Everyone wants a fast Windows 7 computer. How can you speed up your Windows 7 computer without paying an arm and a leg to increase the speed.
Several things make a computer fast. A new Windows 7 computer is like my 2 car garage in 1985.
The same is true of most computers today. Over time software accumulated in the computer. A clean computer is a fast computer. How to clean is computer is the focus of another article.
Windows 7 has a responsive measurement tool called the Windows Experience Index. Newly purchased computers typically score in the range of 3.4 to 4.5.
The Windows Experience Index measures Processor speed, Memory speed, Graphics card desktop performance speed, graphics card 3D gaming and business performance, and hard disk transfer rate.
Many computers today have quad-core processors running at 2.5 to 3.2 GHz with DDR3 memory. Generally, CPU and Memory are not a major consideration in making a Windows 7 computer fast.
Disk drives in computers are Serial AT Attachment (SATA) drives. Laptop drives may run at 5,400 rpm. High performance drives operate at 10,000 rpm. Most SATA drives have a Windows Experience Index of from 5.6 to 5.9.
What remains is the graphics card performance. With Windows XP, increasing the computer’s memory size from 256 MB or 512 MB to 3 GB or 4 GB noticeably improves performance. Most Windows 7 computers today come with 3 GB to 6 GB of memory. My computer has 16 GB of memory. Right now my computer seems to be using 10 GB of memory. Increasing memory size in a Windows 7 computer is not likely to result in a noticeable improvement in responsiveness.
Two drives can improve performance: 1. Solid State Drives (no moving parts) and 2. High RPM drives (10,000 rpm). My computer uses a 128 GB SSD for Windows. It has a Windows experience Index of 6.8.
In contrast a card with a high 3D performance and a low desktop performance our computer may not make our computer as responsive as we hope. Also how we use our computer can be important.
The final consideration is the graphics card memory interface. In the case of four monitors, a $100 card that has a 256-bit memory interface produces a Windows Experience Index rating of 6.8 for both Windows Desktop and 3D Graphics performance. Computers with a 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps interface are common. Few if any computers operate at the original 10 Mbps Ethernet speed. It is simple, when a network is not working well, a Windows 7 computer slows to a snail’s crawl.
So a responsive Windows 7 computer is determined more by graphics card performance and memory interface, as opposed to CPU speed, Memory speed, and disk drive speed. Keeping the computer clean from unused and memory resident software helps as well.
Speeding Up A Windows 7 Computer
