Extra memory

[BoredBloke]

Does anybody know anywhere which graphically shows the effect on a pc of adding extra memory. My current client are complaining that their reporting is slow. They are trying to run it on a p3 800 with 256Mb Ram and windows XP. The excel macro which produces the reports is huge, but I don't see it as being particularly inefficient. Basically the PC is not up to the job and the limiting factor is memory.

I proposed buying more memory but was told that a new PC is on order and it would be the same spec as the one I have been given. A P4 2.8 with 256 Mb memory.

Basically they have to run these reports on a daily basis and would rather pay a guy - soon to be me - to sit and watch the screen for 3 hours per day while the reports run, rather than invest in £60 to upgrade their equipment.

[MrsGoof]

Buy the memory yourself
plug it in (don't tell 'em)
the watch it run quicker.
when they ask what you did tell 'em


btw 256Mb is not enought for XP (assuming that the new machine is XP) 512 or more is required in the real world.

[Daywalker]

I should know this but check MS webtulipe, I think 256 is the recommended minimum for memory when running XP. When running with this amount it is bad enough never mind actually trying to do anything with it.

[kramer]

if you want to record benchmarks then look at SANDRA...

[Toad]

To give you a rough idea of what's happening, have a look at the Task Manager / Performance.
For a more detailed view of things, run Perfmon and set up a few counters to monitor memory usage. Don't forget to monitor Page Faults per sec as well, as it'll be paging like buggery if you're short of RAM.
Alternatively, sit and do nothing until the new PC arrives.

[DimPrawn]

What is it with clients?

They ALWAYS buy the latest expensive CPU and then buy the absolute minimum memory. Idiots.

ALWAYS spend your money on memory first and then the rest on the CPU.

For XP SP2 running the usual Microsoft suspects you need at least 1GB to get decent performance, preferably 2GB. The OS flies with more memory.


256MB might be okay for Linux, for a modern Windows PC LOVES memory.

[MarillionFan]

May I be so bold

"The excel macro which produces the reports is huge"

Just out of interest. Does this macro have the line

application.screenupdating = false

In it, because if some bright spark has left this set as true then the macro will run about 5 times slower.

Just a pointer.

MF

[BoredBloke]

Cheers for the comments. The macro is pretty well written and not really what is slowing down the PC. I usually recommend that people put a gb in thier pc's but getting through to the people here is somewhat difficult. What I wanted was some recognised benchmark test which had been carried out on a pc running with 256Mb ram, 512Mb and 1Gb. That way I can show them a picture (graph) showing the performance gain for a small outlay in cash.

It gets better - My pc has shared video, so the 256 is not even 256.

I can't use the performance things in XP as they have been disabled in the build. I was going to show them how many times the page file was in use but couldn't get into it.

[MrsGoof]

can you hear the disk rattling away, thats pretty much the same as page file access.

[MarillionFan]

Tony.

What the command line does is turn off the updating on the screen. If your macro is doing stuff on the sheet and you can see what its doing, you can turn this off. Trust me - 5 to 10 time speed improvement.

MF