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

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hdrdtd said:
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.

Our 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.
Click to expand...

Was that "Dual Pentium" or "Dual CORE Pentium"?

It sounds like disk speed was by far the most important thing
for you photographer - and that SCSI was significantly faster the WD
drive
(whatever "WD" is!).

So this sounds like I'm being steared towards some sort of SCSI...
- but at what *price*?!

I am told by my hardware supplier that a "decent" SCSI controller is
about GBP 250 or so(!) ...And he doesnt recommend anything less...
Whereas my entire budget is about GBP 300, maybe GBP350 absolute
tops...!

Also could anyone possibly explain what RAID1 RAID0 are?
Are they remotely within my budget?

I had a look at www.adaptec.com - who used to be one of the
top names in SCSI, but I don't know where to start.
I mean which of the following would be *remotely* relevant?:

- Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
- Ultra320 SCSI PCI-X HBAs
- Ultra320 SCSI PCI RAID
- Ultra160 SCSI PCI HBAs
- SCSI PCI HBAs
- SCSI JBOD
- iSCSI HBAs


Ship
Shiperton Henethe













Mike Walsh said:
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
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
300 pounds sterling would buy you alot of downers and muscle relaxers.
Take plenty of those; as long as they hold out, your computer will SEEM
alot faster! Of course, I think you'd be best off spending the money
on a Core 2 Duo E6600 ($185 American). Your motherboard is already
Core 2 Duo ready, so you can keep that and your 2 gigs of RAM (which is
plenty). Let's see, that leaves you with, what's the conversion
between USD and GBP? Uh, I'm gonna guess like 100 GBP left over to put
back into your account towards a brand new quad-core rig sometime next
year (or more/better memory for the computer you own).
 
300 pounds sterling would buy you alot of downers and muscle relaxers.
Take plenty of those; as long as they hold out, your computer will SEEM
alot faster! Of course, I think you'd be best off spending the money
on a Core 2 Duo E6600 ($185 American). Your motherboard is already
Core 2 Duo ready, so you can keep that and your 2 gigs of RAM (which is
plenty). Let's see, that leaves you with, what's the conversion
between USD and GBP? Uh, I'm gonna guess like 100 GBP left over to put
back into your account towards a brand new quad-core rig sometime next
year (or more/better memory for the computer you own).
Click to expand...


Nice thinking - except that as far as downloading emails into Outlook
goes,
it now seem that my hard disk is being thrashed to death, whilst my
CPU more or less has as snooze. Hence adding another "core" to the
processory chip seems unlikely to help...

....unless you know otherwise by experience!


Ship
Shiperton Henethe
 
300 pounds sterling would buy you alot of downers and muscle relaxers.
Take plenty of those; as long as they hold out, your computer will SEEM
alot faster! Of course, I think you'd be best off spending the money
on a Core 2 Duo E6600 ($185 American). Your motherboard is already
Core 2 Duo ready, so you can keep that and your 2 gigs of RAM (which is
plenty). Let's see, that leaves you with, what's the conversion
between USD and GBP? Uh, I'm gonna guess like 100 GBP left over to put
back into your account towards a brand new quad-core rig sometime next
year (or more/better memory for the computer you own).
Click to expand...


Nice thinking - except that as far as downloading emails into Outlook
goes,
it now seem that my hard disk is being thrashed to death, whilst my
CPU more or less has as snooze. Hence adding another "core" to the
processory chip seems unlikely to help...

....unless you know otherwise by experience!


Ship
Shiperton Henethe
 
SpaceGirl said:
Just how will that make DreamWeaver go faster, Jerry? Hmm? :)
Click to expand...

Not necessarily Dreamweaver - but there are a lot of Linux based tools
out there, also. And most of them are free, and many are better quality
than Dreamweaver.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
(e-mail address removed)
==================
 
Max out the RAM and delete any processes that aren't needed. Too many programs
load up helper processes that suck up RAM.

Move your pagefile to another hard drive
 
An edit to my last post:

Where I said:

Generally Speed Up NTFS (NOT COMPATIBLE WITH WIN9x/DOS Software)

Corrected: not compatible with DOS software anything that runs using
Long FileNames under Win9x will be fine under winXP with these
enabled
 
Here's a few tweaks for you to increase your system speed Under WinXP
Home/Pro



Disable Paging Executive Files (Registry)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manager\Memory Management
"DisablePagingExecutive"=dword:00000001

Enable Large System Cache (Registry)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session
Manager\Memory Management
"LargeSystemCache"=dword:00000001

Disable NTFS Last-Access TimeStamp (Registry)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
"NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate"=dword:00000001

Generally Speed Up NTFS (NOT COMPATIBLE WITH WIN9x/DOS Software)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
"Win31FileSystem"=dword:00000000
"Win95TruncatedExtensions"=dword:00000001

Enable 48-Bit LBA for drives (Registry)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters\
"EnableBigLba"=dword:00000001

Disable NETBIOS_Netcrawling (Registry)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
"NoNetCrawling"=dword:00000001

Disable User Tracking (Registry)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\explorer
"NoInstrumentation"=dword:00000001
"NoRemoteRecursiveEvents"=dword:00000001

General FileBrowsing Speed-Up (Registry)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\stisvc
"Start"=dword:00000002

Uninstall unneccessary software
Set your PF to (0.5 * RAM)
Put PF on SATA/SCSI Disk
Turn off unneccessary services (Messenger, NLA, Processor Serial,
stuff like that) (MMC--->Services)
Disable S.M.A.R.T for IDE disks until you need it (BIOS)
Disable Peer Concurrency (BIOS)


Well I hope some of this helps...Leep me posted on what u decide to do
 
Jerry Stuckle ha scritto:
Not necessarily Dreamweaver - but there are a lot of Linux based tools
out there, also. And most of them are free, and many are better quality
than Dreamweaver.
Click to expand...

Many, you say?

Name a single program that is "better quality" than
Adobe's new release of Dreamweaver 8.

It's the best product available for web design - hands down.
 
According to the specs for his motherboard, he could swap the P4 chip
for a dual-core Pentium D -- but not for one of the new dual-core "duo"
chips.

Jim said:
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
|
Click to expand...
 
Jerry Stuckle ha scritto:



Many, you say?

Name a single program that is "better quality" than
Adobe's new release of Dreamweaver 8.

It's the best product available for web design - hands down.
Click to expand...

vim comes to mind...

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

Many, you say?

Name a single program that is "better quality" than
Adobe's new release of Dreamweaver 8.

It's the best product available for web design - hands down.
Click to expand...

The lowliest text editor is better. The best (emacs) is far
superior.
 
Frank said:
According to the specs for his motherboard, he could swap the P4 chip
for a dual-core Pentium D -- but not for one of the new dual-core "duo"
chips.
Click to expand...

That would help if he were cpu bound, but his problem is that he is disk
bound so switching to a faster cpu, dual core etc won't help.

On a different note, I wish my motherboard would let me upgrade to a dual
core cpu. New motherboard and dual-core cpu is very definitely on my wish
list.
 
Chris said:
The lowliest text editor is better. The best (emacs) is far
superior.
Click to expand...

In what respect?

DW (and other visual editors), for all their woes, are a lot faster at
producing output. Also fantastic for prototyping where time is an issue
and layout is critical. It takes 2 clicks to insert a table (even in
code view), or how many key presses in emacs?

DW's code editor, while not the best in the world, is very powerful and
easily holds it's own against most windowed editors. Unlike the awful
FrontPage it does not "rearrange" your code for you either.

Code monkeys need to wake up; the less time you have to spend coding
the better - you can spend more time on making your sites easier to
use, more pleasant to look at and more functional instead of pissing
around with HTML tags. What's more important, pretty code or user
experiences?
 
Brian said:
That would help if he were cpu bound, but his problem is that he is disk
bound so switching to a faster cpu, dual core etc won't help.

On a different note, I wish my motherboard would let me upgrade to a dual
core cpu. New motherboard and dual-core cpu is very definitely on my wish
list.
Click to expand...

OP here.

Strangely although it APPEARS to be the Hard Disk that is the
bottleneck
(CPU barely being used... Red light on HB constantly on...)
the fact is that it stops perfectly ordinary non/limited HD activities
like
refreshing the screen or swapping between applications.

So it is perfectly *possible* that using a second processor would
help things. It might even be able to grab a bit more HD time off
Outlook(2003). :)


Interestingly since I have cut down my live outlook file to a maximum
of
1 week of emails, the problems have greatly diminised!
(and that is even though I still now have the main PST file open too)

I think it was the rules that were struggling to put new emails into
the right
place (on the c.1GB PST file) that were causing most of the problems.


What also helped was making the Outlook rules include "and stop
processing".
Anyhow they now come down at about 4 to 8 times faster.

DW8 can still take a full minute or even TWO to close mind you.
And it's checkin links is pretty painful on a large site...


Ship
Shiperton Henethe
 
ship said:
OP here.

Strangely although it APPEARS to be the Hard Disk that is the
bottleneck
(CPU barely being used... Red light on HB constantly on...)
the fact is that it stops perfectly ordinary non/limited HD activities
like
refreshing the screen or swapping between applications.

So it is perfectly *possible* that using a second processor would
help things. It might even be able to grab a bit more HD time off
Outlook(2003). :)
Click to expand...

I think that's Windows for you. Its my experience that if the hard disk is
maxed out that everything else seems to come to a halt - may not be entirely
true but certainly explorer (windows or internet) seem to come to a halt,
probably because both read from the disk and once the disk is maxed out they
have to wait until their various reads complete like everything else.
Interestingly since I have cut down my live outlook file to a maximum
of
1 week of emails, the problems have greatly diminised!
(and that is even though I still now have the main PST file open too)

I think it was the rules that were struggling to put new emails into
the right
place (on the c.1GB PST file) that were causing most of the problems.


What also helped was making the Outlook rules include "and stop
processing".
Anyhow they now come down at about 4 to 8 times faster.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm coming to the conclusion that Outlook can be a real resource hog. I
probably ought to archive off a number of my emails since Outlook is
starting to feel quite slow at time for me. I'm sure that would speed it up.
 
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