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A few comments: The newer machines do just about everything faster than the
machines of a couple years ago. Ultra DMA disk drives, higher speed
motherboard buses, etc. make my new 266mhz almost twice as fast as my older
200mhz. Also be sure to check how much memory is cacheable. Having more than
the cacheable limit results in a performance hit up to 5% unless you really
load up the memory. A lot of older PC's only cache 64 megs. Lastly, about
Matrox, they are supposed to be very nice if they work. But if you have
problems, support is a huge pain. It's a toll call to Canada with on-hold
times of 30 minutes or more, and they are very unresponsive to email. The
warranty is basically worthless, as the costs of actually contacting them for
repair or replacement could well pay for another card from a competitor.
In a message dated 1/7/99 3:09:07 PM Pacific Standard Time, eadamy@xxxxxxxxxx
writes:
> Before anyone rushes out to buy a faster machine they may not need, they
> might want to do some tuning of the machine they have. The sad fact is that
> while everyone touts processor speed, the real bottleneck on virtually
every
> machine is memory and disk (including swap file). In many cases, fast new
> machines as sold without enough memory and with disks configured for
> terrible performance. Memory is cheap and there is no reason why any
heavily
> used machine should not have 96-128 meg. Big disks are cheap too, but they
> need to be properly configured and most manufacturers and users do not -
see
> Jan 5 "Shutdown- Access Violation at Address" in archive for my earlier
> suggestions with respect to swap files. And finally, let us not forget the
> controller of everything - the operating system. Those needing robust
> performance and truly efficient processing, threading, and file caching
will
> take the time to install and learn Windows NT.
>
> My ancient, but extremely well-tuned, p133 with 512k of pipeline cache,
runs
> a dozen programs all day long including several in real-time and NT Task
> Manager Processes Monitor shows that the System Idle Process continues to
> account for 80% of CPU cycles and total process utilization rarely runs
> above 50%. Even the biggest programs load virtually instantly. Every time I
> think about dropping in one of the fast new motherboards into the box, I
> look at the stats and conclude "why bother".
>
> I do concur entirely with using large monitors - 17" monitors which I used
> to buy for $1200 can now be had for under $500. Ditto for multiple
monitors.
> Based on comments here, and my own experience, I highly recommend _matched_
> Matrox cards where a monitor is to be attached to each card. These people
> have been doing multi-monitor support long before Microsoft decided to
> support it. The Matrox desktop software (included with the Matrox drivers)
> does an outstanding job of changing resolution, desktop area, colors, and
> refresh rate without requiring reboot. Due to poor design, my TimberHill
> Workstation will not configure properly if loaded on a dual monitor setup
> so I switch to single onitor, load the software, and switch back to dual
> monitor all without unloading other software or rebooting.
>
> Earl
>
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