An AC was so kind to post this link about AMD's plans (or lack of) for the FX platform.
I can only surmise that AMD took so long to create the new FX chips that they just decided to create an entirely new platform. Fair enough - why bother with NVidia? I mean it's not like they are a stellar software engineering company. For example NVidia forgot to assign some of our motherboards a MAC address or better yet how about those 8800 GTX drivers that finally work 8 months after Vista's RTM launch? To their credit they still have the worlds fastest (consumer) graphics card a year later.
It's also quite evident from the motherboard lineup that Phenom will be their platform going forward. That was always something that bothered me about the FX - there was just one motherboard available. It seemed like that wasn't quite enough.
Anyway - it is unlikely that I will continue investing my money in this platform. While I will carry a banner on principal for a time, AMD is so badly beaten at this point that it will be time to make a switch. I might have stayed with AMD but the fact that a year ago we were promised upgrades which never came - no new technology. No investment by AMD in the products WE invested in. We'll - that's hard to swallow.
In the coming months I will be putting up a new blog - I'll post the URL here for anyone that might be interested.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Intel unloads a new salvo
I just stumbled along this link:
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Intel_Skulltrail_and_Penryn_Performance_Preview/
Looks like the FX platform may not be so great after all...
It would be nice if AMD had answer for this.
http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Intel_Skulltrail_and_Penryn_Performance_Preview/
Looks like the FX platform may not be so great after all...
It would be nice if AMD had answer for this.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Smoke and mirrors
It's disappointing that AMD feels the need to mislead the market place into thinking that something has been realeased when it really hasn't.
Take for example the 2360 SE and the 2350 parts.
Shortly after the announcement I poked some of my favorite sites that carry such things - to no avail. In fact, one site indicates that the 2350 is ETA: Past Due and that there are -4 parts in stock.
Wow.
For a company that has in the past been critised for difficulty in delivering - this doesn't help any.
I have also noticed that Dell carries high efficiency quad core chip propoganda on their site, but none of the servers can be configured with any of the new parts.
I don't know about anyone else but I would prefer that a launch date actually mean something.
Sadly, I just purchased two dual quad core E53XX servers from Dell.
Take for example the 2360 SE and the 2350 parts.
Shortly after the announcement I poked some of my favorite sites that carry such things - to no avail. In fact, one site indicates that the 2350 is ETA: Past Due and that there are -4 parts in stock.
Wow.
For a company that has in the past been critised for difficulty in delivering - this doesn't help any.
I have also noticed that Dell carries high efficiency quad core chip propoganda on their site, but none of the servers can be configured with any of the new parts.
I don't know about anyone else but I would prefer that a launch date actually mean something.
Sadly, I just purchased two dual quad core E53XX servers from Dell.
Barcelona Benchmarks
An interesting write up recently in tech report on Barcelona...
http://techreport.com/articles.x/13176
The bottom line is this - in the highly business oriented benchmark SPECjbb2005 the opterons pulled ahead of their competing Intel parts. In some of the scientific benchmarks such as MyriMatch the Opteron also performed well. However when it comes to raw compute the chips don't perform that well.
Another item of interest is the single threaded performance of the 2300 parts in benchmarks such as POV-Ray. The new chips actually finish last among Intel AND previous generation AMD parts.
This tells me that the plumbing in the new chips is exceptional. The raw core performance seems to be lagging, but the internals must be able to handle IO very, very well to keep pace with Intel.
Overall - they still lag far behind Intel based on these test benchmarks.
For those of us that game this is not good news. As I wrote a while ago gaming performance is largely dictated by the performance of core and does not see much benefit from multiple processors. If the FX-90's don't see a significant boost on raw core performance we will find that most of games will perform worse - not better than they do now.
http://techreport.com/articles.x/13176
The bottom line is this - in the highly business oriented benchmark SPECjbb2005 the opterons pulled ahead of their competing Intel parts. In some of the scientific benchmarks such as MyriMatch the Opteron also performed well. However when it comes to raw compute the chips don't perform that well.
Another item of interest is the single threaded performance of the 2300 parts in benchmarks such as POV-Ray. The new chips actually finish last among Intel AND previous generation AMD parts.
This tells me that the plumbing in the new chips is exceptional. The raw core performance seems to be lagging, but the internals must be able to handle IO very, very well to keep pace with Intel.
Overall - they still lag far behind Intel based on these test benchmarks.
For those of us that game this is not good news. As I wrote a while ago gaming performance is largely dictated by the performance of core and does not see much benefit from multiple processors. If the FX-90's don't see a significant boost on raw core performance we will find that most of games will perform worse - not better than they do now.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
My 4x4 in the news
There was a write up a few months ago featuring my machine...
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/Help/60d9b045-e2fe-4f7a-9111-e2f2222851991033.mspx
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/Help/60d9b045-e2fe-4f7a-9111-e2f2222851991033.mspx
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Vacation
For anyone that is actually still subscribed to this blog... lol you know I've taken a bit of a vacation.
Here are a few updates!
When I built this machine last year I had expected that I would be upgrading to two 8 core processors. This unfortunately has not happened due to AMD seriously slipping on their delivery schedule for the Phenom line. At the moment it looks as if there is going to be a serious wait for those of us who wish to take advantage of 8 cores. I'm really disappointed by these turn of events. So much for the 4x4 becoming a "platform". More information about the release schedule is available here. I think I'm tempted to wait for the FX-91 to launch. I can't really see the benefits of taking a step back in MHz. Of course, clock is not everything but...
When I make the move to 8 cores it will be time for a disk upgrade as well. One of the issues that the current machine faces is that a large number of processes causes excessive I/O and effectively limits the capacity of the machine. Vista indicates a ling queue length. A good example of this is running 3 or four virtual machines in addition to "normal" development tasks. I've been exploring options. At the moment, out and deep come to mind. I'm thinking about adding another array and possibly trying a 3 disk RAID 0 to see if there is better performance. I'm not convinced that will alleviate queing issues though so it might be worth test (how?).
The drivers for the 8800 are now WHQL, there have not been too many issues with it. Upgrading using NVidia's package has been easy. I would not recommend using Windows update to upgrade the NVidia drivers, especially the storage drivers as I have had issues in the past. There is a new board package for the 680a although I'm really not too interested in "upgrading" anything that has to do with the RAID array. As they say "If it ain't broke don't fix it".
Performance monitoring still does not work correctly and I have no idea why.
The recently reported bug involving decreased network performance while playing audio under Vista affects this machine. It's really bad too. When transfering Multi-GB virtual machine images over the network I can get 107 MB/s peak and appx. 90 MB/s average between another Dell server with a RAID 0 array. The same transfer with audio playing will reduce the transfer speed to appx. 16 MB/s average. Terrible.
Overall the system continues to run well and continue to meet and exceed the demands that I place on it.
I'm still on the fence if I will move to the AMD chipset. We'll see if they are able to provide a compelling reason to make a move. Although, it looks like the 680a is largely dead. NVidia has already released a new version of the 680i chipset with more features. To be fair I'm not sure what they could add to the 680a besides SLI drivers that work!
LG
Here are a few updates!
When I built this machine last year I had expected that I would be upgrading to two 8 core processors. This unfortunately has not happened due to AMD seriously slipping on their delivery schedule for the Phenom line. At the moment it looks as if there is going to be a serious wait for those of us who wish to take advantage of 8 cores. I'm really disappointed by these turn of events. So much for the 4x4 becoming a "platform". More information about the release schedule is available here. I think I'm tempted to wait for the FX-91 to launch. I can't really see the benefits of taking a step back in MHz. Of course, clock is not everything but...
When I make the move to 8 cores it will be time for a disk upgrade as well. One of the issues that the current machine faces is that a large number of processes causes excessive I/O and effectively limits the capacity of the machine. Vista indicates a ling queue length. A good example of this is running 3 or four virtual machines in addition to "normal" development tasks. I've been exploring options. At the moment, out and deep come to mind. I'm thinking about adding another array and possibly trying a 3 disk RAID 0 to see if there is better performance. I'm not convinced that will alleviate queing issues though so it might be worth test (how?).
The drivers for the 8800 are now WHQL, there have not been too many issues with it. Upgrading using NVidia's package has been easy. I would not recommend using Windows update to upgrade the NVidia drivers, especially the storage drivers as I have had issues in the past. There is a new board package for the 680a although I'm really not too interested in "upgrading" anything that has to do with the RAID array. As they say "If it ain't broke don't fix it".
Performance monitoring still does not work correctly and I have no idea why.
The recently reported bug involving decreased network performance while playing audio under Vista affects this machine. It's really bad too. When transfering Multi-GB virtual machine images over the network I can get 107 MB/s peak and appx. 90 MB/s average between another Dell server with a RAID 0 array. The same transfer with audio playing will reduce the transfer speed to appx. 16 MB/s average. Terrible.
Overall the system continues to run well and continue to meet and exceed the demands that I place on it.
I'm still on the fence if I will move to the AMD chipset. We'll see if they are able to provide a compelling reason to make a move. Although, it looks like the 680a is largely dead. NVidia has already released a new version of the 680i chipset with more features. To be fair I'm not sure what they could add to the 680a besides SLI drivers that work!
LG
Friday, May 11, 2007
Driver Upgrade
NVidia has released a new driver package!
Drivers for x64 vista have been spotty to date but this update to nTune seemed to go a long way in providing me with decent system stats. It is also the only way we'll be able to OC the 8800.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.05.38.00.html
Also, new 8800 drivers were released on May 2nd!
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_158.18.html
The install process is easier. I can now play texas hold 'em with out that nasty flicker. Stay away from the DreamScene content though, it apparenly causes major issues.
**Note** I would highly recommend running all of the control panels as administrator, they seem to crash when they are not.
Drivers for x64 vista have been spotty to date but this update to nTune seemed to go a long way in providing me with decent system stats. It is also the only way we'll be able to OC the 8800.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.05.38.00.html
Also, new 8800 drivers were released on May 2nd!
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_158.18.html
The install process is easier. I can now play texas hold 'em with out that nasty flicker. Stay away from the DreamScene content though, it apparenly causes major issues.
**Note** I would highly recommend running all of the control panels as administrator, they seem to crash when they are not.
4x4 in the news
Some great news from Toms Hardware and TG Daily. Apparently AMD is showing off new boards and chipsets (something on my wish list):
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31991/118/
Apparently our new motherboard platform will be called Wahoo.
And the 4 core processor? It's apparently 45nm and was demoed this week as well! It will be called "Agena".
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31977/135/
Pretty exciting stuff!
News about R600 has been a little disappointing. Apparently AMD is releasing a model that is between the 8800 GTS and GTX but about the same price as the GTS. I believe the model is the 2900 XT. The monster card is the 2900 XTX which is supposed to be shipping around the same time as the board and processor parts.
It seems the ATI community is pretty happy about their drivers - encouraging. Hopefully ATI is doing the right thing and not developing their driver codebase on the fly.
Here is some info on the 2900's performance:
2900 XT Benchmarks
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31991/118/
Apparently our new motherboard platform will be called Wahoo.
And the 4 core processor? It's apparently 45nm and was demoed this week as well! It will be called "Agena".
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31977/135/
Pretty exciting stuff!
News about R600 has been a little disappointing. Apparently AMD is releasing a model that is between the 8800 GTS and GTX but about the same price as the GTS. I believe the model is the 2900 XT. The monster card is the 2900 XTX which is supposed to be shipping around the same time as the board and processor parts.
It seems the ATI community is pretty happy about their drivers - encouraging. Hopefully ATI is doing the right thing and not developing their driver codebase on the fly.
Here is some info on the 2900's performance:
2900 XT Benchmarks
Monday, April 30, 2007
Disk Disk Disk
I think the one of the upcoming challenges for the 4 and 8 core workstation market is going to be resolving a major problem for multi core systems. I/O contention.
In the 4x4 we have two processors with a total of four cores, soon to be 8. So much CPU - and yet I find that I still wait. So I must of course ask the question "What am I waiting for?". Invariably the answer is the hard drive. As I continuted to cogitate I realized now that the machine can run four concurrent processes - system or otherwise, and there can be 4 active threads ( minimum ) that would be able to and need access to the hard disk. Each thread on it's own is quite capable of saturating the hard disk with requests.
With 8 threads running concurrently we're going to have even more trouble feeding them the data that they need. It's an unfortunate scenario because there does not seem to be a decent answer.
For now I see the most viable option is to add between 4 and 8 disks to your system. I will elaborate.
To truly take advantage of the 8 cores I think that we'll need the following:
Drives Purpose
1/2 (R0) System Disk
1/2 (R0) Program Files
1/2 (R0) User Data
1/2 (R0) User application data (My Documents, Music, Etc.)
These are all areas that are accessed very frequently and demand a high level of I/O. The nvidia chipset has a large number of SATA slots, and it's possible that the designers were thinking that it would be wise to use them all. I can see now, why this is the case.
This is likely overkill - you could probably get away with using 2 of the 4 sets. But if you need and use Virtual Machines a 3rd or 4th set is not out of the question.
I suspect there would be performance boost, but I'm not entirely sure how we'd go about measuring this.
Just food for thought.
In the 4x4 we have two processors with a total of four cores, soon to be 8. So much CPU - and yet I find that I still wait. So I must of course ask the question "What am I waiting for?". Invariably the answer is the hard drive. As I continuted to cogitate I realized now that the machine can run four concurrent processes - system or otherwise, and there can be 4 active threads ( minimum ) that would be able to and need access to the hard disk. Each thread on it's own is quite capable of saturating the hard disk with requests.
With 8 threads running concurrently we're going to have even more trouble feeding them the data that they need. It's an unfortunate scenario because there does not seem to be a decent answer.
For now I see the most viable option is to add between 4 and 8 disks to your system. I will elaborate.
To truly take advantage of the 8 cores I think that we'll need the following:
Drives Purpose
1/2 (R0) System Disk
1/2 (R0) Program Files
1/2 (R0) User Data
1/2 (R0) User application data (My Documents, Music, Etc.)
These are all areas that are accessed very frequently and demand a high level of I/O. The nvidia chipset has a large number of SATA slots, and it's possible that the designers were thinking that it would be wise to use them all. I can see now, why this is the case.
This is likely overkill - you could probably get away with using 2 of the 4 sets. But if you need and use Virtual Machines a 3rd or 4th set is not out of the question.
I suspect there would be performance boost, but I'm not entirely sure how we'd go about measuring this.
Just food for thought.
L1N64-SLI WS Ethernet DOA Part 2
Well, it seems that the Ethernet DOA - was not.
Apparently the firmware for my motherboard was not properly initalized leaving the MAC address for the Ethernet in it's default (and invalid) state.
I found through the helpful advice of another reader that setting the MAC address manually in Vista allowed me to use the on-board ethernet. Whoo!
I was quite happy about this and immediately did some benchmarking with a server on my network that has a RAID 0 disk and a GbE controller. The result under Vista was an astonishing 92 MB/sec - very close to the benchmarked maximum read speed of my disks.
Apparently there is another ASUS BIOS update out there or possibly still in beta that will allow you to write the MAC address value directly to the firmware. However because setting the address manually worked I have not invested much time in exploring BIOS updates.
Of course there is a caveat - I found that running the same transfer 12 hours later yielded performance in the 18 - 24 MB/s range. I guess the dynamic TCP windowing capability of Vista is not that smart :(
My guess is that if 99% of your traffic is internet based then the window function will tend towards a much smaller MTU, and the advantatges of the large MTU will be lost over the local LAN. This is of course speculation - but the likelyhood that the dynamic windowing function is unaware of the context of the transmission (local LAN vs. WAN) is quite likely given where it would sit on the network stack to do it's job.
Bottom line: reboot for multi GB transfers over GbE.
An interesting note however is that there is a very noticeable difference between my onboard card vs. netgear card. The onboard completely outpaced the netgear card even after rebooting and retrying the transfers.
Apparently the firmware for my motherboard was not properly initalized leaving the MAC address for the Ethernet in it's default (and invalid) state.
I found through the helpful advice of another reader that setting the MAC address manually in Vista allowed me to use the on-board ethernet. Whoo!
I was quite happy about this and immediately did some benchmarking with a server on my network that has a RAID 0 disk and a GbE controller. The result under Vista was an astonishing 92 MB/sec - very close to the benchmarked maximum read speed of my disks.
Apparently there is another ASUS BIOS update out there or possibly still in beta that will allow you to write the MAC address value directly to the firmware. However because setting the address manually worked I have not invested much time in exploring BIOS updates.
Of course there is a caveat - I found that running the same transfer 12 hours later yielded performance in the 18 - 24 MB/s range. I guess the dynamic TCP windowing capability of Vista is not that smart :(
My guess is that if 99% of your traffic is internet based then the window function will tend towards a much smaller MTU, and the advantatges of the large MTU will be lost over the local LAN. This is of course speculation - but the likelyhood that the dynamic windowing function is unaware of the context of the transmission (local LAN vs. WAN) is quite likely given where it would sit on the network stack to do it's job.
Bottom line: reboot for multi GB transfers over GbE.
An interesting note however is that there is a very noticeable difference between my onboard card vs. netgear card. The onboard completely outpaced the netgear card even after rebooting and retrying the transfers.
Still here
To answer a readers question: we're still up and running. I've been running around quite a bit lately and it hasn't involved spending a lot of QT with my 4x4.
As we get closer to the AMD launch I'll be providing some details on AMD's support for the upcoming Barcelona platform as well as the new R600.
When the time comes we'll be documenting the upgrade from the FX-70 to the new Barcelona chips.
Believe it or not, I'll be needing the CPU!
As we get closer to the AMD launch I'll be providing some details on AMD's support for the upcoming Barcelona platform as well as the new R600.
When the time comes we'll be documenting the upgrade from the FX-70 to the new Barcelona chips.
Believe it or not, I'll be needing the CPU!
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Goodbye NVidia
Almost two and a half months after the launch of Vista we don't have fully operational 8800 drivers. In addition, the platform drivers are of questionable quality as well.
This is in my opinion, inexcusable.
There are a number of others who are quite peeved, most notably the forum goers over at the once operational www.nvidiaclassaction.org ( I wonder where the site went? ). Though you can pretty much find a rant just by typing "8800 GTX Vista" into google.
So I've decided that when the R600 rolls out (I'm willing to be a little patient) I'm going to make the switch.
With any luck we will see a motherboard from ATI/AMD for the 4x4 platform sometime soon as well.
I hope that others who have NVidia products and are displeased will choose differently on their next purchases. Short of some sort of legal action, the only way we can show our dissatisfaction is by purchasing another product.
This is in my opinion, inexcusable.
There are a number of others who are quite peeved, most notably the forum goers over at the once operational www.nvidiaclassaction.org ( I wonder where the site went? ). Though you can pretty much find a rant just by typing "8800 GTX Vista" into google.
So I've decided that when the R600 rolls out (I'm willing to be a little patient) I'm going to make the switch.
With any luck we will see a motherboard from ATI/AMD for the 4x4 platform sometime soon as well.
I hope that others who have NVidia products and are displeased will choose differently on their next purchases. Short of some sort of legal action, the only way we can show our dissatisfaction is by purchasing another product.
L1N64-SLI WS Ethernet DOA
At least two other readers have had trouble with their on board Ethernet. I'd like to hear from anyone else who has had an issue as well just leave a comment.
A call for comments
Give the compatibility issues I've written about so far, I ask any readers of this blog to post comments about hardware vendors whose hardware works with Vista, or doesn't and any other information that you feel is relevant. At some later date I'll re post with a list featuring the naughty and nice.
Vista Compatibility
Recent events have me pretty ticked off.
I just bought a Logitech Orbit MP camera. A cool little camera with 640x480@30fps and Pan/Zoom/Tilt features as well. I bought it specifically because there is a logo on the box that shows: "Works with Vista". Two vista installs later (32 and 64) it doesn't work with Vista, nor do the latest drivers.
I also had to uninstall the latest version of the 8800 drivers because the nvidia display driver kept crashing after playing W.o.W. for 30 minutes. I'm now back to the Feb. 20th release. Which while it works has some problems. Several are incompatibilty with the Hold Em' game distributed with Vista Ulti and crashes after running DreamScene for more than a few minutes.
Why is it that Samsung has Vista drivers that work with my 4 year old laser printer? And why does a nice little icon show up with my T-Mobile dash? All of my joysticks including my Yoke and Pedals from CH Products work as well.
The things I've read over in the ATI camp indicate that they are pretty happy with their "Vista Experience". And I have to be honest my Laptop has an old school X300 in it, and it's been running Vista since October with not a single instability.
I'm baffled at how companies can release products that are advertised to work with Vista but don't. From what I've been reading, Logitech's track record with software support for their hardware is pretty bad. NVidia has major issues as well.
I would like to see some legal action related to the claims of "compatibilty" I feel that it is really going to be the only way to send a clear message to these companies that it is NOT ok to use us as beta testers.
I just bought a Logitech Orbit MP camera. A cool little camera with 640x480@30fps and Pan/Zoom/Tilt features as well. I bought it specifically because there is a logo on the box that shows: "Works with Vista". Two vista installs later (32 and 64) it doesn't work with Vista, nor do the latest drivers.
I also had to uninstall the latest version of the 8800 drivers because the nvidia display driver kept crashing after playing W.o.W. for 30 minutes. I'm now back to the Feb. 20th release. Which while it works has some problems. Several are incompatibilty with the Hold Em' game distributed with Vista Ulti and crashes after running DreamScene for more than a few minutes.
Why is it that Samsung has Vista drivers that work with my 4 year old laser printer? And why does a nice little icon show up with my T-Mobile dash? All of my joysticks including my Yoke and Pedals from CH Products work as well.
The things I've read over in the ATI camp indicate that they are pretty happy with their "Vista Experience". And I have to be honest my Laptop has an old school X300 in it, and it's been running Vista since October with not a single instability.
I'm baffled at how companies can release products that are advertised to work with Vista but don't. From what I've been reading, Logitech's track record with software support for their hardware is pretty bad. NVidia has major issues as well.
I would like to see some legal action related to the claims of "compatibilty" I feel that it is really going to be the only way to send a clear message to these companies that it is NOT ok to use us as beta testers.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Motherboard RMA
I have an RMA into Asus regarding the on-board network card issue. Another reader pointed out he had the same symptoms under xp 64 - I hope that the hardware is broken and not the software. Hopefully they are going to be able to send me a new motherboard so I can just do a swap.
In the mean time I will continue to make due with my little Netgear 1 GbE card.
In the mean time I will continue to make due with my little Netgear 1 GbE card.
Virtual Server 2003 R2 and Vista
Just a word of caution, it doesn't work on this machine.
I installed virtual server a couple nights ago. I rebooted, and my machine BSOD'd within 10 minutes of starting up. Periodically it would BSOD and reboot. Whacky. The error was in ndis.sys. Of course "Checking on-line" for a solution yielded nothing. Admittedly Virtual Server 2003 R2 does not feature Vista 64 as one of the compatible operating systems, oh well.
I installed virtual server a couple nights ago. I rebooted, and my machine BSOD'd within 10 minutes of starting up. Periodically it would BSOD and reboot. Whacky. The error was in ndis.sys. Of course "Checking on-line" for a solution yielded nothing. Admittedly Virtual Server 2003 R2 does not feature Vista 64 as one of the compatible operating systems, oh well.
More RAM installed
I got another pair of the Tracers this evening. I popped them in with out a hitch. The system seems a bit more responsive - especially in WoW during the flight from Westfall to Iron Forge (an aerial route in which there are many frequent scene changes) Route the frame rate seems to be better.
Interestingly, the steady state ram usage is now up to about 2 GB.
I'm sure the RAM benchmarks would be pretty high now. Unfortunately I tried to install Sandra a week ago and it doesn't work. No idea why, something about not being able to connect to a database. I wish vendors would test their software with Vista... >:0
Interestingly, the steady state ram usage is now up to about 2 GB.
I'm sure the RAM benchmarks would be pretty high now. Unfortunately I tried to install Sandra a week ago and it doesn't work. No idea why, something about not being able to connect to a database. I wish vendors would test their software with Vista... >:0
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
A few words about power management
One of the really neat things about Vista is the new resource monitor. It gives a very detailed in depth look at what is going on with your system. It offers a number of new metrics to see how your system is doing. Some of the readings that I got after installing baffled me a little.
In Vista, under the original task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Delete -> Task Manager) you can find your CPU utilization. I spent a decent amound of time looking at the CPU meter under XP 64 just to see what was going on under the hood. I found that for the most part the CPU never exceeded 30 - 40%. Only when a number of tasks or an installer was running would it go higher. Occasionally I'd leave WoW and EVE running at the same time and wonder why it wasn't quite as fast as it should be. Mind you, I'm overly sensitive and have high expections for my new machine. However when I was not using the machine, I found that the CPU was largely idle (1% Usage)
So after I installed Vista it seemed that my base usage had gone up, a lot. It also seemed that the general responsiveness of the machine was lower. I became curious and investigated further. I found that there is a new button, under the "Performance" tab in the Task Manager. It's the resource monitor. The resource monitor provides a vast amount of information. Amoing it's nice features is a CPU readout. Unlike task manager there are two data points, a blue line "Frequency" and the traditional green line, CPU usage.
I watched the graph and realized in short order that the CPU was by default, not running at 100%. In fact, most of the time it was clocked at 38%, the lowest speed possible. I typed in the word "Power" in the start menu and it brought up "Power Options". Sure enough, Vista is clocked at "Balance" by default. This means that if your cpu supports Cool n' Quiet (Lame name AMD) or SpeedStep Vista will enable it by default. It's nice that Vista supports these features by default.
So, if you feel like Vista is a little slower than XP, it probably is by default, but know that you are helping the environment by keeping the "Balanced" or "Power Saver" setting. You can always change it to give you a boost when you need it.
In Vista, under the original task manager (Ctrl-Alt-Delete -> Task Manager) you can find your CPU utilization. I spent a decent amound of time looking at the CPU meter under XP 64 just to see what was going on under the hood. I found that for the most part the CPU never exceeded 30 - 40%. Only when a number of tasks or an installer was running would it go higher. Occasionally I'd leave WoW and EVE running at the same time and wonder why it wasn't quite as fast as it should be. Mind you, I'm overly sensitive and have high expections for my new machine. However when I was not using the machine, I found that the CPU was largely idle (1% Usage)
So after I installed Vista it seemed that my base usage had gone up, a lot. It also seemed that the general responsiveness of the machine was lower. I became curious and investigated further. I found that there is a new button, under the "Performance" tab in the Task Manager. It's the resource monitor. The resource monitor provides a vast amount of information. Amoing it's nice features is a CPU readout. Unlike task manager there are two data points, a blue line "Frequency" and the traditional green line, CPU usage.
I watched the graph and realized in short order that the CPU was by default, not running at 100%. In fact, most of the time it was clocked at 38%, the lowest speed possible. I typed in the word "Power" in the start menu and it brought up "Power Options". Sure enough, Vista is clocked at "Balance" by default. This means that if your cpu supports Cool n' Quiet (Lame name AMD) or SpeedStep Vista will enable it by default. It's nice that Vista supports these features by default.
So, if you feel like Vista is a little slower than XP, it probably is by default, but know that you are helping the environment by keeping the "Balanced" or "Power Saver" setting. You can always change it to give you a boost when you need it.
Share your score
I just found this really cool site for sharing your Windows Vista Score. Pretty cool stuff check it out!
http://www.shareyourscore.com
After submitting your info you'll get a little icon like the one on the right bar
http://www.shareyourscore.com
After submitting your info you'll get a little icon like the one on the right bar
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