EP121 - Out of the Box Tweak/Clean: Services and Applications

Just finished installing, so, here's the windows Index score:

Processor: 5.6
Memory: 5.6
Graphics: 2.2
Gaming: 3.2
Hard disk: 7.6

Not bad, but a Sandy bridge GPU would beef things up a lot.

Seconds to boot to desktop: 20 seconds. No real change

 

You'll see a big graphics score boost with newest intel drivers.

 

...Cool. Installing now.

Processor: 5.6
Memory: 5.6
Graphics: 3.2
Gaming: 4.5
Hard disk: 7.6

Boots in 16 seconds to desktop... Happy

 

The unoffical EP121 blog has an interesting take on re-install of Win7:

"In the case of the EP121, I’ve found that clean installing Windows did not improve boot times or resume times and I noticed no difference in overall system performance. I also found that simply un-installing the applications I wasn’t interested in was just as efficient in reclaiming disk space. "

Link to the blog (this guy has some helpful EP121 advice):
Clean Installing Windows on the EP121 Asus EP121 Slate PC Unofficial Blog

Hope this helps.

 

Awesome fine tuning tweaks here.

Pardon my ignorance, what is superfetch? Is it a RAM Memory cleaner? Why was it showing bogus memory readings?

Thanks for the helpful tune-up info.

 

Are there spedific links to retrieve these new drivers?

Thank you for the help

Marsha

 

Superfetch is a process that cache's regularly used applications to improve overall system performance. So when you monitor memory on a Windows 7 box, you reed to be aware that you're RAM usage might be a little inflated due to this.

When memory consumption becomes high and available memory becomes low, Superfetch automatically releases RAM so disabling this service for the purpose of preserving RAM isn't necessary or advisable.

 

I'd say that each person should look at disabling services and test themselves to see if they prefer the change. In my honest opinion, I do prefer Windows 7 leaving ram alone. Sure, caching is great but for some caching great big game textures can take 'time' SUperfetch also takes time to release memory, so, I prefer to leave it OFF with an SSD drive.

@Marsha.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/default.aspx?iid=gg_support+en_UK_15+driveanddown
Run the intel update driver utility.

Also, THANK YOU Marsha for saying 'Thank you'.

@StewartJoseph.
Yes, quite true and I think that the SSD is the limiting factor here, hence I changed to the Intel 310 for improved speed. Also, I'd prefer a CLEAN system without many, many files sitting there taking up space. So, I DO recommend a clean system install on ANY machine, especially machines like the DV6.

@JClishe
Superfetch:
"There is one serious flaw with Superfetch. It only works if you have a reliable routine for it to follow, otherwise it will constantly try to populate the memory with programs it’s not even sure you’re using right now.

My usual routine changes from day to day – I never follow the same schedule as far as my PC is concerned. When i finally upgraded from XP to 7 i was thoroughly annoyed at not being able to leave the PC on when i go to sleep. On XP it was always perfectly silent, whereas on 7, when idle(!), the HD’s kept churning nearly 100% of the time. It took me a few days to track down the problem, and it turned out to be Superfetch.

From your description of what it does, it simply will not work for me. I have about 30 applications i use during the course of a week, none of which are on a schedule. Superfetch cannot possibly know when i will start up one app or another since that changes all the time! I think that’s why it had trouble staying silent when my PC DOES go idle – It keeps trying to guess, and in doing so, is producing constant wear on my HD’s.

For me, this service simply *does not work*, since it cannot predict my usage properly. Even *I* can’t, how can this service?"


At the moment, my Asus ep121 idles at a consistent 0%, which obviously reduces battery time. It boots in 16 seconds and uses a small amount of ram. IF you want these things, then maybe consider the tweaks in this thread... besides, you can ALWAYS turn them back on again.

 

The latest update lowered my windows settings, why?

Processor: 5.5
Memory 5.5
Graphics: 3.1
Gaming: 3.4
Hard disk: 5.9

 

I had the same experience. I was at 3.3 but the latest driver put it down to 3.2. I'm not too concerned about this, however. As I'm sure there are other benefits besides raw speed that come with the updated driver. Stability, power efficiency, etc...