My computer is slower than before. What to do?

[firehawk]

Does anyone know if Premiere Pro CS6 is most CPU or GPU dependent?

[Greg_E]

I would still pull the processor and ram, look for dark spots on the ram connections and clean with an eraser and then alcohol. Replace thermal too.

I'd say replace the CPU since it would be cheap, but if it breaks a license activation then you'd be in trouble, so need to stay with what you have.

[combatentropy]

Here is process list when Premiere CS6 is running.

You need to click the CPU heading, to sort it by CPU usage. You may need to click it twice, to sort it from highest to lowest. Wait until your fans kick in or your computer is getting slow.

If that screenshot you posted was the complete list, and it was during a period of computer wonkiness, then there is no apparent software culprit. Almost all of the processes are at 0%. One process is at 2%, and then there is the "System Idle Process" at 95%, which is normal.

If that is the case, then the next suspect is your frankenrig --- 7 years old, once overheated, a variety of third-party hardware and software:

The system was new in 2013
I used Acronis Disk director on my main C: to adjust the main partition
One of my SSD is running Samsung Magician
I added this Add in card [from eBay]
CrystalDiskinfo and coretemp which I have been using to monitor things
And V-ray 4 for 3ds Max
There was a brief point where the fan on my cooler failed and my CPU got up to 90C
I did recently replace the rear fan

Have you considered a Macbook Air

[firehawk]

If it's software related I had an idea: I still have my original SSD system drive (stored) with CS6 activated which I later cloned to a larger SSD using a hardware clone device and then adjusted the partition using Acronis Disk director to give me more space. Could I unplug from internet, disonnect most of my other SSD drives and swap in the original SSD system drive to boot it and see if it runs faster? And if not then I could take it back out and put it back like it was?

The original SSD has a lot of software installed but not as much as I currently have on my current System drive so it would be the leanest way to run and if it handles video better then I'll know something has bogged down my system since then. If it's the same then I look into hardware solutions like changing paste etc...?
Wouldn't that work?
Should I remove the Add in card before booting up the old system drive?

[firehawk]

Playing a long 4K Phantom 4 clip in CS6 my CPU usage varied from about 50% to 81% with the clip playing smoothly sometimes and sometimes playing very jerky.

Playing a complex timeline in CS6 where it totally played very very jerky nearly the entire time it varied from about 6% to high 90s all the way through which doesn't seem to make sense to me because it was struggling bad the entire time trying to play the timeline.

[firehawk]

cpu usage.jpg

[J Michael]

I do an entire system backup that way, copy a drive and run the system on the new one. So you should be able to fire up the system using the old drive and test. I occasionally go into the startup configuration and turn off anything I don't want loaded automatically - as software is installed there are often services turned on by default that do nothing more than look for updates and the like.

I didn't see any mention of codec which may be a factor for the variable cpu rates you're seeing.

If it's software related I had an idea: I still have my original SSD system drive (stored) with CS6 activated which I later cloned to a larger SSD using a hardware clone device and then adjusted the partition using Acronis Disk director to give me more space. Could I unplug from internet, disonnect most of my other SSD drives and swap in the original SSD system drive to boot it and see if it runs faster? And if not then I could take it back out and put it back like it was?

The original SSD has a lot of software installed but not as much as I currently have on my current System drive so it would be the leanest way to run and if it handles video better then I'll know something has bogged down my system since then. If it's the same then I look into hardware solutions like changing paste etc...?
Wouldn't that work?
Should I remove the Add in card before booting up the old system drive?

[firehawk]

I didn't see any mention of codec which may be a factor for the variable cpu rates you're seeing.

The Codec of the long clips I've been testing is h.264 100Mb DCI 4k 60p from Phantom 4 Pro. My system struggles with this. And during playback CPU load varied between 50-81%.

But what really brings it down to it's knees is playing complex timelines mixed with video and TGA sequences. CPU load then ranges from 6% to 90s. But that doesn't make sense because it plays so jerky it seems it should just be at like 100% the entire time.

So I tested some TGA sequenes on my Threadripper 3970X (128GB RAM, RTX 2080ti) also running Premiere Pro CS6 and it struggles a bit with them too, though not as bad as the old i7 3930k system does. So maybe it's a limitation of the software?

[combatentropy]

CPU load then ranges from 6% to 90s. But that doesn't make sense because it plays so jerky it seems it should just be at like 100% the entire time.

Not necessarily. That assumes that Premiere and Windows are 100% efficient and have no bugs. Computers are complicated beasts.

[Peter C.]

Based on the OP first post, the system is old. The speed of timeline playback has more to do with the GPU and ram speed. Upgrading to the latest mobo and gpu will do the trick so basically you need a new computer. There's a company that builds custom computers for video editing in premier. https://www.pugetsystems.com/recomme...ecommendations I had a colleague get one and its fantastic. Of course great performance doesn't come cheap.