Thread: Ensuring optimum performance from your PC

Interesting. I have two G4 Macs; one an iMac the other a PowerBook. Both have 1 GHz processors. The iMac has 1.5GB RAM. The PowerBook has half that. The PowerBook has 512 KB L2 cache, the iMac half that. Bus speed on both is 133 MHz. Both have serial ATA hard drives.

On a purely subjective basis and contrary to what you might expect from a machine with half the RAM, the PowerBook always feels much faster than the iBook. Could the amount of L2 cache make that much difference?

Originally Posted by dirtydog

See what is hogging resources in your task manager, probably differant av or firewall.

Both run the same Antivirus (AVG Free) and Firewall (ZoneAlarm).

Both machines run Firefox 2, the same office suite, even the same install of XP. The same version of Photoshop, and so on.

i dont really know what i am talking about but isnt there something to be gained by defragmenting your hard drive?

this is a very interesting topic you have brought up marmite and i will be following this thread closely as it was not started by CMN

Originally Posted by slimboyfat

i dont really know what i am talking about but isnt there something to be gained by defragmenting your hard drive?

Yes. One should defrag every now and again. The problem with that is that I am usually too busy posting shite on TD to remember to do it. I shall do it today after logging off (for 10 days!!! Bliss!).

Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

found PC 2 to be running at around 60% of its capability

I don't understand what you mean by that, but a very simple test is to press Ctr-Alt-Del, click Task Manager , click processes.
There you can see how much cpu usage each process has, and mostly you can find which one is hogging the computer.
System Idle Process should be around 90 - 95 % if no heavy applications are running.

Originally Posted by lom

System Idle Process should be around 90 - 95 % if no heavy applications are running.

It is.

I shall post a piccie of the utility that told me how crap my other PC is running, but it'll be next week.

Different motherboards I bet.

Originally Posted by slimboyfat

defragmenting your hard drive?

I was in the process of defragging today.
my boot up is very slow.
fukking power cut at about 33%
back to the drawing board.

I have never found that a defrag made any difference.
The only software that has made a difference for me has been a registry cleaner.

I suggest you to download Passmarks Performance Test program from their website. The evaluation version is not able to do a direct compare with other computers (from a database) but running it on both of your computers and doing a visual compare should tell you where the big difference between them is.
Are both of them using the same type of video card ?

Originally Posted by ChiangMai noon

fukking power cut at about 33%

A UPS won't cost you more than 3 pub evenings..

Originally Posted by Thetyim

The only software that has made a difference for me has been a registry cleaner.

I use ccleaner.
not sure that makes a blind bit of difference either.
what worries me is that a very slow boot is usually the prelude to hard drive failure.

Windows has a tendency to get 'kludgy' after some period of use as well. I'm back to a 15-20 sec. boot time after wiping out XP and reinstalling it.

I never found defragging to be of any benefit either.

As well: if one PC is using onboard video and the other has a dedicated video card then you'll see a big difference in overall performance.

Originally Posted by Anonymous Coward

Interesting. I have two G4 Macs; one an iMac the other a PowerBook. Both have 1 GHz processors. The iMac has 1.5GB RAM. The PowerBook has half that. The PowerBook has 512 KB L2 cache, the iMac half that. Bus speed on both is 133 MHz. Both have serial ATA hard drives.

On a purely subjective basis and contrary to what you might expect from a machine with half the RAM, the PowerBook always feels much faster than the iBook. Could the amount of L2 cache make that much difference?

Yes, definately. The first generation P4 only had 256k of cache. When it was upgraded to 512k the performance difference was quite noticeable.

Now, don't fall into the trap of more = better. Most applications won't benefit from 1MB or more of L2 cache. Usually more cache is used on multi-core CPUs so that each one gets about 512k of cache.

Originally Posted by surasak

Yes, definately. The first generation P4 only had 256k of cache. When it was upgraded to 512k the performance difference was quite noticeable.

OK, got it. The PowerBook is about a year newer than the iMac....

That was one way in which Apple crippled certain products to ensure people would buy the others...less cache. They can't do it any longer since someone else designs the motherboards/CPUs now.

Of course, the big joke is that all Celerons are essentially neutered Pentium 4s with half the L2 cache disabled.

Originally Posted by surasak

Of course, the big joke is that all Celerons are essentially neutered Pentium 4s with half the L2 cache disabled.

True but it is improving. I just bought a Cedar Mill 3.2 Ghz with 512MB L2 cache.
Good value for money and not worth th extra for a P4

How about your swap files? Do you have a separate partition for your swap file on the faster PC and not on the slower one? Even if fragmentation of "ordinary" files doesn't change performance much, a fragmented swap file sure will.

Originally Posted by surasak

Of course, the big joke is that all Celerons are essentially neutered Pentium 4s with half the L2 cache disabled.

Not disabled intentionally but because of manufacturing defects.
The very fast SRAM of the cache is difficult to make with 100% success, even when making them as external chips. A lot has to go to the bin.

When etched together with a CPU core it would cost them to much to bin the faulty ones so those with an error in one half of the cache is sold as lower grade CPU's.

Originally Posted by surasak

Now, don't fall into the trap of more = better.

Usually it is.

Originally Posted by surasak

Most applications won't benefit from 1MB or more of L2 cache.

Only if the sum of all running applications size is smaller than the cache size.
Ideally, you wouldn't want to have a cache at all - you would want all of your memory to be fast SRAM.
But, they are expensive to manufacture and because of their speed they are power hungry.
DRAM + SRAM cache has a better overall economy, the price you pay is reduced speed.