Best CPU to use with VS2005

[Rene]

Could someone please tell me if using one of the new dual-core CPUs will
speed up the process of compiling a program using Visual Studio 2005?

I have a solution that includes about 10 projects on it and it takes a long
time to compile. My biggest issue is that I am the kind of person that
likes to compile the project very often to make sure that everything is OK
and waiting a long time for VS 2005 to compile the project is very
frustrating.

I am sure that a dual-core processor will be better than a single core
processor in overall performance but I am not sure if the VS 2005 compiling
process is a multithreaded process or if it's a sequential process. If
compiling is not a multithreaded process then I would not expect to see a
huge cut in the time that it takes to compile a project and it may not be
worth investing on a new computer at this time.

Does anyone have any experience on this issue?

Thanks.

 

[Barry Kelly]

Could someone please tell me if using one of the new dual-core CPUs will
speed up the process of compiling a program using Visual Studio 2005?

The processors might run single-threaded applications faster than your
current chip, so it may be faster; also depending on what you've got
running in the background (e.g. virus scanners etc.), there may be less
contention.

I am sure that a dual-core processor will be better than a single core
processor in overall performance but I am not sure if the VS 2005 compiling
process is a multithreaded process or if it's a sequential process.

It is sequential, as is msbuild. I've used GNU make -j in order to
create parallel builds myself, and as a result I've seen about 30%
speedups. Disk IO can still be a limiting factor, and it doesn't react
very well to thrashing. Dependencies matter too. Don't forget Amdahl's
law.

Eventually msbuild is supposed to get support for parallel builds; at
that point, I expect VS will get it too. AFAIK the build engine is
shared between the two.

-- Barry

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=F6ran_Andersson?=]

As Barry Kelly said, msbuild currently doesn't make full use of a dual
code CPU.

Perhaps changing the way you use Visual Studio may be an alternative to
a hardware upgrade.

From the Build menu you can open the configuration manager. There you
can specify which projects should be built for debug and release mode.
You can also create custom modes.

 

[Guest]

Rene,
As Goran indicated, generally what I do with multi-project solutions is turn
off the "Build" setting on all except the project I am working on. After all,
if you aren't changing the code in the others, there is no reason to rebuild
them until such time as you do.
Peter

 

[Guest]

There were a tool, can't remember it name, smth like "extremlyBuild", maybe
smb from the presenters can remeber it.
It allows you to parallel you builds and even build on the separate
n-processor machine.
We used it to parallel build for the C++ project.
Great tool, but i forgot it name

I think you shoul look on this, test if it suites u. In that case you can
use single processor machine for development and build apps on the separate
server

Could someone please tell me if using one of the new dual-core CPUs will
speed up the process of compiling a program using Visual Studio 2005?

I have a solution that includes about 10 projects on it and it takes a long
time to compile. My biggest issue is that I am the kind of person that
likes to compile the project very often to make sure that everything is OK
and waiting a long time for VS 2005 to compile the project is very
frustrating.

I am sure that a dual-core processor will be better than a single core
processor in overall performance but I am not sure if the VS 2005 compiling
process is a multithreaded process or if it's a sequential process. If
compiling is not a multithreaded process then I would not expect to see a
huge cut in the time that it takes to compile a project and it may not be
worth investing on a new computer at this time.

Does anyone have any experience on this issue?

--
WBR,
Michael Nemtsev :: blog: http://spaces.msn.com/laflour

"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not
cease to be insipid." (c) Friedrich Nietzsche