Thoughts on multitasking....

[blazerazor]

Im thinking to my self, ok so maybe you running MP proscessor or got HT intel technology... but the harddrive can only be doing one thing at a time. The Everything has to access the harddrive for tasks. So how would be the optium way to set up mutliple harddrives for multi tasking, I mean like dedicate one for games as another to feed files or wateva else.

Just some of my thoughts here.

 

[thirdlegstump]

Best way is to install more than 1 computer in the computer and commence multi-computer-tasking.

 

[Alex]

Originally posted by: deathkoba
Best way is to install more than 1 computer in the computer and commence multi-computer-tasking.

LOL

but seriously thats a pretty good point... i have no idea but i'm curious to see what everyone else thinks

 

[DaveSimmons]

Most programs do not spend all of their time reading/writing to the hard drive. Hard drives have cache memory buffers so they can essentially read from and write to multiple areas at once.

Multiple drives won't hurt, but they often won't help much or at all.

 

[HeaterCore]

With enough RAM -- maybe 1-2GB, even for programs like Photoshop or 3DSMax -- most apps can reside comfortably in memory. This side of video-editing, compiling, heavy-duty rendering or a few other memory-intensive apps, your system won't have to thrash the drive for cached info very often.

-HC-

 

[thirdlegstump]

Anyway...dual Xeon and SCSI drives.

 

[boran]

windows does not multitask anything IO. just try this: put in a CD and immediatly open explorer, it'll wait showing data untill the CD is completely finished reading it's index.

that's one point the OS definetly can be improved.

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: boran
that's one point the OS definetly can be improved.

Longhorn, baby!

 

[thirdlegstump]

Longhorn fixes that?!!? VERY cool. It'll almost be as good as OS X!

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: blazerazor
Im thinking to my self, ok so maybe you running MP proscessor or got HT intel technology... but the harddrive can only be doing one thing at a time. The Everything has to access the harddrive for tasks. So how would be the optium way to set up mutliple harddrives for multi tasking, I mean like dedicate one for games as another to feed files or wateva else.

Just some of my thoughts here.

Plenty of memory and RAID is the current answer to this.

 

[boran]

Originally posted by: biostud

Originally posted by: blazerazor
[...cut...]

Plenty of memory and RAID is the current answer to this.

Wont solve the IO problem of the OS, raid or no raid, do what I said above and you'll see. only one IO application can happen at once.

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: boran

Originally posted by: biostud



Plenty of memory and RAID is the current answer to this.

Wont solve the IO problem of the OS, raid or no raid, do what I said above and you'll see. only one IO application can happen at once.

But it will be able to make more I/O's pr. second AFAIK.

 

[asm0deus]

ATA133 cards and 2GB RAM, my friend burns 2 DVDs simultaneously and plays WoW I think, not mention tons of windows open. I'm actually thinking about not using my on-board IDE ports just to see if I notice a difference. I can definitely detect system slow down in moving GBs all over the place.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: deathkoba
Anyway...dual Xeon and SCSI drives.

Or dual Opteron and SCSI arrays !

 

[halfadder]

Originally posted by: deathkoba
Longhorn fixes that?!!? VERY cool. It'll almost be as good as OS X!

I don't know if Longhorn fixes that exact problem, but it does fix a lot of problems that we currently have in XP. Plus I hear that Longhorn has a new filesystem... so I think that should be fixed in Longhorn.

 

[biostud]

Originally posted by: halfadder

Originally posted by: deathkoba
Longhorn fixes that?!!? VERY cool. It'll almost be as good as OS X!

I don't know if Longhorn fixes that exact problem, but it does fix a lot of problems that we currently have in XP. Plus I hear that Longhorn has a new filesystem... so I think that should be fixed in Longhorn.

The new file system has been postponed to later.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's true, most desktop IDE HDs are optimized for more-or-less single-tasking desktop-workload usage. The I/O queue depth isn't very high. If you want to handle higher levels of simultanous I/Os, move up to SCSI, the protocol was designed specifically with multi-tasking I/O in mind. Those that have used multiple optical drives on SCSI, vs. IDE, know exactly what I'm talking about. If you're stuck with using IDE, then for more efficient multi-tasking, have multiple physical HDs, on multiple independent IDE channels, to maximize I/O throughput. (For example, have a seperate HD to store CD/DVD images to burn, seperate from your normal OS drive, and so on. That way, if you are doing something that requires heavy paging activity to the OS drive, it won't interrupt your burn operation and invoke burn-proof and leave a tiny gap. In the "bad old days", there was no burn-proof feature, and doing just that, trying to multi-task on your PC while using an IDE burner, would often create a coaster. People that were heavily into CD-burning, either spent extra $$$ for SCSI, or set up a seperate dedicated machine for just burning, that they wouldn't touch while in operation.)