Why is my 1.66ghz dual core laptop worse than my 3200+ AMD from 3years ago?

Question

Laptop specs
t5500 1.66ghz dual core intel
geforce go 7300
160gb 5400rpm
1g ram

comp
AMD 64 3200+ (2.01ghz)
9600pro ATI
200gb 5400rpm
0.756g ram

Both computers have barely anything on it but my laptop seems to run a lot slower. Is there a fault with the laptop coz im sure my laptop is much better in specs

Both are running XP btw

Answer 1

The laptop may look better from the specs you have listed, but there are certain compromises made in laptop components that are a bit more subtle than what you have shown.

Consider that the front side bus (how the processor communicates with the rest of the system) on the Laptop is 667MHz, while it's 1GHz on the Desktop. This provides a great advantage to the Desktop when you are swapping between applications, or doing something (like games) where behavior is unpredictable.

The memory on the Laptop is probably also slower in speed than the desktop. There are numerous aspects to memory speed (not just a MHz rating, but also response latency), and in order to conserve power, and due to the front side bus speed, the laptop is likely to be slower in system memory access.

The AMD part on the Desktop also has another advantage: it has an integrated memory controller. This may (or may not) be negated by an advantage on the L2 cache size (the Intel part has 2MB, the AMD part has either 1 MB or 512KB, I can't tell without knowing the exact part number). L2 cache helps to avoid main memory access.

The Graphics card on the Desktop also is likely to have more memory (probably 256MB vs. 128MB as noted above). You can check your video memory through: Control Panels//Display//Settings//Advanced//Adapter
... As noted above, the graphics card bus width (64 bit in the laptop and 128 bit in the desktop) is also another aspect of performance, especially in graphics-heavy applications.

Answer 2

The laptop with dual core could be slow due to 1Gb RAM on Vista. Its Go 7300 graphics is also slow because it just uses 64bit memory interface. With 2Gb RAM, it should be fast in multi-tasking and multi-threaded applications.

The 3200+ single core processor is fast for single threaded apps in XP. ATI 9600 Pro is a decently clocked AGP card that uses a 128bit memory interface.

Answer 3

try running the task manager to check if there are more processes running in your laptop than your desktop

also check for malicious processes that might be running, they maybe malwares,adwares,spywares, etc. that can hamper the overall system performance

Answer 4

checkup the fans of laptop. i think it is generating much heat than it should be.