got a few questions regarding drive and memory performance.
Machine is a new Dell 4550 P4 2.66ghz on an Intel 845PE
1 gig (2x 512mb) Kingston Hyper X DDR 3000 @ DDR 2700 CAS 2-2-2-5
60gig 7200rpm 2mb cache that came with the system, one partition NTFS and on master (end of ATA chain, autodetect jumper settings).
I installed a 2nd 80gig WDSE 7200rpm/8mb cache. I formatted a 20 gig FAT32 and a 60 gig NTFS. The 80 gig is currently the slave (middle) on the ATA chain, autodetect jumper setting)
The HD's are running 7200rpm ATA100
My main issue I am having is the HD benchmarking. The HD seems to be running fine in applications. Load times don't seem too slow or anything but I have so much RAM that it may be hard to see HD performance lags in a running application. But I do see it in some drive transfers and in Sandra benchmark. Sandra 2003 lite/demo version is testing everything else just fine but it's having problem testing my HD's. When I test the 60gig boot, it takes forever (15-25 minutes) and it will hang often resulting me to end task from task manager. When it does go through my benchmark results are extremely poor. Last testing the other day resulted in a score f around 1800 or so? It was a good 40% lower then a reference ATA/66 5400rpm 40gig benchmark. Which is pretty sad. When I test the WDSE slave it downright locks up Sandra and I have to end task. I tried it about 4-5 times giving it 20+ minutes and I get no response and teh progress bar doesn't move.
Now to verify this I did some large copies from one drive to the other. From my 60gig main bootup I transferred 10gigs, all big ISO files and a 1gig video files. 10 gigs took over 30 minutes... Thats terrible. About 5mb/sec transfer rates on the same ATA/bus and this was all big files not thousands of small ones. Something is obviously wrong here. One thing I didnt check which I should is a copy on the same drive. I think something is wrong with the bus config or something. I don't think large file duplications on the same drive took too long though. I have done many ISO conversions so far with no abnormal delays. I hope I didnt miss something brutally obvious. I gotta fix this before I start doing some serious video/rendering work. Any ideas?
Whats the best way to partition for XP or XP pro? Why should I make a FAT32 partition over NTFS? Faster? My new 80gb I partitioned a 20gig boot system/application partition of 20 gigs and the other 60 is a NTFS storage partition. I haven't used the FAT32 part yet. Is that a good idea to have a FAT32 part like that? Or should it all be NTFS. The 60gig it's booting off now is one big NTFS partition. Thats what the machine came with but I want to Xfer the main bootup to the 7200rpm 8mb cache drive I just got, should be a little faster. Also, (I plan on adding another 80gig WDSE) I'd like to go RAID 5 but I don't think my MB has a built in RAID controller. Software RAIDing will eat some CPU cycles won't it? Is the tradeoff worth it for heavy CPU workload like 3D rendering and video? I should just buy a hardware RAID controller card eh?
2nd question: Is there a good programs that can show me system performance and resource usage across all running apps and functions? Like crappy norton systemworks? I want to map out my performance for when I want to do some rendering. I will probably make a linux boot partition for that or Win2k pro in safe mode for the rendering. I want to make sure the rendering software gets as much resources as possible.
3rd question: I have 1 gig (2x512mb) of DDR 3000 CAS 2 ram running at 333mhz (DDR 2700) and 2-2-2-5 timings. How should I set my page file? Currently it is at 960/1820mb or so for the page file. But really I shouldn't need that much at all right? I want the computer to pull from virtual memory as LITTLE as possible. It should keep using the real RAM as much as possible right? It will only pull from the page filing for unimportant stuff right? Win XP's memory handling pretty smart? Or should I force it to use less page filing? Like what will help with the best performance?
ok thats all for now 😛
Machine is a new Dell 4550 P4 2.66ghz on an Intel 845PE
1 gig (2x 512mb) Kingston Hyper X DDR 3000 @ DDR 2700 CAS 2-2-2-5
60gig 7200rpm 2mb cache that came with the system, one partition NTFS and on master (end of ATA chain, autodetect jumper settings).
I installed a 2nd 80gig WDSE 7200rpm/8mb cache. I formatted a 20 gig FAT32 and a 60 gig NTFS. The 80 gig is currently the slave (middle) on the ATA chain, autodetect jumper setting)
The HD's are running 7200rpm ATA100
My main issue I am having is the HD benchmarking. The HD seems to be running fine in applications. Load times don't seem too slow or anything but I have so much RAM that it may be hard to see HD performance lags in a running application. But I do see it in some drive transfers and in Sandra benchmark. Sandra 2003 lite/demo version is testing everything else just fine but it's having problem testing my HD's. When I test the 60gig boot, it takes forever (15-25 minutes) and it will hang often resulting me to end task from task manager. When it does go through my benchmark results are extremely poor. Last testing the other day resulted in a score f around 1800 or so? It was a good 40% lower then a reference ATA/66 5400rpm 40gig benchmark. Which is pretty sad. When I test the WDSE slave it downright locks up Sandra and I have to end task. I tried it about 4-5 times giving it 20+ minutes and I get no response and teh progress bar doesn't move.
Now to verify this I did some large copies from one drive to the other. From my 60gig main bootup I transferred 10gigs, all big ISO files and a 1gig video files. 10 gigs took over 30 minutes... Thats terrible. About 5mb/sec transfer rates on the same ATA/bus and this was all big files not thousands of small ones. Something is obviously wrong here. One thing I didnt check which I should is a copy on the same drive. I think something is wrong with the bus config or something. I don't think large file duplications on the same drive took too long though. I have done many ISO conversions so far with no abnormal delays. I hope I didnt miss something brutally obvious. I gotta fix this before I start doing some serious video/rendering work. Any ideas?
Whats the best way to partition for XP or XP pro? Why should I make a FAT32 partition over NTFS? Faster? My new 80gb I partitioned a 20gig boot system/application partition of 20 gigs and the other 60 is a NTFS storage partition. I haven't used the FAT32 part yet. Is that a good idea to have a FAT32 part like that? Or should it all be NTFS. The 60gig it's booting off now is one big NTFS partition. Thats what the machine came with but I want to Xfer the main bootup to the 7200rpm 8mb cache drive I just got, should be a little faster. Also, (I plan on adding another 80gig WDSE) I'd like to go RAID 5 but I don't think my MB has a built in RAID controller. Software RAIDing will eat some CPU cycles won't it? Is the tradeoff worth it for heavy CPU workload like 3D rendering and video? I should just buy a hardware RAID controller card eh?
2nd question: Is there a good programs that can show me system performance and resource usage across all running apps and functions? Like crappy norton systemworks? I want to map out my performance for when I want to do some rendering. I will probably make a linux boot partition for that or Win2k pro in safe mode for the rendering. I want to make sure the rendering software gets as much resources as possible.
3rd question: I have 1 gig (2x512mb) of DDR 3000 CAS 2 ram running at 333mhz (DDR 2700) and 2-2-2-5 timings. How should I set my page file? Currently it is at 960/1820mb or so for the page file. But really I shouldn't need that much at all right? I want the computer to pull from virtual memory as LITTLE as possible. It should keep using the real RAM as much as possible right? It will only pull from the page filing for unimportant stuff right? Win XP's memory handling pretty smart? Or should I force it to use less page filing? Like what will help with the best performance?
ok thats all for now 😛
