Old problem- new solutions? Discussion

[Brent]

Anyone yet found a way to get Windows to free more resources? I enjoy the convenience of all the background apps running in the system tray, but unless I Ctrl-Alt-Del and shut down virtually everything, my games with a G400 run less than smoothly. It seem that the moment system resources fall below 70%, performance suffers, and that is reached after installing just a couple of apps that have background programs.
I have a Coppermine @667 and 128M RAM, and even running 256M RAM makes hardly any difference, as it seems that all the caching tweaks and swap file tweaks I have tried merely make minor improvements to hard drive related performance. I want something that allows my CPU to fully perform with each app I am actually using, and not be crippled by the background apps.
I note that Compaq over Xmas posted on their customer support site that their customers should consider disabling/ uninstalling background programs and not blame their systems for being unresponsive as Windows is to blame.
What is the use of a whiz bang system that has great gaming power, internet/ multimedia potential, answers the phone for you (my WinFax Pro 8 causes an immediate 9 to 11% drop in resources when running in monitoring mode!), edits videos etc, etc, when it can hardly run with its head above water if all options are up and running. Is this a legacy of an OS that is based on the days of DOS and B & W screens? Is Win 2000 (multitasking?) going to be saviour in this arena?
Any comments, discussion greatly appreciated.

[birdy]

I do know what you mean. To get round this I have set up the pc with a number of different users each given a specific task.

For example I sometimes want to watch dvd's but don't want all the little programs that normally run going at the same time so i have a watch a dvd user setting that has only the required programs for watching dvds (the remote control prog, zone selector and realmagic dvdplayer)

Obviously i sometimes want to do more than one thing at a time so i have a normal setting which allows me to do everything at once.

I know it's not the ideal situation but it does make things run more smoothly, plying games with only the systray and explorer running in the background certainly keeps things stable and fast.

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p3 450@600. bx6 ver 2. 128mb unbranded pc100. iwill 2930u scsi, diamond pro pci modem, advansys 1505 isa scsi, SB Live!, pioneer dvd103s, hollywood plus dvd card, plextor 40x cd rom, ricoh 1420 cdr, ibm 13.5gb @ 7200rpm, G400 @ max settings. All wrapped up in a big case with loads of fans. Belinea 10 30 40 17" monitor

[noackjr]

256 MB RAM would not help because Win9x cannot use it in any way that would solve this problem (can't really use it anyway). The problem lies with Win9x and the way it allocates and uses resources. The problem is not evident in NT or 2000. The only Microsoft OS that would really benefit from 256 MB RAM is Win2000. I've run 9x, NT, and 2000 with 128 and 256 MB RAM and the only one for which the difference could be justified was Win2000. I'm sure someone else has a better description, but that's the best I could do. By the way, dual processors is really nice for handling all those little background programs...

Jon

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My baby...

QDI Brilliant IV - Bios 2.0 Beta (Win2000 updates - email me if you want it!)
2 Pentium III 500 MHz
256 MB PC-100 SDRAM
Matrox Millenium G200 8 MB SGRAM - Bios 2.6-20
2 Creative Labs 3D Blaster Voodoo2 12 MB (SLI...)
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live!
Klipsch ProMedia v.2-400
Quantum Viking 4.5 GB UW SCSI (weak...)
Plextor UltraPlex 32X
Creative Labs PC-DVD Encore 2X

All more or less running on Windows 2000...


[This message has been edited by noackjr (edited 08 February 2000).]

[Brent]

Re dual processors- I thought Win 98 made little or no use of dual processors but NT did?
Have you tried NT with dual processors and just how much better do DP cope with background apps? Does NT with a single processor already have a big advantage here?
Can the architecture of Win 98 ever be improved to multitask better do you think?

[Raptor^]

Win 9x doesnt make any use of dual processors at all, it can't even tell the second one exists.

Win NT / 2000 does use them and when you run a game will stick all the background stuff and itself on 1 processor and use the other for the game itself, because games do not support dual processors, being written for Win9x (Q3 possibly excepted, cos its supposed to support dual procs, but I never tried it to find out)

If you normally kill all your background apps before running a game the performance increase from dual procs is insignificant, if not you might see some benefit.

As for the multitasking, NT / 2000s is much better as it actually pays some attention to the priority that background apps are supposed to be running at (idle normally) and so only services them if the processor isn't doing anything else.

[Raptor^]

Gurm - agreed, I don't notice the background apps at all either, in 9x or anything else, but I cant tell the difference between 128meg and 256 in 98, but I can in 2k. Perhaps I just have less stuff running

[Brent]

GURM,
Have you checked what percentage system resources you have. I have seen many systems without too many "toys" such as communication software, background full time virus checkers, cordless mice and keyboards, schedulers for backup and maintenance, MS FAst Find etc etc., that have resources above 60 or 70 % and thus do not suffer from a major slow down, but if not ??.
You have a 512M swap file - although you are implementing the common theory of improving the swap file performance, if I try this kind of size, in fact anything over about 300M, I feel that my system actually slows down.