MegaFLOPS and hyper-threading

[Guest]

I have a P4 2.8 w/HT, 1G Ram. Sony VAIO. (PassMark Performance Test)

I am a day trader and work from home. My software - MetaStock runs some
serious calculations and my computer runs it so slowly - so I have been
trying to get the most I can. I just finished formatting and starting
clean. I have also had another issue - some software say they can not
complete their process because there is a problem with my hard drive and I
need to run scandisk to fix it.

I have run a test that shows a main score average around 330 and a MegaFLOPS
score of 220. I figured this was good but checked on friends and family's
computers and their MegaFLOPS scores were in the 500s and 600s.

Just for fun - I disabled HT in my BIOS. My main score moved up a little to
349 but my MegaFLOPS went balistic and hit 630 - about 400 points.

1) Which score is more important for normal users? ...overall or MegaFLOPS?
2) I run a ton of programs at the same time - mail, music, MetaStock,
internet,etc., should I have HT on or off ?
3) Is it normal that HT would bring down my MegaFLOPS score?
4) Can I improve this?
5) How can I determine a problem with my hard drive if Windows scandisk
says it is ok?

Thank you so much !!!!!
Steven

 

[Robert Moir]

I have a P4 2.8 w/HT, 1G Ram. Sony VAIO. (PassMark Performance
Test)
[snip]

I have run a test that shows a main score average around 330 and a
MegaFLOPS score of 220. I figured this was good but checked on
friends and family's computers and their MegaFLOPS scores were in the
500s and 600s.

Are these computer desktops or laptops? Laptops tend to have lots of speed
regulation bits and pieces running by default that might change this
figure - though not drastically.

Just for fun - I disabled HT in my BIOS. My main score moved up a
little to 349 but my MegaFLOPS went balistic and hit 630 - about 400
points.

1) Which score is more important for normal users? ...overall or
MegaFLOPS?

For normal users, one might say "neither" - what scale is this "main score"
based on?

2) I run a ton of programs at the same time - mail,
music, MetaStock, internet,etc., should I have HT on or off ?

In general, running many programs at once suggests using hypterthreading.
However some programs might benefit from running on a system with it
disabled - computationally intensive tasks are a case in point, which brings
us back to Metastock!

3) Is it normal that HT would bring down my MegaFLOPS score?

It doesn't strike me as that unusual. I'd want to know more about the
benchmark program before commenting on the size of the difference.

Does it make a "real world" difference to your system's performance?
Benchmarks are very good for comparing systems to one another by running the
same benchmarks across the two systems to see a relative difference, but I'm
real careful about relying on them to tell me about "real world"
performance.

4) Can I improve this?

Turn hyperthreading off, perhaps. The minor improvement it might give to
running lots of programs alongside your main business tools isn't worth the
hit on those tools, I'd say.

5) How can I determine a problem with my hard drive if Windows
scandisk says it is ok?

I'd try a diagnostic program such as the ontrack data advisor -
http://www.ontrack.com/dataadvisor/

--
--
Rob Moir, MS MVP
Blog Site - http://www.robertmoir.com
Virtual PC 2004 FAQ - http://www.robertmoir.co.uk/win/VirtualPC2004FAQ.html
I'm always surprised at "professionals" who STILL have to be asked "Have you
checked (event viewer / syslog)".

 

[Guest]

I have a P4 2.8 w/HT, 1G Ram. Sony VAIO. (PassMark Performance
Test)
[snip]

I have run a test that shows a main score average around 330 and a
MegaFLOPS score of 220. I figured this was good but checked on
friends and family's computers and their MegaFLOPS scores were in the
500s and 600s.

Are these computer desktops or laptops? Laptops tend to have lots of speed
regulation bits and pieces running by default that might change this
figure - though not drastically.

Just for fun - I disabled HT in my BIOS. My main score moved up a
little to 349 but my MegaFLOPS went balistic and hit 630 - about 400
points.

1) Which score is more important for normal users? ...overall or
MegaFLOPS?

For normal users, one might say "neither" - what scale is this "main score"
based on?

------- I am not sure, I will try to attach the file.----------