How to get more performance out of your machine

N2IT

I have a Vizio laptop with 4 gbs of ram SSD HDD and I7 process 1.9 ghz. I am just killing my CPU, (true hyperthreader). Any thoughts on how to gain more performance. Ram is not a problem in task manager it's showing the CPU. I am running Windows 8 Professional. ***I am running a 32 bit office. Would switching to a 64 bit license help out?

Bloogen

Sounds like you have a low power version of the CPU which I have observed to under perform to a great degree for demanding tasks compared to their full power/clock-rate counterparts.

I doubt switching to the 64 bit version of Office would make any noticeable difference to make up for the lack of performance in the CPU.

tpatt100

Maybe check your BIOS settings CPU related and see if something is set that is slowing your CPU down? I would get something like CPUID and let it run while you use your machine normally. I did that when I was trying to see why my PC fans were running like mad in an HTPC case machine and I saw it was running pretty hot.

About7Narwhal

What could you possibly be doing to max out an i7? Perfmon that sucker up and see what you get. Normally I would suggest checking for CPU parking and ensure that you are not on a power restriction. But I believe Windows 8 removed core parking and I doubt you have a battery saver setting turned on. (Though I have done silly thinks like that myself, so you never know.)

Bloogen

He probably has an ultrabook-like laptop which uses a lower performance version of the i5/i7 cpus. I was using an i5 version of a similar CPU the other day and the performance was very disappointing for anything but basic tasks.

Look up the exact CPU model and run a comparison benchmark to what its "supposed" to achieve from the reports of others. If yours is lower than it should be by a large margin (I doubt it), maybe you need a bios update or to modify some custom power saving software. If not, well then thats just the limitation of the CPU.

You also didn't mention what your doing that kills the CPU?

YFZblu

Is it all the time, or just right now?

kriscamaro68

Virus maybe?

About7Narwhal

kriscamaro68 wrote: »

Virus maybe?

Been hearing a lot about Bitcoin mining software recently..

paul78

That particular CPU doesn't actually benmark well. At 1.9Ghz it is clocking a bit slower than most. And I think it has a much smaller cache. I don't think there is much you can do.

PassMark - Intel Core i7-3517U @ 1.90GHz - Price performance comparison

SteveLord

Like a few have said, it's because it's a lower powered CPU designed for ultrabooks. You really have no way to increase performance unless you put a severely stripped version of Windows 7/8 on it or keep the laptop plugged in as much as possible in the higher performance mode so the CPU can't throttle down.

Side note - 64bit Office as nothing to do with performance and even Microsoft doesn't recommend it to most people unless you're coding within it.

N2IT

Thanks for the follow up. I appreciate all the great input.