 05:59 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Charlie Hoffpauir
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 347
Default Homebuilt computer has slowed noticably.... why?

On Tue, 04 Sep 2018 06:45:11 -0400, John B. Smith
wrote:

On Mon, 03 Sep 2018 16:13:21 +0100, Peter Johnson
wrote:

On Sun, 02 Sep 2018 10:51:53 -0500, Charlie Hoffpauir
wrote:

My home built is getting a bit old, but within the last weeks has
noticable slowed in many operations. For example, in Photoshop, using
the erasure tool; before, erasures were instanteous. Erased materal
instantly disappeared from the scene. Now, it sometimes disappears,
and sometimes the dissappearance lags the erasure in what seems an
erernity, but is probably a second or so. The same lag appears in
simple operations in other programs as well, Thumbs up, my program for
cataloging images, and Rootsmagic, my genealogy program.

Here's my system. I'm guessing it has to do with the Intel microcode
"fixes". If so, is there any way to improve performance? Perhaps a
more modern processor? If it's the microcode, can the fix be removed?

Windows 10 Pro ver 1803 Latest update KB4100347 included the Intel
microcode fixes (8/26/2018)


EVGA GeForce GTX 960 04G-P4-3962-KR 4GB SC GAMING (8/7/2015)

Intel Core i5-4690K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 3.5 GHz LGA 1150 88W
BX80646I54690K Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4600 (7/10/2015)

GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK (rev. 1.0) LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s
USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard (7/10/2015)

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
(PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9D-16GXM (7/10/2015)

Intel 730 Series 2.5" 480GB SATA 6Gb/s MLC Internal Solid State Drive
(SSD) SSDSC2BP480G4R5 (12/3/2014)(The Intel SSD is a carryover from
the drive in my previous system... do SSD's slow down? Computer
Management says it's 446.668 GB with 288.85 GB free)

I also have 2 3 TB spinning drives for data and backups. I don't think
either one is a factor in this, as they've been in the system long
before this started.


You have made sure that the drives aren't full?


I guess this can't happen in Win10 (I'm in XP) but here's Paul's take
on mine:

"You're in PIO mode.

This shouldn't happen.

When there is a measurable error rate, the driver scheme
changes transfer rates, in an attempt to reduce the error
rate. But it doesn't take that many "gear down" attempts
by the driver, until it's in polled transfer mode,
a word is transferred at a time by the CPU. That
destroys transfer rate performance.

When you look in the appropriate dialog, you'll see
that DMA is no longer listed, and it's changed to PIO.
But I can tell just by your transfer rate, what just
happened. "4" is a popular number - that's what I'm using
as evidence."

You look for it in Device Manager IDE controllers. My HD Tune transfer
rate was down to 4.


I don't think the problem is with the drive. My operating system is on
the Intel SSD. When the SSD was new, HDTune data was Min 161.6 MB/sec,
Max 231.3 MB/sec ave 222.2 MB/sec. Now the data is Min 268.9, Max
402.2, avg 323.9. The HDClone infor original was when the SSD was
installed in my former computer, probably running Vista. Even though
the old computer was much slower overall, the lack of response I'm
seeing now wasn't there.
My next step is to revert back to an old clone of the SSD (on and old
Seagate 500 GB drive) and see if the performance issues are there.
  #14  
Old September 4th 18, 08:46 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Charlie Hoffpauir
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 347
Default Homebuilt computer has slowed noticably.... why? Update

Today, I removed my SSD C drive and installed a clone from the CD made
about a year ago, as a backup. This happened to be on a 1 TB WD black,
but that isn't important. The computer booted up afer reassigning the
boot drive, and the only issue I found was that Microsoft for some
reason wanted me to verify myself. Once that was done, windows ran
normally, no delays in either Photoshop or in my genealogy program. So
after a few minutes of checking everything, I shut down and
re-installed the Intel SSD. Booted it up and checked a few programs,
and so far, no delays, everything is snappy! The only thing that I
know of that was changed, is that I verified myself to Microsoft.
Could that somehow have been what was causing the slowdown?
  #15  
Old September 4th 18, 09:35 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,407
Default Homebuilt computer has slowed noticably.... why? Update

On Tue, 04 Sep 2018 14:46:44 -0500, Charlie Hoffpauir
wrote:

Today, I removed my SSD C drive and installed a clone from the CD made
about a year ago, as a backup. This happened to be on a 1 TB WD black,
but that isn't important. The computer booted up afer reassigning the
boot drive, and the only issue I found was that Microsoft for some
reason wanted me to verify myself. Once that was done, windows ran
normally, no delays in either Photoshop or in my genealogy program. So
after a few minutes of checking everything, I shut down and
re-installed the Intel SSD. Booted it up and checked a few programs,
and so far, no delays, everything is snappy! The only thing that I
know of that was changed, is that I verified myself to Microsoft.
Could that somehow have been what was causing the slowdown?


I regularly, from dedicated storage, impose OS backups;- I've two SSDs
and do the streaming backups between them viz a boot arbitrator and a
third OS. It's not as much a forensic device as a preventative
measure employed on a regular basis over more or less a weekly or
monthly routine. No doubt with habit underlying a repetition factor
to serve to make the procedure easier and matter of course. I
couldn't even begin, or imagine, every adverse anomaly across a length
of time which has surfaced. Rather, I should say, that any hardware
upgrades have, so far, been a focus on anticipating and some
consequent adjustments for backup image compatibility. Doubtlessly
many issues have been overwritten and negated, as well a tendency to
jump the gun over, potentially, false assumptions. I'm sure it's
arguable, for home maintenance, a regular binary overwrite to an
accepted steady state condition is preferable to an entropy factor of
being incessantly connected to the WEB between;- of course and last to
mention industry interests, which might not like the concept, among
further provisions regardless being rolled out for a greater vision,
as one more or less a shared level of abstraction.
  #16  
Old September 5th 18, 12:19 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
rp
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 9
Default Homebuilt computer has slowed noticably.... why? Update

On Tue, 04 Sep 2018 14:46:44 -0500, Charlie Hoffpauir wrote:

Today, I removed my SSD C drive and installed a clone from the CD made
about a year ago, as a backup. This happened to be on a 1 TB WD black,
but that isn't important. The computer booted up afer reassigning the
boot drive, and the only issue I found was that Microsoft for some
reason wanted me to verify myself. Once that was done, windows ran
normally, no delays in either Photoshop or in my genealogy program. So
after a few minutes of checking everything, I shut down and
re-installed the Intel SSD. Booted it up and checked a few programs,
and so far, no delays, everything is snappy! The only thing that I
know of that was changed, is that I verified myself to Microsoft.
Could that somehow have been what was causing the slowdown?


By swapping the drive over you also reseated the SATA connector I
presume. Maybe that was loose and causing errors.

--
Regards - Rodney Pont
The from address exists but is mostly dumped,
please send any emails to the address below
e-mail rpont (at) gmail (dot) com


  #17  
Old September 5th 18, 01:23 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Charlie Hoffpauir
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 347
Default Homebuilt computer has slowed noticably.... why? Update

On Wed, 05 Sep 2018 00:19:26 +0100 (BST), "rp"
wrote:

By swapping the drive over you also reseated the SATA connector I
presume. Maybe that was loose and causing errors.


Thanks, I never considered that. It's one of those locking connectors,
but I guess it could still be loose or have some corrosion.
  #18  
Old September 26th 18, 03:32 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Char Jackson
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 213
Default Homebuilt computer has slowed noticably.... why? Update

On Tue, 04 Sep 2018 19:23:48 -0500, Charlie Hoffpauir
wrote:

On Wed, 05 Sep 2018 00:19:26 +0100 (BST), "rp"
wrote:

By swapping the drive over you also reseated the SATA connector I
presume. Maybe that was loose and causing errors.


Thanks, I never considered that. It's one of those locking connectors,
but I guess it could still be loose or have some corrosion.


If that was the issue, you'd be able to see it in the Event logs. Use
Event Viewer to check it out.

 




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