base score lower than expected

[Paul Pedersen]

I'm setting up a new computer for a friend. It has a Sempron 3200 running at
1.8GHz and 512 GB RAM (shared with the video, I think) with Vista Home Basic
(bottom of the line, I know).

The processor score is 3.7, not great but acceptable. But the RAM score is
only 2.0. Why is it so low? It's all new equipment from a computer
superstore. I don't care about graphics for games, because there will be no
games on this computer. But apparently something about the RAM is cutting
overall performance by 46%!

Is half a gig of ram considered inadequate these days? What can I do to
speed up this thing?

 

[Richard G. Harper]

512mb of RAM shared between the system and the video is pretty much
inadequate for any kind of reasonable Vista experience.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm

 

[KristleBawl]

My 512MB of RAM only scores 2.0 also.

Vista Home Basic runs fine on that, but runs better with 2GB of RAM.

Upgrading the hardware to improve the score will also make the computer
better able to handle any future upgrade to other versions of Vista.

KB

 

[Andrew McLaren]

Hi Paul,

Yes, incredible as it may seem (especially to those of us who remember
multi-user systems running on 128k of memory), 512MB is pretty much the
lower edge of acceptable, for Vista. Web browsing, email and office apps
will all run fine in 512MB but you won't see blazing performance. A score of
2.0 sounds about right to me.

It can also be affected by the speed of your memory - faster memeory will
get a higher score. 512MB of PC5300 memory will get a higher score than if
you had 512MB of PC2100 memory. Also the speed of the memory bus (ie,
Front-side Buss or FSB) - a machine with a 1066MHz FSB will get a higher
memory score than a machine with a 533MHz FSB, becuse the performance test
can perform more read-and-write memory operations per second.

The Sempron is a "budget" processor, so is usually found in machines that
are assembled with a goal of economy rather thanr blazing performance. For
the common uses I mentioned, I suspect your machine will run just fine, you
won't be frustrated by it. But it won't be a speed-demon.

Just for comparison, my deskktop box has 3GB of PC4200 RAM, and gets a
memory score of 5.4 (and overall score 5.2). I'm usually running a couple of
Virtual PCs, and compiling in Visual Studio - both memory-intensive
activities, so the extra memory performance helps. It's wild overkill, for
email and using Word When I first installed Vista I had an overall score
of 2.4 - I had a pretty basic video card which was anomolously low-scoring.
I replaced the video card with a (still pretty moddest) 7900GS video card
and the score leapt to 5.9!

Hope this helps,
Andrew

 

[Paul Pedersen]

Thanks to all for the replies.

Yes, at one time 128kB was a lot. I started programming on a Commodore 64,
and people said, "What will you do with all that memory? And it has color
too!"

This is not a development machine, but it will be used for small to moderate
sized desktop publishing tasks, plus other desktop apps, while also acting
as a low-moderate volume file server to three or four other machines. So
performance is a concern.

I won't be able to change the motherboard or processor, and overclocking is
not really something I want to risk on a business computer.

How much improvement can I expect to see by just increasing the amount of
RAM?

Thanks.

 

[Andrew McLaren]

This is not a development machine, but it will be used for small to
moderate sized desktop publishing tasks, plus other desktop apps, while
also acting as a low-moderate volume file server to three or four other
machines. So performance is a concern.

Well it's a rule-of-thumb guide, but if desktop publishing includes apps
like Adobe InDesign, or similar, I'd definitely recommend you get at least
1GB. And if you want to run a file server as well, start thinking in terms
of 2GB. Vista will efficiently utilise any spare memory as cache, so it
won't go to waste; ie, you can't have "too much" memory.

512MB can be adequate for a single user running simple desktop apps - but
not much more.

You'll need to examine your motherboard (or computer's manual) to see how
many memory slots it has, and what slots are already occupied. Ideally you'd
add say, 2 x 1GB chips to your existing 512MB, for a total of 2.5GB - rather
than have to throw the 512 MB away, and replace it with a pair of 1GB chips
for total 2GB.

Hard to redict what score you'll get. But many users report significant
boost in performance by going from 512MB to 1GB - it takes Vista out of the
"packed in tight" range, into "breathing freely".

Cheers,
Andrew

 

[Guest]

Yes .5GB is considered bare minimum for VISTA. It works okay with 1GB but 2Gb
seems to be the sweet spot.

 

[Andrew McLaren]

I just noticed, you're also sharing system memory with the video adaptor. In
that case, you'll almost certainly need more memory! Get as much as you can
afford.

 

[Paul Pedersen]

Thanks to all.

I think I'll replace the existing 512MB PC5300 with a 2GB PC6400. That will
still leave room for future expansion.

 

[Qu0ll]

Just for comparison, my deskktop box has 3GB of PC4200 RAM, and gets a
memory score of 5.4 (and overall score 5.2). I'm usually running a couple
of Virtual PCs, and compiling in Visual Studio - both memory-intensive
activities, so the extra memory performance helps. It's wild overkill, for
email and using Word When I first installed Vista I had an overall
score of 2.4 - I had a pretty basic video card which was anomolously
low-scoring. > I replaced the video card with a (still pretty moddest)
7900GS video card and the score leapt to 5.9!

My Vista machine scores only 4.7 for the Experience Index even though it is
extremely powerful with dual Xeons due to the latency of the FB-DIMMS. The
memory score is 4.7 whereas all other scores are 5.9. I don't really
understand why Vista simply uses the lowest the score to determine to
overall index as 4.7 is not indicative of this machine's overall
capabilities. Surely some kind of weighted average would be more
representative.

--
And loving it,

-Q
_________________________________________________
(e-mail address removed)
(Replace the "SixFour" with numbers to email me)

 

[Tim]

Hello, i thought i'd pop into this discussion

My laptop is a new HP Pavillion DV2200.
It has 2gbs of RAM at 800mhz
160 gig HDD
AMD Turion 64 X2, 200mhz, 2 core processor


I use my laptop effectively for things like
Jasc PSP
Media Center
Sonic Sound Fordery
And many other high memory usage programs
(they use space for "undo" functions)

if you are thinking of using a PC for file storage/server, i recommend
adding 2 gigs of RAM, at the correct timing, and adding more virtual memory.
With more RAM/Virtual memory, you will be able to use the PC for your
desktop apps, and for file storage.


(e-mail address removed)

 

[Paul Pedersen]

My guess is that Windows reports the "weakest link" in the chain of speed,
i.e., the bottleneck, the item to upgrade first to increase overall speed.

 

[Andrew McLaren]

My guess is that Windows reports the "weakest link" in the chain of speed,
i.e., the bottleneck, the item to upgrade first to increase overall speed.

Yes, that's exactly correct!

The overall score will be heavily skewed by the lowest scoring component. So
if you have a blitzing, quad-proc "11.0" CPU but 256MB of RAM, you'll still
only get a 1.5 score. This is consistent with standard performance planning
calculations, even for very large systems such as mainframes and webservers.
The goal is to identify bottlenecks which unreasonably retard the whole
system.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I'm setting up a new computer for a friend. It has a Sempron 3200 running at
1.8GHz and 512 GB RAM (shared with the video, I think) with Vista Home Basic
(bottom of the line, I know).

The processor score is 3.7, not great but acceptable. But the RAM score is
only 2.0. Why is it so low? It's all new equipment from a computer
superstore. I don't care about graphics for games, because there will be no
games on this computer. But apparently something about the RAM is cutting
overall performance by 46%!

Is half a gig of ram considered inadequate these days? What can I do to
speed up this thing?

How much RAM you need for adequate performance, as always, depends on
what apps you run. However, 512MB is about the very bottom level at
which decent performance begins with Vista, if your apps are not at
all demanding.

Add to that the fact that you are sharing RAM with onboard video, and
your Vista performance is likely very poor. If I had onboard video
sharing system RAM, I would want to have at *least* 1MB of RAM, and
(depending on what apps are run) likely 2GB.

 

[Paul Pedersen]

Yes, that's exactly correct!

The overall score will be heavily skewed by the lowest scoring component.
So if you have a blitzing, quad-proc "11.0" CPU but 256MB of RAM, you'll
still only get a 1.5 score. This is consistent with standard performance
planning calculations, even for very large systems such as mainframes and
webservers. The goal is to identify bottlenecks which unreasonably retard
the whole system.

Cheers
Andrew

How much will a relatively low graphics score slow down the computer if a
low demand is placed on the graphics system?

 

[Andrew McLaren]

It depends on the application. An database server might be heavily disk I/O
intensive, for example, but only have a command line interface. The graphics
card will have almost no impact on its performance. Most computer games on
the other hand are extremely graphics-intensive, so they benefit from the
top-end, $900 video cards; but they might not use a lot of Disk I/O, so
having a SCSI-attached RAID 10 disk array won't boost their performance
much.

Vista's overall performance score is somewhat artifical, in that it assumes
a composite, typical workload for a desktop computer. It's still a good
rule-of-thumb measure; a better guide than what most people had before. But
it doesn't purport to be a fully-fledged, performance tuning consultant:
hey, those guys charge per hour

Most office applications, like Word and Excel are basically 2D graphics, so
having whizz-bang 3D graphics cards are of little direct benefit. Vista's 3D
Aero graphics provides some performance boost, even without specific 3D
features (pixel piplines etc), because DWM permits off-screen composition,
etc; which benefit any application. The amount of benefit is proportional to
the amount of graphics processing and IO the app needs to perform.

The video card would have no impact on your system's performance as a file
server. But if you want to run Photoshop or similar image processing
applications, these are very graphics intensive: so they will probably
benefit from a better graphics card. Desktop publishing will be slightly
less graphics intensive, but they would require more graphics grunt than
just running Word or email.

Systems with an integrated graphics processor (ie, on the motherboard, not a
separate card) and shared system memory, are generally designed to run basic
desktop applications - email, web browser, Word and Excel. It's just a
cost/benefit trade off. Given that your system has a Sempron processor,
512MB RAM, and shared video memory, it is in fact, a pretty low-end system
(although adequate for basic desktop tasks) - so I hope it was pretty cheap,
too. For the applications you describe, I personally would have gone for a
bit of a more grunty machine - 1 or 2GB RAM, Intel Core Duo 2 CPU, and a
dedicated graphics card. But if you're running a business, and counting the
pennies ...

If the machine has a spare PCI-E slot, you can drop in a better graphics
card any time in the future; you're not locked in.

By the way, the resource requirements you're seeing on Vista (1-2GB RAM,
etc) are pretty typical for all modern opertaing systems: Vista, Mac OS X,
Linux or Solaris. I have 2GB RAM in my Mac mini, and at least 1GB in all my
Linux boxes. There are some variations (some people argue Linux can run on
less powerful hardware), but overall, you're in the same boat with any OS.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[Paul Pedersen]

It depends on the application. An database server might be heavily disk
I/O intensive, for example, but only have a command line interface. The
graphics card will have almost no impact on its performance. Most
computer games on the other hand are extremely graphics-intensive, so they
benefit from the top-end, $900 video cards; but they might not use a lot
of Disk I/O, so having a SCSI-attached RAID 10 disk array won't boost
their performance much.

Vista's overall performance score is somewhat artifical, in that it
assumes a composite, typical workload for a desktop computer. It's still a
good rule-of-thumb measure; a better guide than what most people had
before. But it doesn't purport to be a fully-fledged, performance tuning
consultant: hey, those guys charge per hour

Most office applications, like Word and Excel are basically 2D graphics,
so having whizz-bang 3D graphics cards are of little direct benefit.
Vista's 3D Aero graphics provides some performance boost, even without
specific 3D features (pixel piplines etc), because DWM permits off-screen
composition, etc; which benefit any application. The amount of benefit is
proportional to the amount of graphics processing and IO the app needs to
perform.

The video card would have no impact on your system's performance as a file
server. But if you want to run Photoshop or similar image processing
applications, these are very graphics intensive: so they will probably
benefit from a better graphics card. Desktop publishing will be slightly
less graphics intensive, but they would require more graphics grunt than
just running Word or email.

Systems with an integrated graphics processor (ie, on the motherboard, not
a separate card) and shared system memory, are generally designed to run
basic desktop applications - email, web browser, Word and Excel. It's just
a cost/benefit trade off. Given that your system has a Sempron processor,
512MB RAM, and shared video memory, it is in fact, a pretty low-end
system (although adequate for basic desktop tasks) - so I hope it was
pretty cheap, too. For the applications you describe, I personally would
have gone for a bit of a more grunty machine - 1 or 2GB RAM, Intel Core
Duo 2 CPU, and a dedicated graphics card. But if you're running a
business, and counting the pennies ...

If the machine has a spare PCI-E slot, you can drop in a better graphics
card any time in the future; you're not locked in.

By the way, the resource requirements you're seeing on Vista (1-2GB RAM,
etc) are pretty typical for all modern opertaing systems: Vista, Mac OS X,
Linux or Solaris. I have 2GB RAM in my Mac mini, and at least 1GB in all
my Linux boxes. There are some variations (some people argue Linux can run
on less powerful hardware), but overall, you're in the same boat with any
OS.

Cheers
Andrew

Thanks for the help. The choice of machine was not mine, but my friend's.
Upgrading RAM to 2 GB should help. If his graphics performace is too slow,
we can get a card.

My XP Pro home machine has 1GB. I used to think that was a lot.

 

[Lang Murphy]

How much improvement can I expect to see by just increasing the amount of
RAM?

<snip>

Increasing the amount of RAM is not a "just" type of proposition. It's the
whole kit and kaboodle, so to speak.

Try that first. If issues are encountered with editing video, then try a
video card with more dedicated RAM. I've done video editing on this PC which
has a boatload of shared RAM with the system and it's worked fine. But I've
not pushed the edge of the envelope when it comes to video editing... so I
can't say for sure whether the system in question will benefit from a video
card with dedicated vid RAM. (And don't get me started on drivers... LOL!)

Good luck!

Lang