How can I make my WinXP Pro PC run faster? (Second HD? SCSI? Dual-Core?) - Budget: aprox. GBP300

[ship]

Hi

I need some advice - how can I make my PC go faster!

e.g. How much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a SATA?

MAIN APPLICATIONS I USE:
DreamWeaver 8 (huge websites),
Outlook2003 (1+GB .PST files etc)
O/S: WindowsXP Pro (SP2),


MY EXISTING COMPUTER:

Processor: 3.2Hz Intel Pentium 4 -
RAM: 2GB
Disk: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA

PROCESSOR: Intel Pentium 4 based system
MOTHERBOARD: Intel Pentium 4 D945GNTLR system board
Integrated Intel GMA950 graphics
*Intel High definition audio
*Intel 10/100 LAN*8USB 2.0
*4 conventional PCI *2 PCI Express x1 *1 PCI
Express x16 *1 Serial*1 Parallel
*4 Serial ATA interfaces
*1 Parallel ATA IDE interface with UDMA33,
ATA-66/100
*PS/2 Keyboard port *Mouse port
*Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz Processor 775 chipset 800FSB
2Mb cache
RAM: 2Gb 533 DDR2 memory
GRAPHICS CARD: Matrox Millenium P650 PCle 128 - 128Mb Dual DVI/VGA PCI
Express X16 - s/n: KEW37452
CASE: ATX Midi tower with 300W 12V PSU
DISK: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA hard drive
OPTICAL: DVD RW dual layer +&- drive
FLOPPY: 1.44mb 3.5" Floppy disk drive
O/S: Microsoft Windows XP Pro Oem

Main applications: WindowsXP Pro (SP2), DreamWeaver 8, Outlook2003


I WAS thinking of replacing the processor with a DUAL-CORE chip.
But I have been largely talked out of it.
Looking the WindowsXP "Task Manager" Performance monitor
it seems that for most of the time the processor is barely being
used - it's mainly DISK ACCESS that is so slow.

The WORST applications for slowing up my PC seem to be
Outlook2003 and Dreamweaver. (I have already done what
I can to shrink the files that they are using...)

SCSI?
Should I change or add another hard disk?
If so how much faster would a SCSI hard disk be?
My hardware supplier says that a "decent" SCSI controller
would set me back about GBP 250 - just for the controller!
But how much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a SATA?

Or maybe I should simply buy another SATA hard disk and put
all my data (e.g. .PST file and large websites etc) on it..
Maybe I could get a SATA disk with a huge amount of CACHE??

I have a budget of about GBP250 to 350.

- Any suggestions? And any idea how much FASTER each of
the options would be likely to make things run in practice overall...?

- Any thoughts?


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

 

[SpaceGirl]

- Any thoughts?

DW is slow whatever machine you have. I find it best to break up large
sites in it into smaller sub sites; makes DW run a lot faster when it
has to scan smaller numbers of files.

Move the Windows Swap file to a dedicated high speed disk. That makes a
lot of difference.

Make sure your Windows/Application disk is seperate from your file
store disk, and make sure all disks are fully defragmented.

The memory in your machine is very slow (533). Maybe replace that with
800mhz or 1066mhz if your machine can take it.

 

[Brian Cryer]

Hi

I need some advice - how can I make my PC go faster!

Main applications: WindowsXP Pro (SP2), DreamWeaver 8, Outlook2003

I WAS thinking of replacing the processor with a DUAL-CORE chip.
But I have been largely talked out of it.
Looking the WindowsXP "Task Manager" Performance monitor
it seems that for most of the time the processor is barely being
used - it's mainly DISK ACCESS that is so slow.

If you are sure that its the disk you are waiting on (and a simple way of
telling this is how long are you waiting when the disk light is on), then a
faster disk will help. The disk spindle speed is a good indication of the
overall disk speed (although other factors do come in, such as number of
platters). Your disk is 7200rpm. Almost every disk in a pc these days is
7200rpm, but if you hunt around you might be able to find a faster one - but
remember that a 10,000rpm disk will only give (on paper) just short of 40%
speed increase, the reality is probably that unless you are waiting for a
LONG time then you are not likely to notice much of an improvement.

Given that you have 2GB of RAM, how much of that does task manager report as
being used? I find a good indicator is the page-file usage (PF Usage in task
manager), if this is well below the amount of physical ram then you won't be
swapping and adding more RAM won't help. If on the other hand the page-file
usage approaches 2GB or goes above then either look into whether your pc can
take more RAM (most can't, although XP will support up to 4GB) and whether
you can move your page file to another disk.

The WORST applications for slowing up my PC seem to be
Outlook2003 and Dreamweaver. (I have already done what
I can to shrink the files that they are using...)

SCSI?
Should I change or add another hard disk?
If so how much faster would a SCSI hard disk be?

I'm no expert, but my understanding is that whilsst SCSI disks generally
spin faster and have better support for multiple disk accesses, that the
performance of SATA is often at least as good - certainly unless you do your
homework and come up with a clear case (or have shed loads of money to
spare), migrating from SATA to SCSI isn't likely to yield any noticable
returns for you.

Hope this is useful.

 

[Jim Macklin]

You can't do a lot, a second SATA hard drive for the virtual
memory and storage would speed up some.

You can't run the dual-core P4 on a 945 board AFAIK. A new
mobo with faster frontside bus, support for dual-core would
give a boost.

What kind of Internet connection are you running? Have you
copied those huge Outlook files to a DVD so the program
doesn't have to work them all?

Have you checked background services and spyware? You may
be able to gain the most speed increase by buy/building a
new computer with the latest chipset, CPU and graphics will
help the most.




|
|
| Hi
|
| I need some advice - how can I make my PC go faster!
|
| e.g. How much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a
SATA?
|
| MAIN APPLICATIONS I USE:
| DreamWeaver 8 (huge websites),
| Outlook2003 (1+GB .PST files etc)
| O/S: WindowsXP Pro (SP2),
|
|
| MY EXISTING COMPUTER:
|
| Processor: 3.2Hz Intel Pentium 4 -
| RAM: 2GB
| Disk: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA
|
| PROCESSOR: Intel Pentium 4 based system
| MOTHERBOARD: Intel Pentium 4 D945GNTLR system board
| Integrated Intel GMA950 graphics
| *Intel High definition audio
| *Intel 10/100 LAN*8USB 2.0
| *4 conventional PCI *2 PCI Express x1
*1 PCI
| Express x16 *1 Serial*1 Parallel
| *4 Serial ATA interfaces
| *1 Parallel ATA IDE interface with
UDMA33,
| ATA-66/100
| *PS/2 Keyboard port *Mouse port
| *Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz Processor 775
chipset 800FSB
| 2Mb cache
| RAM: 2Gb 533 DDR2 memory
| GRAPHICS CARD: Matrox Millenium P650 PCle 128 - 128Mb Dual
DVI/VGA PCI
| Express X16 - s/n: KEW37452
| CASE: ATX Midi tower with 300W 12V PSU
| DISK: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA hard drive
| OPTICAL: DVD RW dual layer +&- drive
| FLOPPY: 1.44mb 3.5" Floppy disk drive
| O/S: Microsoft Windows XP Pro Oem
|
| Main applications: WindowsXP Pro (SP2), DreamWeaver 8,
Outlook2003
|
|
| I WAS thinking of replacing the processor with a DUAL-CORE
chip.
| But I have been largely talked out of it.
| Looking the WindowsXP "Task Manager" Performance monitor
| it seems that for most of the time the processor is barely
being
| used - it's mainly DISK ACCESS that is so slow.
|
| The WORST applications for slowing up my PC seem to be
| Outlook2003 and Dreamweaver. (I have already done what
| I can to shrink the files that they are using...)
|
| SCSI?
| Should I change or add another hard disk?
| If so how much faster would a SCSI hard disk be?
| My hardware supplier says that a "decent" SCSI controller
| would set me back about GBP 250 - just for the controller!
| But how much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a
SATA?
|
| Or maybe I should simply buy another SATA hard disk and
put
| all my data (e.g. .PST file and large websites etc) on
it..
| Maybe I could get a SATA disk with a huge amount of
CACHE??
|
| I have a budget of about GBP250 to 350.
|
| - Any suggestions? And any idea how much FASTER each of
| the options would be likely to make things run in practice
overall...?
|
| - Any thoughts?
|
|
| Ship
| Shiperton Henethe
|

 

[kony]

Given that you have 2GB of RAM, how much of that does task manager report as
being used? I find a good indicator is the page-file usage (PF Usage in task
manager), if this is well below the amount of physical ram then you won't be
swapping and adding more RAM won't help. If on the other hand the page-file
usage approaches 2GB or goes above then either look into whether your pc can
take more RAM (most can't, although XP will support up to 4GB) and whether
you can move your page file to another disk.

The goal is not to have pagefile usage below that of
physical ram, the goal is to have the least pagefile usage
possible no matter how much ram.

The more significant comparison for determining if there is
enough memory is:

1) Aggressively use the system, worse case of use with as
many apps, large jobs, etc, as the system will ever see
(often enough that one wants to spend the $ on memory to
combat this use).

2) Next open Task Manager and compare the "Commit Charge",
"Peak" value to the "Physical Memory", "Total" value. The
Peak should always be lower than the Total, by even a few
hundred MB more if you want enough free memory for a
persistent filecache (greatly reducing dependence on HDD
speed for subsequent access to HDD). If working with very
large static files, even more will a large filecache help
but beyond a certain point, some operating system tweaks may
be needed to increase the default size of the cache
supported by windows.
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/931/
In some cases this cache change can degrade performance
instead of improving it, if the apps use a lot of memory.
One can try it both ways and compare per their use of the
system.




You're not likely to benefit much from moving to SCSI for
Outlook and Dreamweaver use. As with anything they will
need enough memory (as mentioned above), high memory
throughput (fast memory bus on a modern platform) and fast
CPU. I don't know if Core 2 Duo architecture will benefit
these uses in particular, as much as some, but you might
seek benchmarks of these to determine what performance:$
improvement is acceptable.

 

[Brian Cryer]

The goal is not to have pagefile usage below that of
physical ram, the goal is to have the least pagefile usage
possible no matter how much ram.
Agreed.

The more significant comparison for determining if there is
enough memory is:

1) Aggressively use the system, worse case of use with as
many apps, large jobs, etc, as the system will ever see
(often enough that one wants to spend the $ on memory to
combat this use).

2) Next open Task Manager and compare the "Commit Charge",
"Peak" value to the "Physical Memory", "Total" value. The
Peak should always be lower than the Total, by even a few
hundred MB more if you want enough free memory for a
persistent filecache (greatly reducing dependence on HDD
speed for subsequent access to HDD). If working with very
large static files, even more will a large filecache help
but beyond a certain point, some operating system tweaks may
be needed to increase the default size of the cache
supported by windows.
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/931/
In some cases this cache change can degrade performance
instead of improving it, if the apps use a lot of memory.
One can try it both ways and compare per their use of the
system.

Agreed. Mine was but a simple rule-of-thumb.

 

[Brian Cryer]

There are a lot of hacks that will affect system performance just by
tweaking the software.

These include turning off unneeded background
services, optimizing the GUI for speed, hacking registry to remove DLLs
from cache memory, defragging.

Defragging! Whilst (personally) I think this is often a complete waste of
time, if the disk is badly fragmented (i.e. probably mostly full and hasn't
been defragmented for a couple of years) then it may be worth defragging it.

My reply isn't to give the merits or demerits over defragging, its just that
"defragging" triggered another thing to consider ... fire up Event Viewer
and take a look in the System log. If there are any disk problems (bad
sector, dodgy controller etc) then these will be reported there. Whilst a
disk problem will often manifest itself with an error, if the system can
read from the disk but requires many retries then this will cripple
performance and the only place it will be reported on is in the system event
log. Its unlikely there are any disk problems, but worth a quick look just
incase.

 

[meow2222]

Hi

I need some advice - how can I make my PC go faster!

e.g. How much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a SATA?

MAIN APPLICATIONS I USE:
DreamWeaver 8 (huge websites),
Outlook2003 (1+GB .PST files etc)
O/S: WindowsXP Pro (SP2),


MY EXISTING COMPUTER:

Processor: 3.2Hz Intel Pentium 4 -
RAM: 2GB
Disk: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA

I have a budget of about GBP250 to 350.

- Any suggestions? And any idea how much FASTER each of
the options would be likely to make things run in practice overall...?

My first aproach would be to look at the software, as your HW is
excellent in every respect except HDD speed, which is decent but could
be quicker. PCs often run all sorts of junk that doesnt need to be
running, I'd first use Autoruns to see what it runs and untick anything
not wanted and not needed. Then look at your apps, theyre not all sleek
efficient products, and much of what youre doing could be done on much
faster bits of software.

Also for when youre only needing to use one app, Winsolo can boost
performance a fair bit.

If you want faster I/O an IDE RAID controller and 2nd 10,000rpm hdd
could about double your hdd speed, depending on settings. In fact for
that money you could put 2 or 3 HDDs on the raid card. But really
anything slowing down a machine like that is a software issue.


NT

 

[JAD]

Hi

I need some advice - how can I make my PC go faster!

e.g. How much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a SATA?

MAIN APPLICATIONS I USE:
DreamWeaver 8 (huge websites),
Outlook2003 (1+GB .PST files etc)
O/S: WindowsXP Pro (SP2),


MY EXISTING COMPUTER:

Processor: 3.2Hz Intel Pentium 4 -
RAM: 2GB
Disk: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA

PROCESSOR: Intel Pentium 4 based system
MOTHERBOARD: Intel Pentium 4 D945GNTLR system board
Integrated Intel GMA950 graphics
*Intel High definition audio
*Intel 10/100 LAN*8USB 2.0
*4 conventional PCI *2 PCI Express x1 *1 PCI
Express x16 *1 Serial*1 Parallel
*4 Serial ATA interfaces
*1 Parallel ATA IDE interface with UDMA33,
ATA-66/100
*PS/2 Keyboard port *Mouse port
*Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz Processor 775 chipset 800FSB
2Mb cache
RAM: 2Gb 533 DDR2 memory
GRAPHICS CARD: Matrox Millenium P650 PCle 128 - 128Mb Dual DVI/VGA PCI
Express X16 - s/n: KEW37452
CASE: ATX Midi tower with 300W 12V PSU
DISK: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA hard drive
OPTICAL: DVD RW dual layer +&- drive
FLOPPY: 1.44mb 3.5" Floppy disk drive
O/S: Microsoft Windows XP Pro Oem

Main applications: WindowsXP Pro (SP2), DreamWeaver 8, Outlook2003

dreamweaver? is a resourse hog? not any version I use or have used.
Dreamweaver is usually slowed down by your connection to the web when
updating your work. Unless your opening 4 programs along with it, then
memory will come into play. Now open INDESIGN2+ holy crapin resourse hog.

OUTLOOK????!!!! can't stand that bloated POS mail suite, That runs slow on
purpose i think. I know of NOTHING that will speed that up (except adding an
'express' to the end of the name.

This is a matter of an individuals meaning of 'slow', try using a PIII with
64 megs of ram while using outlook, then go back to the P4, things will be
lighting fast after that.

I WAS thinking of replacing the processor with a DUAL-CORE chip.
But I have been largely talked out of it.
Looking the WindowsXP "Task Manager" Performance monitor
it seems that for most of the time the processor is barely being
used - it's mainly DISK ACCESS that is so slow.

what Harddrives are you using? Was this a clean install of XP or upgraded
over something else?

The WORST applications for slowing up my PC seem to be
Outlook2003 and Dreamweaver. (I have already done what
I can to shrink the files that they are using...)

there is something wrong with your setup.....dreamweaver is nothing to
sweat the system- outlook///well no comment.
My html machine is a P4B266 - P4 1.6 -with a gig of ram -3 x7200 WD 80gig
harddrives, a shrimp of a machine.
Dreamweaver-photoshop7-fireworks-illustrator10 all open at the same time,
and it doesn't even make it strain.

SCSI?
Should I change or add another hard disk?
If so how much faster would a SCSI hard disk be?
My hardware supplier says that a "decent" SCSI controller
would set me back about GBP 250 - just for the controller!
But how much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a SATA?

Or maybe I should simply buy another SATA hard disk and put
all my data (e.g. .PST file and large websites etc) on it..
Maybe I could get a SATA disk with a huge amount of CACHE??

I have a budget of about GBP250 to 350.

- Any suggestions? And any idea how much FASTER each of
the options would be likely to make things run in practice overall...?

- Any thoughts?


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

 

[Toby Inkster]

Looking the WindowsXP "Task Manager" Performance monitor
it seems that for most of the time the processor is barely being
used - it's mainly DISK ACCESS that is so slow.

Double your physical memory and disable virtual memory completely. That
tends to give you a pretty good speed boost -- will probably only cost you
about £100.

 

[Mike Walsh]

SCSI drives have very good performance. When I bought two 160 GB 7200 RPM IDE drives for my home PC I had planned to retire my old SCSI drives but decided to keep my 10,000 RPM 9 GB drive for page file and temp files when I found that the random access read rate (reading 64 KB data blocks) is 20% faster than the IDE drives.
The fastest drives available are 15,000 RPM SCSI drives in RAID 1, but higher density IDE drives have excellent sequential read rates (good for reading very large files). You can get good performance without RAID if you use separate drives for OS, data, page file, and depending on the application, temp files.

Hi

I need some advice - how can I make my PC go faster!

e.g. How much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a SATA?

MAIN APPLICATIONS I USE:
DreamWeaver 8 (huge websites),
Outlook2003 (1+GB .PST files etc)
O/S: WindowsXP Pro (SP2),

MY EXISTING COMPUTER:

Processor: 3.2Hz Intel Pentium 4 -
RAM: 2GB
Disk: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA

PROCESSOR: Intel Pentium 4 based system
MOTHERBOARD: Intel Pentium 4 D945GNTLR system board
Integrated Intel GMA950 graphics
*Intel High definition audio
*Intel 10/100 LAN*8USB 2.0
*4 conventional PCI *2 PCI Express x1 *1 PCI
Express x16 *1 Serial*1 Parallel
*4 Serial ATA interfaces
*1 Parallel ATA IDE interface with UDMA33,
ATA-66/100
*PS/2 Keyboard port *Mouse port
*Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz Processor 775 chipset 800FSB
2Mb cache
RAM: 2Gb 533 DDR2 memory
GRAPHICS CARD: Matrox Millenium P650 PCle 128 - 128Mb Dual DVI/VGA PCI
Express X16 - s/n: KEW37452
CASE: ATX Midi tower with 300W 12V PSU
DISK: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA hard drive
OPTICAL: DVD RW dual layer +&- drive
FLOPPY: 1.44mb 3.5" Floppy disk drive
O/S: Microsoft Windows XP Pro Oem

Main applications: WindowsXP Pro (SP2), DreamWeaver 8, Outlook2003

I WAS thinking of replacing the processor with a DUAL-CORE chip.
But I have been largely talked out of it.
Looking the WindowsXP "Task Manager" Performance monitor
it seems that for most of the time the processor is barely being
used - it's mainly DISK ACCESS that is so slow.

The WORST applications for slowing up my PC seem to be
Outlook2003 and Dreamweaver. (I have already done what
I can to shrink the files that they are using...)

SCSI?
Should I change or add another hard disk?
If so how much faster would a SCSI hard disk be?
My hardware supplier says that a "decent" SCSI controller
would set me back about GBP 250 - just for the controller!
But how much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a SATA?

Or maybe I should simply buy another SATA hard disk and put
all my data (e.g. .PST file and large websites etc) on it..
Maybe I could get a SATA disk with a huge amount of CACHE??

I have a budget of about GBP250 to 350.

- Any suggestions? And any idea how much FASTER each of
the options would be likely to make things run in practice overall...?

- Any thoughts?

Ship
Shiperton Henethe

 

[hdrdtd]

I agree that SCSI drives can be quite a bit 'faster', but they do cost more
than your typical ATA or SATA drives, plus you have to factor in the cost of
a good SCSI controller.

At work, we do physical testing of automobiles and automobile parts, and we
take extensive digital photos of the parts as they are being tested.

for some time now, the main PC we use for Digital photo procesing was a
custome PC built using dual P3 550Mhz CPU's 1gig of ram, and several SCSI
HD's running mainly Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and processing 16meg TIF files.

We decided it was time to build a newer PC, and to that end we built a PC
using a single 3.2Ghz P4, 2gig of ram, a 36gig raptor to boot to and a
320gig WD drive for storage.

Outr photographer tried the new system for a couple of weeks, then proceeded
to revert back to the older system with dual 550Mhz CPU's and the SCSI
drives.

SCSI drives have very good performance. When I bought two 160 GB 7200 RPM
IDE drives for my home PC I had planned to retire my old SCSI drives but
decided to keep my 10,000 RPM 9 GB drive for page file and temp files when
I found that the random access read rate (reading 64 KB data blocks) is
20% faster than the IDE drives.
The fastest drives available are 15,000 RPM SCSI drives in RAID 1, but
higher density IDE drives have excellent sequential read rates (good for
reading very large files). You can get good performance without RAID if
you use separate drives for OS, data, page file, and depending on the
application, temp files.

Hi

I need some advice - how can I make my PC go faster!

e.g. How much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a SATA?

MAIN APPLICATIONS I USE:
DreamWeaver 8 (huge websites),
Outlook2003 (1+GB .PST files etc)
O/S: WindowsXP Pro (SP2),

MY EXISTING COMPUTER:

Processor: 3.2Hz Intel Pentium 4 -
RAM: 2GB
Disk: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA

PROCESSOR: Intel Pentium 4 based system
MOTHERBOARD: Intel Pentium 4 D945GNTLR system board
Integrated Intel GMA950 graphics
*Intel High definition audio
*Intel 10/100 LAN*8USB 2.0
*4 conventional PCI *2 PCI Express x1 *1 PCI
Express x16 *1 Serial*1 Parallel
*4 Serial ATA interfaces
*1 Parallel ATA IDE interface with UDMA33,
ATA-66/100
*PS/2 Keyboard port *Mouse port
*Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz Processor 775 chipset 800FSB
2Mb cache
RAM: 2Gb 533 DDR2 memory
GRAPHICS CARD: Matrox Millenium P650 PCle 128 - 128Mb Dual DVI/VGA PCI
Express X16 - s/n: KEW37452
CASE: ATX Midi tower with 300W 12V PSU
DISK: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA hard drive
OPTICAL: DVD RW dual layer +&- drive
FLOPPY: 1.44mb 3.5" Floppy disk drive
O/S: Microsoft Windows XP Pro Oem

Main applications: WindowsXP Pro (SP2), DreamWeaver 8, Outlook2003

I WAS thinking of replacing the processor with a DUAL-CORE chip.
But I have been largely talked out of it.
Looking the WindowsXP "Task Manager" Performance monitor
it seems that for most of the time the processor is barely being
used - it's mainly DISK ACCESS that is so slow.

The WORST applications for slowing up my PC seem to be
Outlook2003 and Dreamweaver. (I have already done what
I can to shrink the files that they are using...)

SCSI?
Should I change or add another hard disk?
If so how much faster would a SCSI hard disk be?
My hardware supplier says that a "decent" SCSI controller
would set me back about GBP 250 - just for the controller!
But how much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a SATA?

Or maybe I should simply buy another SATA hard disk and put
all my data (e.g. .PST file and large websites etc) on it..
Maybe I could get a SATA disk with a huge amount of CACHE??

I have a budget of about GBP250 to 350.

- Any suggestions? And any idea how much FASTER each of
the options would be likely to make things run in practice overall...?

- Any thoughts?

Ship
Shiperton Henethe

 

[DaveW]

The best improvement you could probably make for that money is to get a
Western Digital "Raptor" harddrive that runs at 10,000 rpm and, in the case
of the 150 GB Raptor, it has a 16 MB cache. They sell in the U.S. for $299.

 

[Senex]

ship rattled this off his keyboard on 9/22/2006 :

Hi

I need some advice - how can I make my PC go faster!

e.g. How much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a SATA?

MAIN APPLICATIONS I USE:
DreamWeaver 8 (huge websites),
Outlook2003 (1+GB .PST files etc)
O/S: WindowsXP Pro (SP2),


MY EXISTING COMPUTER:

Processor: 3.2Hz Intel Pentium 4 -
RAM: 2GB
Disk: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA

PROCESSOR: Intel Pentium 4 based system
MOTHERBOARD: Intel Pentium 4 D945GNTLR system board
Integrated Intel GMA950 graphics
*Intel High definition audio
*Intel 10/100 LAN*8USB 2.0
*4 conventional PCI *2 PCI Express x1 *1 PCI
Express x16 *1 Serial*1 Parallel
*4 Serial ATA interfaces
*1 Parallel ATA IDE interface with UDMA33,
ATA-66/100
*PS/2 Keyboard port *Mouse port
*Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz Processor 775 chipset 800FSB
2Mb cache
RAM: 2Gb 533 DDR2 memory
GRAPHICS CARD: Matrox Millenium P650 PCle 128 - 128Mb Dual DVI/VGA PCI
Express X16 - s/n: KEW37452
CASE: ATX Midi tower with 300W 12V PSU
DISK: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA hard drive
OPTICAL: DVD RW dual layer +&- drive
FLOPPY: 1.44mb 3.5" Floppy disk drive
O/S: Microsoft Windows XP Pro Oem

Main applications: WindowsXP Pro (SP2), DreamWeaver 8, Outlook2003


I WAS thinking of replacing the processor with a DUAL-CORE chip.
But I have been largely talked out of it.
Looking the WindowsXP "Task Manager" Performance monitor
it seems that for most of the time the processor is barely being
used - it's mainly DISK ACCESS that is so slow.

The WORST applications for slowing up my PC seem to be
Outlook2003 and Dreamweaver. (I have already done what
I can to shrink the files that they are using...)

SCSI?
Should I change or add another hard disk?
If so how much faster would a SCSI hard disk be?
My hardware supplier says that a "decent" SCSI controller
would set me back about GBP 250 - just for the controller!
But how much faster is a SCSI hard disk compared to a SATA?

Or maybe I should simply buy another SATA hard disk and put
all my data (e.g. .PST file and large websites etc) on it..
Maybe I could get a SATA disk with a huge amount of CACHE??

I have a budget of about GBP250 to 350.

- Any suggestions? And any idea how much FASTER each of
the options would be likely to make things run in practice overall...?

- Any thoughts?


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

4 Goodyears and a V8 B-)

 

[Mike Walsh]

DOH!!!

That should be RAID 0 (stripe) for high performance.

 

[SEOwebMarket.com]

I need some advice - how can I make my PC go faster!

MAIN APPLICATIONS I USE:
DreamWeaver 8 (huge websites),
Outlook2003 (1+GB .PST files etc)
O/S: WindowsXP Pro (SP2),

I WAS thinking of replacing the processor with a DUAL-CORE chip.

Easy, get a mac. You're wasting your time with windows.

 

[Jerry Stuckle]

Hi

I need some advice - how can I make my PC go faster!

<snip>

Load Linux.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
(e-mail address removed)
==================

 

[ship]

Double your physical memory and disable virtual memory completely. That
tends to give you a pretty good speed boost -- will probably only cost you
about £100.

This sounds pretty radical!
Anyone else agree...?

I'll have to see how my memory is configured to see how hard that will
be
to do...

Ship

 

[ship]

The memory in your machine is very slow (533). Maybe replace that with
800mhz or 1066mhz if your machine can take it.

It looks to me like the fastest RAM it can handle is 667

See:
http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d945gnt/Four 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM DIMM sockets
Support for DDR2 667, DDR2 533, or DDR2 400 MHz DIMMs
Support for up to 4 GB of system memory

DW is slow whatever machine you have. I find it best to break up large
sites in it into smaller sub sites; makes DW run a lot faster when it
has to scan smaller numbers of files.

The trouble is that synchronising becomes hard that way.
e.g. with Beyond Compare if we try and synch the root directory
all the 50 or so dead directories get listed as well!
And I cant find any way to get either Beyond Compare 2
(nor DW8 come to that matter) to completely ignore a
specified list of directories.

Move the Windows Swap file to a dedicated high speed disk. That makes a
lot of difference.

Good idea (I suppose).
But... where does this stop a separate disk for each of
-Windows
-My applications
-My data
-the Windows Swap file

Remember my budget is only GBP 200 - GBP300 or so...

Plus last time I tried this (about 3 years ago) although the theory was
good
in practice it made almost no difference!!

Make sure your Windows/Application disk is seperate from your file
store disk, and make sure all disks are fully defragmented.

I defrag regularly


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

 

[ship]

I WAS thinking of replacing the processor with a DUAL-CORE chip.

If you are sure that its the disk you are waiting on (and a simple way of
telling this is how long are you waiting when the disk light is on), then a
faster disk will help. The disk spindle speed is a good indication of the
overall disk speed (although other factors do come in, such as number of
platters). Your disk is 7200rpm. Almost every disk in a pc these days is
7200rpm, but if you hunt around you might be able to find a faster one - but
remember that a 10,000rpm disk will only give (on paper) just short of 40%
speed increase, the reality is probably that unless you are waiting for a
LONG time then you are not likely to notice much of an improvement.

Yes I'm pretty sure it's the *disk* that's hold things up simply
because
the little red light on the hardware box showing disk I/O is almost
permanently on, on these occassions. Whereas the processor is
barely a few % of usage...


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

P.S. What seems to have helped quite a lot is to massively archive
off stuff from my main PST file. So that I only have a few days of
email
on it. And I keep my (1st level of) archive file open all the time.

It seems that Outlook spends a lot of time trying to work out where to
put new emails if/when the PST file that it is arriving at is too
large!

HOWEVER this doesnt stop the ultra-small PST file from throwing errors
according to SCANPST.EXE after new emails arrive.(sigh!)

I would just start with a new PST file - but I have about 60 rules set
up
and if I have to rebuilt all those rules for a new PST file - so that
they know
which directory to land new emails in, then this will take bl**dy hours
of
my time!

[EOM]