Speakeasy forum: Goldern PC's

Booting from solid state drives will cut that time in almost half if that's what you are basing the speed on. Number of processes loaded in the background during boot up can slow that, and also slow things down performance wise afterwards. Your friend my have Trojans and Virus already infected on his computer, especially if he's a fan of peer to peer software and various other free programs not from reputable site like download dot com. There are many variables which can affect the speed. For instance you already noted screen resolutions, but could one be using 16 bit instead of 32 bit color rendering? Extra ports not used may be turned off in BIOS on one computer, but not on the other. Peripherals hooked to USB ports, even if not being used at the time, still maintain digital contact with the computer which can affect it's speed.

Want to do a fair speed test you need to make all the variable the same. Monitor, mouse keyboard, all unused ports disabled, no peripherals plugged in, all wireless devices internal turned off, etc.

Your test confirmed what I noted. Change the test and the other machine may win on that race. But if all you need is GTA4, then you have your answer.
Bob