Re: performance Winxp vs Linux

From: Bob Halpin (halpin_at_qwpage.com)
Date: 10/04/03 

Date: Sat, 04 Oct 2003 11:02:07 -0400

Re: 'low' CPU consumption

Here's what we have observed.

A benchmark app we use executes in a given time on a new Win2K box.
(It's a busy, busy app with lots of disk I/O.) Average CPU time used
during execution was > 90%.

A new hard drive, identical to the one used above, is installed and Win
XP installed.

The benchmark app takes three times longer to execute. Average CPU time
was < 20%.

Long story short - Under XP, drivers from the motherboard driver CD had
not been installed (as they had under Win 2K.) When those drivers -
especially the "Intel Application Accelerator" was added, the benchmark
app executed in the same time as under Win 2K.

The background on this seems to be that without that driver, disk I/O
bottlenecks the system, but there is no process you can see consuming
the CPU time and the System Idle Process sits there soaking up > 90% of
the CPU.

We have had feedback from many sources that confirm this 'problem' -
many, many systems seem to be assembled, and Win installed, but
specialized drivers for the motherboard are not. I think it's fair to
say that *most* PC users would never notice the fact that their spanking
new P4 never actually allows an app to run anywhere near the speed it
could.

For more info on the Intel Application Accelerator, including a utility
to identify your chipset, try this:

        www.intel.com/support/chipsets,iaa

Hope this helps.

Bob

Relevant Pages

  • [Summary] Diagnosis fun...
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  • Re: Timing your loops
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    (microsoft.public.win32.programmer.directx.managed)
  • Re: Timing your loops
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    (microsoft.public.win32.programmer.directx.managed)
  • Re: [Announce] [patch] Modular Scheduler Core and Completely Fair Scheduler [CFS]
    ... Matt Mackall wrote: ... Probably not if you use common sense, and in the context of a replacement ... Is it common sense that a heavily-threaded app should be able ... to get hugely more CPU than a well-written app? ...
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  • Re: GetCurrentProcessorNumber() for XP?
    ... building a one->one mapping of APIC ID to CPU number; ... instruction executes, ... executing the appropriate cpuid instruction, ...
    (microsoft.public.win32.programmer.kernel)
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