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High idle load on a PIII

363 Views 9 Replies 7 Participants Last post by  NotoTIP, 
N
I just got this old clunker (see sig rig) up and running after spilling water on my macbook. I noticed that it is really slow though. It can't even stream youtube videos without the feed being really choppy and scrolling through pdf documents is a painful experience. Although I do have it hooked up to a 21" widescreen.
I checked out task manager and the CPU is idling at 50-60%. Anyone know if it's just the computer being old or is something wrong here? I have a fresh install of a slimmed down Windows XP on it so there aren't any processes going on that are taking up a lot of resources. I'm thinking I might put another 1GB stick in it (if the computer can support more than a gig).
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majin death
Quote:


Originally Posted by NotoTIP
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I just got this old clunker (see sig rig) up and running after spilling water on my macbook. I noticed that it is really slow though. It can't even stream youtube videos without the feed being really choppy and scrolling through pdf documents is a painful experience. Although I do have it hooked up to a 21" widescreen.
I checked out task manager and the CPU is idling at 50-60%. Anyone know if it's just the computer being old or is something wrong here? I have a fresh install of a slimmed down Windows XP on it so there aren't any processes going on that are taking up a lot of resources. I'm thinking I might put another 1GB stick in it (if the computer can support more than a gig).

It's probably the graphics card.
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dasparx
Hmm, weird.
Ive got a similar system (celeron 1200, 1GbRAM, GF6600) But it idles at 0-4% CPU Usage.
Also, you'd better use Win2K. works helluva lot faster!

Edit:
It cant be the GPU, ive got a Riva TnT2 32Mb wich is Worse, but it did run XP properly, hell, ive even ran XP on a S3 Trio card with no problems! (FYI Thats an 1-2Mb Card.)
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N
I don't know if I still even have a copy of Win2k. I'm kind of at a loss for why it's running like this, I'm thinking it might just be falling apart. After I installed WinXP the first time, I blue screened 12 hours later and couldn't boot back into Windows and had to reinstall. The HD also makes weird clicking sounds every now and then and freezes up the comp.
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P
might be the ram

it it really 512kb or is it MB

because i can stream youtube on a 1000mhz celeron with 128mbram

Edit: if i830 chipset can stream youtube then so can GF2 MX
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Biatch
That's not very performanced PC, so, don't wait for a fast progressing.
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N
Haha, it's 512mb.
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T
Flash is absurdly resource intensive. As for the idling, are you sure you don't have some background program running?
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S
Do you have a spare hdd you could try out? That might be the problem. I'm not exactly sure but after you said about the clicking and thinking how old the hdd is that makes me feel it might be the problem.
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N
Yeah, I'm gonna try out another HDD after I go home for Spring Break. I also just got a really good deal on a refurbished Eee PC at mwave.com, and it actually has better specs than this thing. Hopefully that will be able to stream videos and such.
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