Testing your pc

[Loppan Torkel]

I'm getting warnings that I should reduce the graphics on the desktop - the windows screen - when I exit civ5. Civ5 seems kind of slow too. I've gone over the things on the pc a few times now, updated what I can think of, run anti-virus, scanned the disks, etc. I don't think the hardware is that bad if it's fully functional, although I'm not sure it is that.. Do I know the graphics card is doing it's job properly?

Is there a good program to check the computer's capabilities?

 

[Zelig]

What do you want to test? Memtest86+, Prime95 and Furmark stress test the memory/cpu/gpu respectively.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

The best thing would be an easy tool that told me what part of the pc brought the performance down the most. Either by some fault of the part or if the part just is slower, relatively.
It's an ID 500 warning I'm getting so I guess it's too little RAM perhaps? 8GB should be enough for civ5.


I'll try a more few things the next weekend before using these programs. Thanks!

 

[illram]

What are your PC specs? We could probably tell by looking at that, if it's a hardware limitation and not some other faulty piece.

 

[timtofly]

Have you run the "windows experience index"? I have win 7 and it says that my windows aero could have improvement. I have no clue how to change that other than getting a stronger GPU, which I cannot do in this system. I do know that I am running FAH folding and that is very graphics intensive. Civ 5 is also GPU intensive.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Sorry, I totally forgot about this thread. I've run the "Win experience index". Looks good there, but I've also turned off win aero after windows complained about the performance and suggesting turning it off. It looks like win 98 now, but no complaints from win at least.

My specs...
Win 7
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
RAM: 8Gb
Disk 1: C300-CTFDDAC128MAG ATA
Disk 2-4: WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0 ATA
Graphics: 2x AMD Radeon HD5800

I don't know if there's anything else of interest or if there's any weak links in this. It's a few years old, but I don't do anything that resource heavy either. It did crash pretty hard twice yesterday - booted up from scratch - which I don't recall it has done earlier. No viruses found and I don't suspect virus to be the cause either. No faults found by MS memory test. I tried Prime95 also, but it doesn't seem to be the tool to test if something is broken.

 

[illram]

5800 is a series, what is the specific card? If it's two 5850's or above I do not see why you would be having problems just running Civ 5.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

It's two 5850, it looks like. I don't see why windows was complaining. Civ5 runs okay, but the map needs to be drawn a lot when scrolling.. It's not a huge issue at the moment, I'm done with civ5 anyway. Most things work as they should (two recent crashes excluded), but this is why I'm wondering if there's a diagnostic tool to find a faulty piece in a system.

 

[illram]

Try the programs Zelig mentioned: Memtest86+ (RAM) Prime95 (CPU) and Furmark (GPU).

 

[Loppan Torkel]

I'll try Furmark too. The memory and the cpu seemed to test alright, although stress testing the system seems like different thing. I don't get what to do with the cpu being capable of doing math tests. It's not totally broken, I knew that, and it can solve them fine at some arbitrary rate... ..I did quit the cpu test after some time, though.


Thanks for the answers.

 

[Zelig]

The cpu will fail at math tests if it's not working properly. You can overclock to see the effect. CPUs very rarely actually exhibit hardware failure.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

So, the pc started sounding a bit strange - a recurring processing sound that increased with usage, which wasn't there before and sounded too systematic to be healthy. After running the above programs again without finding any faults, I reinstalled windows 7. Still that sound and occasional crash.
Today it froze up completely and I had to reset it manually. Now it starts up and shuts down a few seconds later. I assume it's the motherboard or the processor, perhaps the RAM?

Any suggestions given this info? I think I want to keep it a while longer, so I might just leave it for some store to repair, if possible.

 

[Zelig]

A "processing sound" isn't really a thing - you essentially have hard drives and fans that make noise, otherwise it's silent like a phone/tablet/fanless PC.

If it's HDD sound you can check SMART attributes with HDD Guardian: https://hddguardian.codeplex.com/

If you see one of the SMART attributes Reallocated_Sector_Ct (5), Reported_Uncorrect (187), Command_Timeout (188), Current_Pending_Sector (197), and Offline_Uncorrectable (198) different than zero, replace the disk as recommended by Backblaze's Hard Drive SMART Stats.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Windows is on an SSD so it shouldn't sound much either, but you're probably right. Not a processing noise then.

However, the sound is the least of my problems now. I started up again, the screen froze at windows loading screen and 30s later it shut down completely. It not totally unlike how my laptop behaved a few months ago.. :-/

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Okay, I opened it up. I suspect the processor is getting too hot. I think it's a water cooling system "coolit systems" on top, which I unscrewed. Pretty hot underneath... I think I'm done for tonight.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

I think it was the water cooling system that broke down, which in turn made the processor overheat. I bought an air-cooling system, but was unable to fix the PC myself. So, in Feb/Mars I let a company have a look at it and repair it. Apparently there was some wiring that was in the way too, which might've caused some noise. It has worked without any issue since then. Thanks for the help.

Still on the sluggish side though...