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What else can you tweak to make Windows 8.1 run faster


Bakuchris

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I was wondering what other tweaks besides changing a few things on Windows 8.1, such as folder options, disabling services, removing useless features of the Programs and Features under control panel, what else can make your system run even faster, as most of things I run into on the internet are the ovious things to remove and to me it's boring since I already know that knowelege.

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Maybe if you list ALL the tweaks you already know, one might be able to suggest one that you don't know :unsure:. (just to avoiding proposing a tweak to be replied with a "thanks, but I already know about it").

 

jaclaz

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There really aren't any tweaks that haven't been deprecated by the improved I/O and memory handling that 8 and 8.1 kernel offers. Most tweaks you read about are from the Windows NT5 [2000] or NT5.1/5.2[x64] [XP] era. Toggling such tweaks can actually worsen performance because of improvements in the Windows NT kernel that occured with Vista, 7, 8, and even 8.1 which all made dramatic changes to the kernel for I/O and memory management. 

 

While it isn't a tweak, its the only viable way to improve the performance of Windows 8.1 for me.. 

 

Give V-locity endpoint a go. Its made by the same company that makes Diskeeper, it prevents fragments, has I/O caching and is designed for Windows 8.1 in mind. Free for 30 days. 

 

It takes a full 72 hours for it to compile a report on your system which adjusts its features to best increase throughput. And the fragment preventer - which redirects disk I/O through a RAM disk before writing fragment-free does not by default do this to SSDs.

 

Its a beta though, or was when I installed it a few weeks ago. And just a note, it will take away 1/3 of your RAM for the RAM disk and Intellimemory feature, but fear not, most of that RAM it reserves can and will be used by applications still. 

 

http://www.condusiv.com/business/v-locityendpoint/overview/

Edited by Rfire
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Well the tweaks I did are things like disabling some services, changed the performance tab under system properties and removed three things, changed my wallpaper to a static color (no wallpaper),removed some components from the Program and Features under Control Panel, Updated to Update Pack One, nothing spectacular but I think it works. Also thanks for the intresting idea Rfire, maybe I will check it out.

 

(P.S. I do know that you can also disable Windows Defender but does that actually speed up the system, I doubt it would but thats what alot of websites say online.)

Edited by Bakuchris
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Well for starters I would get rid of Vista (shows on your screen name) and then get rid of that slow Pata drive and get a SSD drive, Do A Clean Install Of Windows 8.1 and then geesh Your Suddendly faster.

 

~DP

Edited by DosProbie
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+1 to DosProbie's suggestion, except that I'd suggest plugging in a couple (or more) of them and creating a RAID 0 volume.  There's nothing like GARGANTUAN I/O performance coupled with near-zero latency.  There is no one single thing better you can do that's more effective at making your system feel responsive.

 

Oh, and by the way, since some of the sluggish feel is actually from intentional time delays (Microsoft doesn't want to cognitively overload the Windows for Dummies crowd), I posted some UI tweaks that make the desktop feel snappier over here:

 

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/172302-taskbar-and-classic-shell-time-tweakage/

 

Even if you don't use Classic Shell, the Taskbar and menu speed improvements can make a system feel more responsive.

 

-Noel

Edited by NoelC
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+1 to DosProbie's suggestion, except that I'd suggest plugging in a couple (or more) of them and creating a RAID 0 volume.  There's nothing like GARGANTUAN I/O performance coupled with near-zero latency.  There is no one single thing better you can do that's more effective at making your system feel responsive.

 

Yep:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269-7.html

 

At the end of the day, the real-world differences between SSDs in a desktop environment aren't altogether very large. The most important jump happens when you go from a hard drive to (almost) any solid-state drive. With that said, there are measurable attributes that separate one SSD from another. But you'll need to approach a purchasing decision as the sum of many parts. Within individual apps, you'll hardly notice the difference between most SATA 3Gb/s and faster SATA 6Gb/s drives. It's the more taxing workloads that make a faster device worth owning.

Sequential performance is an important SSD attribute, but there are points beyond which it's difficult to make use of the performance in a real and meaningful way. That's why the hierarchy chart below relies on information provided by our Storage Bench v1.0, as it ranks performance in a way that reflects average daily use for a consumer workload. It's simply a ranking using one metric, and not gospel. But as far as single-number performance is concerned, it is serviceable for our needs.

 

 though it is not at all clear (to me) how to choose one, they seem to have "crazy" pricing :w00t:

 

The good guys at tom's hardware managed to put in the mentioned article:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269.html

everything AND the kitchen sink, thus creating a completely UNreadable/UNunderstantable mish-mash.

 

The graphic on last page, if you draw a few lines to separate "comparable" capacities and interfaces is telling me that:

  1. In the 120/128 Gb class the two "best" (imho) ones are both Samsung BUT Samsung evo 120 Gb has a slower performance that the Samsung pro 128 Gb for a price of 0.75 $/Gb vs. 0.89 $/Gb (a 16% difference) with prices ranging from $90 to $114
  2. in the 240/256 Gb performances are much "nearer" among all makes/models and prices vary between 150 and 160 $ (a 7% variation) but since the Samsuing one which is the one priced lower at 150 $ is also the slower and smaller one, it has a price for Gb of 0.6 $ while all the others are 160 $ with a $/Gb of 0.625 (i.e. a 4% only variation)
  3. at the 512 GB class the crazyness starts, prices from 240 to 360 dollars, i.e. from 0.47 to 0.70 $/Gb (i.e. a variation of 33%

So:

  1. in the 120/128 Gb class you may make your choice depending on whether you can afford or not the additional $24 per drive for some increase in speed and 8 Gb more storage
  2. in the 240/256 Gb class you better throw your dices to choose :ph34r: as prices AND performances are (substantially) THE SAME for all devices (i.e. you have NO choices :w00t:)
  3. in the 512 Gb class the difference in $ is so high (you can roughly get THREE slightly slower devices for the price of TWO of the slighltly fastest one :whistle:) with seemingly trifling performance differences that there is (IMHO) no race at all

 

jaclaz 

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I'd suggest overprovisioning if at all possible in the budget.  Systems and SSDs both run best with a lot of free disk space.

 

Besides the OS, make room for everything - OS swap, your applications, data, scratch space - everything.  A system set up like that (I have one) SCREAMS.

 

-Noel

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Actually I'm noticing when I run for example Adobe Premiere, it seems to be much more smoother in Windows 7 then in Windows 8.1, in 8.1 it was actually slower even though they both use around 1GB of RAM. Why I never noticed this before is strange to me.. anyway I think I will stick with my copy of Windows 7 for now, though if my programs run faster on 7 why would I want to upgrade back to Windows 8.1, I never used any of the New start menu apps.. I would use those If I owned a Microsoft Surface tablet or any tablet running Windows, thats how I use my iPad Mini.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I turn it off because of this:

 
Windows 8 maintenance tasks run in the background and include security updating and scanning, Windows software updates, disk defragmentation, system diagnostics, among other tasks.

 

 
I think turning it off will stop modern applications from updating automatically. I also don't like it if it keeps defragmenting the disks everyday! Just don't know if this turning off will cause any harm though.
 
Thanks for replying.
Edited by Aloha
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I don't believe it normally defrags disks every day.  More like once a week as I recall.  And that's good for performance, not bad.  By the way, it doesn't defrag SSDs, assuming the system has properly characterized the disk as an SSD.  It "re-trims" an SSD, which is also not a bad idea and will help ensure best performance.

 

There are other things it does, not all of which are obvious.  The general thinking is that they're not bad.

 

What is it, in particular, that you are you hoping to accomplish?  This thread is about increasing performance, and disallowing the system to maintain itself seems the antithesis to that.

 

-Noel

Edited by NoelC
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Adobe Premiere is much more responsive in Windows 7 then it is in Windows 8.1. and when I ran Windows 8.1 Windows Update was slow even to start updating, Issues with FlashDevelop that always required to be rebooted, rounded themes required a program and I never had rounded edges and this is a disappointment to me as I like rounded edges better then square windows, Windows 7 can be customized way more then Windows 8.1, PS3 Media Server always required many reboots even with Update Pack One just for me to access my media on my Playstation 3, I noticed the difference when I installed Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 that when I installed Windows 7 for the first time it was quick Windows 8.1 even with no update pack one was still faster but slow when opening zip files and installing programs and Adobe Premiere CC was quite slow many times.

 

My Computer is not the newest and is from around 2010 or 2011 and is custom built

 

besides I don't want to start a fight to make it seem I must upgrade to the newest version, Windows 8.1 is not really that bad I just feel like it's to slow for the applications I use.

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