Radically different speeds on different pcs?

I'm with Virgin on their M200 package, so should in theory have speeds up to 200 mbps (the Virgin website says an average of 213mbps). When running TB speed tests, all run on wireless at the same distance from router,

--- on my 5 year old laptop (intel i5 chip, 6GB memory etc) I consistently get speeds between 140 and up to 180 mbps for downloads - although the laptop tends to be quite slow in everyday use;
--- on my 4 year old pc (i7 chip, 8GB memory) I've been getting an average of about 75mbps,

I've just bought a new pc (AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 16GB memory) and last night got a speed of about 38mbps, but repeating the test a few minutes ago - about 2am not a time of high usage - I got 13.9 mbps download and 2.3 upload !!! It doesn't seem especially slow in general use so I'm surprised and baffled by these results.

Latest speed test result

I had imagined that the new pc would give me lightening fast internet with none of the lag I was experiencing with the others. Obviously I need to test the laptop against this, but does anyone understand what may be happening? And how I can fix it?

Thanks

Frances

Are the different machines showing this variation in actual use?

The most obvious issue may be that different wireless cards are performing differently and may even be using different bands.

It's likely that your new PC is doing a massive amount of Windows 10 updating in the background which is killing your connection both up and down.

By default, not only does Windows 10 not limit the rate at which it downloads updates, but even worse, it shares what you have already downloaded with other users out on the internet using something called Windows Update Delivery Optimisation.

See https://www.itproportal.com/news/how-to-stop-windows... to learn how to disable it.

You should also limit the amount of bandwidth used by background update downloads - see https://www.windowscentral.com/how-limit-windows-upd...

Good luck!

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Are the different machines showing this variation in actual use?

The most obvious issue may be that different wireless cards are performing differently and may even be using different bands.

you should be able to go into the smart hub and see which band each of you devices is connected to,easier than going through windows to do the same

It's difficult to know as hard to compare them doing the same thing. The laptop takes longer to open web pages, and the other two vary. I suppose I am a bit alarmed as I got the new pc on Saturday and if there is something seriously wrong with it I'd like to know sooner than later. I'd imagine it has the latest wireless card - it was one of the few things I couldn't choose to upgrade.

In the last half an hour I've run tests on the new pc via wirelss and connected via a powerline plug
The results are
Date/Time Avg Down Avg Up Provider
01-06-2020 10:18:11 (GMT) 26.4 Mbps 5.8 Mbps Virgin Media powerline
01-06-2020 09:59:01 (GMT) 37.7 Mbps 5.7 Mbps Virgin Media
01-06-2020 01:53:30 (GMT) 14.9 Mbps 4.2 Mbps Virgin Media
01-06-2020 01:51:25 (GMT) 14.3 Mbps 3.1 Mbps Virgin Media
01-06-2020 01:09:23 (GMT) 13.8 Mbps 2.3 Mbps Virgin Media
31-05-2020 06:31:35 (GMT) 33.0 Mbps 6.7 Mbps Virgin Media
31-05-2020 06:29:34 (GMT) 32.4 Mbps 6.1 Mbps Virgin Media
31-05-2020 06:28:32 (GMT) 24.9 Mbps 6.4 Mbps Virgin Media
30-05-2020 16:51:31 (GMT) 74.2 Mbps 19.9 Mbps Virgin Media when first got pc on Sat

My old pc (on wirelss) is currently showing 59.7 / 13.3
But my 5 year old laptop just got 185 / 19.6 - which suggests the problem isn't a general Virgin one, but something to do with the new pc.

Any suggestions about where I might look to check/compare any settings on pcs and laptop? I'll try looking on the router when I find the relevant way to get in...

Thanks, I'll try this when I can find the way in - must have the details somewhere on my pc...

I got the new pc on Saturday so it looks as though all the Windows updates etc have now been done - and the really odd thing is that when they were happening I did the first speed test (shown in the history in another part of this thread) and got 74.2 / 19.9Mbps. So strangely everything has slowed down radically since then.

The only difference between the pcs and the laptop is that I have installed PCloud on pcs to keep client data secure. Also, although I seem to have one drive and google drive on the laptop, one drive seems to have no content saved. Any thoughts about whether this could be the reason for the radical differences?

On the ThinkBroadband home page under "Tools" is an option for test files. Try downloading the 1GB file and check how fast the download is coming (remember if you look in the download manager is will measure in MB/s rather than Mb/s so you have to multiply by 8 to get it to Mb/s). If you get slow download speeds then try starting a couple of additional downloads of the file at the same time and see if the combined speeds increase as that will show what multi-threaded speeds are like.

Once you have your readings you can cancel the downloads rather than waiting for the whole file to download.

In reply to a post by Victoria16:

It's difficult to know as hard to compare them doing the same thing. The laptop takes longer to open web pages, and the other two vary. I suppose I am a bit alarmed as I got the new pc on Saturday and if there is something seriously wrong with it I'd like to know sooner than later. I'd imagine it has the latest wireless card - it was one of the few things I couldn't choose to upgrade.

In the last half an hour I've run tests on the new pc via wirelss and connected via a powerline plug
The results are
Date/Time Avg Down Avg Up Provider
01-06-2020 10:18:11 (GMT) 26.4 Mbps 5.8 Mbps Virgin Media powerline
01-06-2020 09:59:01 (GMT) 37.7 Mbps 5.7 Mbps Virgin Media
01-06-2020 01:53:30 (GMT) 14.9 Mbps 4.2 Mbps Virgin Media
01-06-2020 01:51:25 (GMT) 14.3 Mbps 3.1 Mbps Virgin Media
01-06-2020 01:09:23 (GMT) 13.8 Mbps 2.3 Mbps Virgin Media
31-05-2020 06:31:35 (GMT) 33.0 Mbps 6.7 Mbps Virgin Media
31-05-2020 06:29:34 (GMT) 32.4 Mbps 6.1 Mbps Virgin Media
31-05-2020 06:28:32 (GMT) 24.9 Mbps 6.4 Mbps Virgin Media
30-05-2020 16:51:31 (GMT) 74.2 Mbps 19.9 Mbps Virgin Media when first got pc on Sat

My old pc (on wirelss) is currently showing 59.7 / 13.3
But my 5 year old laptop just got 185 / 19.6 - which suggests the problem isn't a general Virgin one, but something to do with the new pc.

Any suggestions about where I might look to check/compare any settings on pcs and laptop? I'll try looking on the router when I find the relevant way to get in...

you can use device manager to look at the properties of the wireless cards,one you have properties of card click the advanced tab and in the window scroll the options to see which wireless "types" it can connect to,it may need manually setting to the faster protocol or even may need a new driver,I have a pretty new laptop that the inbuilt card wont/cant use the faster later ones without a time consuming replacement so ended up buying a dongle and disabled the inbuilt card

just a thought :-the slower pc isn't using a VPN is it?that would slow you down