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Pentium 3 to Pentium 4 - degradation in performanc

2 replies [Last post]
Wed, 2002-12-04 09:06
P3 Scheduler
User offline. Last seen 20 years 16 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 16 Feb 2002
Posts: 18
Groups: GPC Malaysia
I have just upgraded my laptop from Pentium 3 1.13GHz (with Windows Me) to Athlon 1.4GHz (with Windows Xp) and noticed a vast decreased in
performance of P3 v3.0 compared to my older laptop running on older OS.

I have even tried P3 on a laptop with Pentium 4 1.5GHz (with Windows Xp) and found similar degradation in performance. Has anyone experience this?

Could it be that the newer OS (Windows Xp) contributed to the poor
performance of P3?

Upon increasing the RAM memory to 384MB, I found only a "very slight"
improvement in speed BUT still slower compared to my earlier laptop. You can easily notice the slow performance by running a "Global Change" on a 1300+ activities schedule. Even launching P3 application and opening project file are sloooow!

I am contemplating to "downgrade" the OS to Windows 98 instead of using the factory default Windows Xp OS. Is this a good idea? Do you think this will improve the performance of P3?

Looking forward to hear some comments from any P3 users running on
Windows Xp.

Best regards,
CS Ong
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Replies

Sat, 2002-12-14 11:56
#1
Bernard Ertl
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Joined: 20 Nov 2002
Posts: 757
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas, TURNAROUND & SHUTDOWN (T/A & S/D)
Sorry.. I meant 512MB RAM for XP... Not KB!

Bernard Ertl
InterPlan Systems Inc.
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Sat, 2002-12-14 11:53
#2
Bernard Ertl
User offline. Last seen 9 years 49 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 20 Nov 2002
Posts: 757
Groups: Petro-Chem / Oil & Gas, TURNAROUND & SHUTDOWN (T/A & S/D)
I have no experience benchmarking P3 to offer you, however, I thought you should be aware that there are many potential factors that could affect the performance of a program (any program):

1. CPU and system bus.
- Obviously, a faster bus is always beneficial.
- Sometimes a program is written with code optimized for a specific processor. Differences exist between different versions of Intels Pentium Chips as well as AMDs chips.

2. Physical Memory.
- The more the better. Windows employs a memory manager to swap programs and data out of physical memory to the hard drive (virtual memory) as needs dictate. The more physical memory you have, the less swapping that may need to take place.
Note that the amount of available memory is dependent upon the OS version you are using and how many concurrent programs (processes) are running in the background. Windows XP has a [b]much[/b] larger footprint than Windows 9x versions (Windows Me is a 9x platform). I think 512K RAM is the minimum you should have with XP.

3. Hard drive access speed.
- When using the virtual memory manager to swap memory out to disk, the faster the disk, the faster the program response.

4. Program architecture.
- Windows 9x handles 16 bit code more efficiently than Windows NT/2000/XP. If the program employs any 16 bit code, I would expect that code to perform better on the 9x systems.

Hope that helps!

Bernard Ertl
InterPlan Systems Inc.
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