PC Processors: Dual vs. Quad-Core Processors, & MS Excel Performance

I used Photoshop to create it, I use photoshop for everything

Resource Monitor is only in Vista and Win7, but you can get the textual reading on XP's Task Manager in the performance section. Higher the number, the worse.

That HP isnt bad. The processor is ok. And 1Tb is nothing. I have 6Tb on my desktop in my basement and most of it is full. 8Gb of RAM is average now too.

I think it will be ok for you.

 

Does Windows 7 fix the 'always swap' problem? On my w2k box, even with more than enough ram to hold everything, it still insists on using swap from time to time.

 

No. All major Operating Systems (Windowz, OSX, Linux Flavours) do it. Reasoning being if you are 99% full of RAM, the next thing you do will require more RAM than needed. Therefore it preemptively frees memory and there is a big algorithm for choosing what to swap but generally it is a program that hasnt been in the foreground for a long time.

Now it wont ever get to 99% full. Windows likes to always keep a good sized buffer. And for almost all the general users out there, it is the fastest way to deal with memory limitations.

There is a tradeoff to having more RAM though. If you ever use Suspend, you are going to have to power all 8Gb of that RAM. Every few nanoseconds, it has to sweep through every single block of data and keep it refreshed. Remember it is volatile memory, so no power means no data which means suspend will fail big time. In a portable situation this means when your laptop is in suspend and you dont have it plugged in, your battery is going to drain really really fast. And if you use hibernate, it writes the entire contents of RAM (not just what you are "using") to the harddrive so it can do a restore. Therefore entering and waking from hibernation take longer, the more RAM you have and also take more harddrive space (1:1 ratio there).

 

Certainly understand the reasoning but this doesn't happen when I'm at 99% of RAM. More like 50%. Then when you do switch back to the app that hasn't been FG for a while, you have wait for PF. But it's not a complaint. Was more of just a curiosity since I haven't had any experience with the new Windows. I probably won't ever be at a point again where I have enough physical RAM to eliminate most PF use, and the increased HD speeds make it less of a performance hit.

 

Just a side comment, Vista and W7 use a technique called ReadyBoost, if a memory drive is available to them, to speed drive performance.

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost]ReadyBoost - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

Yes, some of the fast cards occupy two slots. Most generic motherboards have the X16 slots spaced to allow for this depth and still allow you to install two cards and "bridge" them for faster performance. I have never done this, but the option is there

Another caveat to a high end card is that they require a dedicated power connector. Some use quite a bit of power, and you have to ensure your power supply is up to the task

 

Overall, the system performance is quite good. You have a middle-of-the-road graphics card, but that shouldn't have much impact on the work you do

FYI for about $110 I can get either an nVidia or ATI branded performance card that will score 6 or better

 

Get a SSD for under $200. Excel (or any other app) will open up instantly.

 

An SSD is a very *bad* idea for anyone using Windows as a primary partition. Yes it is fast, but it will also die prematurely. Good 'ol spinning platters work just as well in a desktop application. if you are worried about harddrive speed, get a 15k RPM raptor drive as your bot disk, and use the 1Tb drive as media/document storage.

 

What do you mean SSD will die? There is no moving part so what can possibly die?

SSD is ideal for Windows partition because of many small files. There is virtually no latency so applications opens up after you click on the mouse button (before you have a chance to even move the mouse).

I have not upgraded to SSD yet but that's the information I got from reading reviews and reviews on Newegg.

 

I upgraded to SSD's a while back and they are FAST! I got the Intel X25-E 32GB drives. If I remember correctly these drives are SLC and Intel said they are guaranteed for 100GB of writes every day for 5 years. They are also rated for much longer service life than mechanical drives.

I love my SSD's and I will never go back to regular drives again. I have two of the X25-E in a raid 0 for my main drive. Ubuntu loads to the desktop in under 30 seconds and apps open instantly. They are the best upgrade you can do to a computer right now.

 

wow, interesting read here. i am dreaming up all kinds of scenarios on why you have a dozen threaded spreadsheets all updating at once. are u in the penny stock market where changes and results need to be instantaneous?? i thought my job's database setup was bad where i have to access up to 3-4 other databases to change info on my front facing screen, and i used to complain about 10-15 second delays!!

one thing u mentioned is your laptop having a gig of memory that cannot be accessed, have you ever thought of setting up a RAM drive (allocates sections of memory to be used as a virtual hard drive for super fast swapping) for those heavy swapping moments? this is trick (not sure of the details) we incorporate a lot when we have heavy switch traffic (changes to database) and orders start to backup the system will swap them to disk to prevent the queue from getting too large which causes us to lose new incoming orders.

just a thought. as far as double slotted video cards, this is a gamer trick. this allows the cards to alternate video info to one screen. each card basically provides half the picture.
this allows much higher resolution and maintain the high frame rates.

 

That echo the reviews I have read. For $150-$200, no amount of CPU power, RAM or fastest 15k RPM drive will boost the performance if you work with a lot of small files.

I don't know how it can benefit spreadsheet other than loading quicker. I simply suggested because I am sure Patrick will use the PC for other things as well.

 

The SSDs will not mechanically die, but will run out of read/writes in a windows environment. Windows writes to the HD a LOT. Even memory paging we were talking about earlier here, that counts and a write every time it swaps. Writes are limited on a SSD. That write figure is if you keep the disk full percentage low. The more full the drive gets, the slower it gets and by a big time. Also it doesnt allow the algorithms in the Intel drives to swap data around equally to try and get an equal fail time of all sectors (or something more close), which means they will die even sooner. If you have a blank drive, and just keep writing a 1Mb file to it constantly (overwriting what was there) the file is going to move around to as many sectors as it can, and try to fail evenly. Fill the drive to 99.9 capacity, and write that same 1Mb file. Now it is rotating around a few sectors only or maybe even one if the drive is that full, and every write counts as a kill on that entire sector.

SSDs are great, but they are not meant for people here. They are meant in enterprise class devices where this failure is ok and planned for.

The ideal SSD application vs. what most people do/know is very different. For example, ideally you want the speed and great seek times of SSD on your boot drive. But you do not want the OS to keep writing to it. Solution? EWF (on windows at least).

Basically this is an overlay between windows and the disk. Windows says "hey write this to page memory", EWF intercepts and tells windows it did, but really it just puts it in a little hoard it made in RAM OR puts it on a secondary platter drive. This is ideal. Not only do your page faults not actually fault to disk, but to extra restricted RAM if setup correctly, all these little write operations are done in RAM. If configured for another drive, you basically smear your OS over two drives, one for booting, one for trashing. The reason this doesnt work for most people is that EWF protects the system disk. So install a new program, and it works... until you restart and all those "changes" to the registry and even the program files directory are really just done temporarily and are discarded as soon as you reboot. There is yet another solution to this where the system disables EWF right before shutdown, which allows things to be permanent ONLY when windows does it "Saving User Settings" stage, and never before.

This is how you use an SSD drive properly. Most people just buy one and install your OS and are happy. As I said this is a BAD idea, but they havent been around long enough to fail. Also I am quite disappointed in big name manufacturers giving SSDs as primary drives in consumer class laptops. This will give them quite the bad name when grandmas collection of baby photos of her grandchildren just give up the ghost in a couple years.