built pc not performing well! please help!

my computer was recently rebuild and it is not performing as well as I feel it should. I have 2 gig of Ram a 500 gig hard drive and my motherboard is a Asus P5VD2-VMSE duo core 2 which should make my computer run really fast but it is not much faster than when it was no-where near the spec it is now. Is there anyway someone could check my system to see if there are any problems? Thanks Funk

Hi Funk and welcome to WhattheTech.

What operating system? Did it run slow right from first power up?

You did not mention any graphics card so I am assuming you are using that motherboard's on-board graphics. Note that on-board graphics - even from a reputable board maker like ASUS - do not have the performance abilities of even the most budget graphics cards. The GPUs (graphics processor unit) are generally entry-level quality, and, more importantly, all on-board graphics steal a significant chunk of system RAM to use for graphics processing - up to 256Mb in your case. So, you end up with a lessor quality graphics system AND you end up with less usable RAM to add insult to injury.

Today's programs tend to be very graphics intensive, placing huge demands on processing power, compounded by the proliferation of widescreen high-resolution monitors. So cutting the budget on graphics is usually a mistake if looking for decent performance. This is especially true with Vista, which is designed to take advantage of the latest in power hungry graphics hardware and software technologies.

So, unless you have a graphics card, I recommend you get one as soon as budget permits. Your board supports PCI Express X16 (PCIe), so that is good. Sadly, graphics cards can consume a lot more power than many of the latest CPUs, so you may have to get a bigger PSU as well.

You should also verify your CPU is running at the speed it is supposed to. CPUz is a great little benchmark program, and is perfect for checking that.