Unusual Request

[Stumped1]

I have sort of an unusual request: I have asked many knowledgeable computer people what really makes the difference in everyday performance and no one has ever come up with a satisfactory answer. I feel that with all the knowledge on this forum, that if I don’t receive an answer, I will quit asking the question. Here goes, hope this isn’t too long or boring:

I have noticed that the MHz rating of a computer has little to do with everyday performance. By everyday performance I mean the speed at which windows, dialog boxes, and screens pop up (for example: opening My Computer, Control Panel, and generally bouncing around the computer to check stuff). I have used everything from a 166mhz Pentium to an 800 Athlon and see very little difference in this type of performance. I have 166’s at work running WinNT to the Athlon 800 running W2000 and the 166 can pop an image on the screen just as fast as the Athlon. A Cheap video card in the 166, fancy video card in the Athlon, etc., etc. I have a PIII500, Voodoo3, 7200hd attached to Ultra 66 Promise controller, 256mb ram at home and then a cheap little Soyo MB box that I built with a Celeron 300A, cheap 8mb “Jaton” video card, 64 ram, old 3.2HD running at ultra 33 and the cheap box is every bit as fast at these everyday tasks as any of the best.
Now all the benchmarks are a different story and they project the ratings of these computers in line with their speeds.
Or is the answer that one will only see the difference while running certain programs and not in the everyday stuff. I’m sure there are many of you out there who like me spend 75% or more of your time just bouncing around from window to window while checking stuff as you are adding, removing, and testing hardware or building and troubleshooting systems. Any light on this subject would be appreciated.
Thank you all in advance.

[gyoung]

I think what you are asking about is Windows performance (either 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT, 2000, you get the point http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif).

At least with the way things are now the processing power of a Pentium 166 or AMD K6 200 is more than enough to power Windows (place version here).

The real difference is RAM. If you have a Pentium 166 with 128 MB of RAM general Windows performance will be adequate. Just like with an Athlon 1GHz with 128MB RAM. The way to cripple Windows is with low amounts of RAM. Give the Pentium 166 32MB RAM and you notice a difference (as my fiance's PC does). An Athlon 1GHz with 32 MB will also suffer.

From what I've read you get optimum performance out of Windows 95, 98, ME with 128MB. Anything more doesn't really improve general performance. NT and 2000 are more efficient at memory use so they can benefit from more RAM.

[Undertow]

gyoung hit the nail on the head. RAM is the key. My computer had 128MB and it was speedy. I now have 256MB and have noticed only minimal performance gains, attributed to the fact that the old was PC100 and the new is PC133 (running at 140). However, when I used a friends' computer with only 16MB of RAM, the difference was extreme. His system crawled to do even the simplest things, like opening explorer, etc. My mom's computer has 64MB, and I'm sure with just another 64MB, as far as windows tasks, she would be up to par with me.

[BFlurie]

Yup, the Windoz OSs in general haven't changed too much in basic structure since W95 & NT4. Those were developed to run quick enough w/133 or so CPUs -- hence no big difference SEEN w/much faster CPUs. It'll only show up w/very demanding apps & games, or apps piled on top of each other. Plus, better hardware (other than the CPU) can help the older CPUs. And the classic slowdown, the swapfile, becomes a non-issue w/plenty of memory.

[Comtech]

The single biggest bottleneck in todays systems is the hard drive speed. How fast the HD can read the information, and write new information to the hard disk.
THIS is why any new application opened may take a few more seconds than others.
The processor and RAM can shuffle information at incredible speeds (no moving parts), but the old rotating platter hard drive, must still spin the platters, and move the heads across the platters to get the information.
Once you have your applications open (reisdent in RAM), they will appear to work much faster with a 600mhz CPU, than a 200mhz CPU (everything else being equal).

[Savant]

I'm sorry to dissagree gyoung, but 166 is simply not enough to run 2000 tolerably, 233 is sort of but still slow.
Savant

[LiLRiceBoi]

you wont notice much difference w/ everyday tasks, however, w/ certain applications there will be a major difference

[Stumped1]

Thanks so much for all the good input.

Al

[Ed_S]

Recent topic re ram amounts and performance: http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/Forum2/HTML/010636.html