Upgrading system

[roansh]

Before I start with my question, My current desktop's hardware
configuration is :

Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo, E7200 (2.53 GHz)
RAM : 1 GB & 667 MHz
Motherboard : Intel DG31GL, with integrated graphics.

I want to upgrade its RAM to 4GB (1x2GB + 1x2GB), 800MHz.
I just want to know, if I upgrade to 4GB memory, will my Computer run
Virtual machine(s) smoothly? I am using Arch linux right now, and I
can run Windows XP in VMware Player. It doesn't 'play' well, though.
I want to run 2 to 3 guest operating systems simultaneously. So, would
it be enough (4GB of RAM and the rest of the configuration, unchanged)
to make it possible?

And if it is not, can overclocking CPU make significant change?

 

[Jan Alter]

Before I start with my question, My current desktop's hardware
configuration is :

Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo, E7200 (2.53 GHz)
RAM : 1 GB & 667 MHz
Motherboard : Intel DG31GL, with integrated graphics.

I want to upgrade its RAM to 4GB (1x2GB + 1x2GB), 800MHz.
I just want to know, if I upgrade to 4GB memory, will my Computer run
Virtual machine(s) smoothly? I am using Arch linux right now, and I
can run Windows XP in VMware Player. It doesn't 'play' well, though.
I want to run 2 to 3 guest operating systems simultaneously. So, would
it be enough (4GB of RAM and the rest of the configuration, unchanged)
to make it possible?

And if it is not, can overclocking CPU make significant change?

Hi,

VMware allows you to adjust memory sharing to guest operating systems, so it
sounds very plausible that upping your memory to 4 GB would help.
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/ws_performance_mem_host.html

However, be aware that if you're running a 32 bit OS, only about 3.6 Gb will
be addressed, not the full 4 Gb as installed. You already have a very decent
CPU to run XP so I wouldn't think that overclocking would give you that much
more potential. However, running two or three guest OS's simultaneously
would dig into your memory very quickly and my guess is that XP would run
exactly the same or even worse if you actually had all 3 OSs along with your
host OS running at once.

 

[Paul]

Before I start with my question, My current desktop's hardware
configuration is :

Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo, E7200 (2.53 GHz)
RAM : 1 GB & 667 MHz
Motherboard : Intel DG31GL, with integrated graphics.

I want to upgrade its RAM to 4GB (1x2GB + 1x2GB), 800MHz.
I just want to know, if I upgrade to 4GB memory, will my Computer run
Virtual machine(s) smoothly? I am using Arch linux right now, and I
can run Windows XP in VMware Player. It doesn't 'play' well, though.
I want to run 2 to 3 guest operating systems simultaneously. So, would
it be enough (4GB of RAM and the rest of the configuration, unchanged)
to make it possible?

And if it is not, can overclocking CPU make significant change?

I have a Core2 Duo E8400 (3GHz), 4GB RAM, and have run three OSes
in VPC2007 at the same time (Win98, Win2K, Ubuntu). You can't use
all the memory with a 32 bit host OS (my host is WinXP). I can assign
1GB to Ubuntu, 256MB to Win98, and perhaps 1GB to Win2K. The Win98 VM
runs file sharing, and allows transferring files to the host desktop
(as the VPC2007 add-in doesn't exist for Ubuntu, so you have to transfer
from Ubuntu to Win98 with file sharing, then Win98 to host with drag-n-drop).

So yes, it works.

But with any VM environment, there can always be reasons for non-smooth
operation. In VPC2007, the cause is related to timer issues - having
a timer for a Linux guest with high precision. I can't really play video
in VMs and expect good results. Playing a video in the host directly
is fine. Pulseaudio runs at RT priority, and I don't think an emulated
environment can support real time operation well. The resulting sound
subsystem is a disaster. If I use a distro from years ago, based on
ALSA sound, that works OK. ALSA doesn't have the same RT requirement that
Pulseaudio does.

In the VPC2007 environment, the guest receives "one core only" for computing.
And "one core only" is shared by all three guest OSes. Whereas, on
a host program such as VirtualBox, all cores can be enabled within a guest.
I don't know the characteristics of VMWare, so can't tell you what to
expect there. The single core limitation of VPC2007 is a bit annoying.

It's the properties of the emulation that matter, and which of those
properties are important to the guest OS. Linux has different expectations
than WinXP. And no program appears to give really good access to video
card acceleration features. Virtualbox has a tick box to enable
said features, but I couldn't see evidence it was working.

Since you only have 1GB, I'd run the WinXP VM at 512MB, and then
test. If it has issues, try to analyze the root cause of the issues.
Don't run a test case in the WinXP guest, which is memory
intensive - WinXP at 512MB only has room to have about three
applications open at a time. Try to run things which accentuate
the performance issues you think are present. It's possible that
more memory won't help, if the issue is one caused by the nature
of the completeness of the emulation. On VPC2007, they only did
enough emulation to make Windows OSes run well, and a Linux guest
is left wanting. (And the Linux developers don't really care whether
Linux runs well in VPC2007 )

Paul

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Before I start with my question, My current desktop's hardware
configuration is :

Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo, E7200 (2.53 GHz)
RAM : 1 GB & 667 MHz
Motherboard : Intel DG31GL, with integrated graphics.

I want to upgrade its RAM to 4GB (1x2GB + 1x2GB), 800MHz.
I just want to know, if I upgrade to 4GB memory, will my Computer run
Virtual machine(s) smoothly? I am using Arch linux right now, and I
can run Windows XP in VMware Player. It doesn't 'play' well, though.
I want to run 2 to 3 guest operating systems simultaneously. So, would
it be enough (4GB of RAM and the rest of the configuration, unchanged)
to make it possible?

And if it is not, can overclocking CPU make significant change?

I've run a couple of VMs at once on a 4gb XP machine. Both were
rather limited in memory, though, and it did load the system
substantially.

Once I upgraded to a 64-bit chip with 24gb on the board the VMs
behaved a lot better and the system didn't go useless when the AV
decided to play with a big file. Right now I have two VMs open, both
running XP. The only thing substantial other than that that's running
is Visual Studio 2010. I'm showing 10gb used.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't know the characteristics of VMWare, so can't tell you what to
expect there. The single core limitation of VPC2007 is a bit annoying.

VMWare user here--I can select how much memory and how many cores to
make available to each virtual machine. The CPU utilization on the
main machine shows that the virtual instances aren't hogging the cores
they are allocated.

 

[Flasherly]

And if it is not, can overclocking CPU make significant change?

Overclocking, not really. Changes granularity, akin to the player,
but the "feel" of the CPU remains tied to the same plot on the same
mooie. Getting out of CPU funk may involve a factor of two or x4
generations of upgrades. Besides, speed being largely now contained
within known limits to the universe, unless a Black Hole for CPUs is
sometime soon discovered, it'll be more a chance allied in updated
programming predictive analysis and code branch shift decisions
favoring cores;- a lion's share which though goes into a presently
sedentary gaming market, is notoriously difficult to implement in the
more pragmatic sense.

 

[Ting Hsu]

I want to upgrade its RAM to 4GB (1x2GB + 1x2GB), 800MHz.

Upgrade to 4gb today.

Win XP eats up more memory than you'd expect. One of the old XP boxes
at work, with nothing running, consumes about 1gb of ram. Load Firefox
plus Excel, and you'll easily eat up 1.5gb of ram.

If you don't have the physical memory, the OS will start to use the
hard drive as swap space for virtual memory, which will slow down your
system dramatically.

 

[Flasherly]

Upgrade to 4gb today.

Win XP eats up more memory than you'd expect. One of the old XP boxes
at work, with nothing running, consumes about 1gb of ram. Load Firefox
plus Excel, and you'll easily eat up 1.5gb of ram.

If you don't have the physical memory, the OS will start to use the
hard drive as swap space for virtual memory, which will slow down your
system dramatically.

For virtual machines, I'd imagine. Clean, squeaky clean. With XP
alone, depending, that needn't be the case. Like my old FFox that's
got a big gapping hole in runaway, errant programming -- a memory leak
-- there are various levels of patching kludge. Alternatives, sort of
the "machines" standpoint in The Matrix for alternative subsistence
without human compromise. I've a couple of extensions -- old
extensions FFox has periodically, consistently abandoned with each
upgrade up to its present predicament -- which more successfully than
not will allow me to purposefully crash the session for restoration
and reclamation of memory;- XP, as I run it, isn't much better, as I
take a different approach and entirely overwrite it at a binary,
sector-to-sector restoration. At half the memory, 2G, a minor
appreciation over at least 1G I was running, bearing in mind program
revision dates or what is acceptable to intent;- a good many program
updates I do reject in favor of for their older counterpart. GOOGLE,
btw, of late is telling me to go away, that they don't want me running
through their USENET with my version of FIREFOX;- interesting, at
times, what then attempts to pass through when I turn back on
FireWalls and filters blocking entire corporate entities and
anacronyms of affiliation intended to bind respective countries.

 

[DK]

Upgrade to 4gb today.

Win XP eats up more memory than you'd expect. One of the old XP boxes
at work, with nothing running, consumes about 1gb of ram.

That means that it loads a lot of crap. My XP with nothing loaded
(Firewall service starts with Windows) uses only 174 MB. I hardly
ever get above 1 GB memory use.

DK

 

[Paul]

That means that it loads a lot of crap. My XP with nothing loaded
(Firewall service starts with Windows) uses only 174 MB. I hardly
ever get above 1 GB memory use.

DK

Mine's similar to yours. Maybe around 200MB at startup. Only a bit
more than my old Win2K install.

What you also tend to notice, is as the available memory drops, the
"appetite" of the OS drops a bit too. So someone with a 512MB WinXP
machine will probably not see the 200MB mine uses. It should be
a lesser number. Maybe someone with a small machine out there can
report in with their numbers, for a comparison. Or, if no one
has a 512MB machine result to offer, it should also be possible
to edit boot.ini and add something to make the OS think there
isn't as much free memory.

Paul