How to make programs boot faster and run more efficiently.

bitingimpression

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Feb 24, 2013
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So I went to my uncle's house and was using his computer to run Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 5.4. His computer has a dual core AMD 6300 with a 500gb 7200rpm hard drive, and 8gb ram. He is also running on windows 8. Im not sure about the rest. My computer has an AMD 8320 8 core processor, (2) 4gb corsair rams, a WD black 1tb hard drive, and my graphics card is a nvdia geforce 240.

When loading Lightroom on his computer, the start up time for lightroom was almost instantaneous and took under 10 seconds. It takes me at least 30 seconds for mines to load. Start up time is not the largest issue. The largest issue is that his runs a lot more efficiently then mines does, and doesnt lag at all. Sometimes my programs freeze up.

I am not sure if my background processes affects this. Lightroom and photoshop were the only programs open on his computer. I would have itunes, chrome, skype, and microsoft word open while i edit photos. I honestly dont think that those programs would have a huge impact on my performance.

Here are a few questions that arose...
-Is it because he is using windows 8 while i am using windows 7?
-what factors might affect our computer differences?
-might it be that his motherboard might be better than mines?
-how big of a difference would adding a ssd to my computer be? (last case since i dont have money)
-would buying a 16gb ram make it better?
 
Solution
as for program startup... if its almost instantaneous then he likely has the programs set as a startup item (in other words some elements are preloaded and already in the ram ready for use. this can slow down boot-up times but can drastically decrease start up times for programs.

i normally disable this on my own systems since i want boot to be as fast as possible and i dont like uncessary items taking up my ram. i use an ssd and cs6 takes about 6 seconds to launch. on a slow hdd its about 20-30 seconds without being preloaded.

some background processes can affect loading. you might be suprised but if you have alot of tabs open in chrome it can be a large strain.

also if you're pulling data from your hard drive (such as copying...
as for program startup... if its almost instantaneous then he likely has the programs set as a startup item (in other words some elements are preloaded and already in the ram ready for use. this can slow down boot-up times but can drastically decrease start up times for programs.

i normally disable this on my own systems since i want boot to be as fast as possible and i dont like uncessary items taking up my ram. i use an ssd and cs6 takes about 6 seconds to launch. on a slow hdd its about 20-30 seconds without being preloaded.

some background processes can affect loading. you might be suprised but if you have alot of tabs open in chrome it can be a large strain.

also if you're pulling data from your hard drive (such as copying files or playing media) it can greatly slow down everything else since it needs to track back and forth between different things at once.

-Is it because he is using windows 8 while i am using windows 7?
...perhaps somewhat. it shouldnt be too major though.
-what factors might affect our computer differences?
...if you're accessing your hard drive playing music or doing other tasks at the same time it will slow down other things. having programs preloaded also helps. perhaps his hard drive has slightly better performance.
-might it be that his motherboard might be better than mines?
...not likely
-how big of a difference would adding a ssd to my computer be? (last case since i dont have money)
...quite a large difference in terms of startup speed and responsiveness. its also better with multitasking. the hang-ups could be cpu related though (not sure, check system monitor).
-would buying a 16gb ram make it better?
...not likely, unless of course you were using all of your ram (check system monitor)
 
Solution
The AMD FX 6300 is a quad core CPU. You can't compare the different systems unless they have the exact same software running in the background and while running at least. Never mind the hardware differences. You already said that you have other programs running, he does not. How can you possibly compare things that way? It's like asking why one car is faster than the other when they are using different engines, tires and one has 5 people while the other one is carrying 2.

Run your program under the same conditions, stop any startup programs and you may be loading different modules. Photoshop for example has many addons that will slow startup time.