[Elecraft] W9OY on P3

[Steve Ellington]

I forgot to mention that I DO have a separate graphics card and memory both 
on my old and new dual CPU Dell. Doesn't help usage at all.
Steve
N4LQ
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jack Smith" <jack.smith at cliftonlaboratories.com>
To: <elecraft at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2010 4:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] W9OY on P3


> The  graphics processor makes a big difference. I have several Dell
> SX-260 computers that run SDR programs painfully slow, despite 2 GB of
> RAM and 2.5 GHz CPU.
>
> It turns out that Dell's graphic processor has no dedicated memory but
> rather shares normal  RAM. That creates a huge bottleneck when running a
> graphics intensive program such as all the SDR software. Some is
> slightly worse than other but they all bog way down on the SX-260
> compared with a machine with a separate graphics card and memory. Same
> SDR program on the SX-260 may run 70% CPU but only 10% on a computer
> with a separate graphics card and memory, with similar CPU speed and RAM.
>
> Jack K8ZOA
>
>
> On 2/19/2010 4:18 PM, ab2tc wrote:
>> I would have agreed if Windows had offered developers an easy way of
>> prioritizing threads and processes. But as far as I know it doesn't (or
>> developers don't know how to use it). In my experience the performance of 
>> a
>> PC with 90% CPU load is miserable for all processes running on it. With 
>> that
>> said, I don't see why PowerSDR should incur that kind of CPU load on a 
>> 3GHz
>> machine. I am running XP home edition on a dual core Dell at 2.9GHz and 
>> 2Gb
>> of RAM. My CPU utilization is hovering between 15 and 30% with all of the
>> following running:
>>
>> LP-Bridge
>> HRD
>> PowerSDR with EMU-0202 sound card at 192ks/s
>> VE7CC cluster client (highly recommended)
>> Iexplore composing this message
>> Thunderbird mail client
>> DX Atlas
>>
>> I can add more applications and the CPU barely nudges upwards. I think 
>> most
>> people would agree that a car that has to be driven always with the
>> accelerator nearly to the metal is underpowered and not much of a joy. I 
>> am
>> a firmware developer and we always worry whenever the CPU utilization
>> exceeds 50% even though we use OS's that allow intelligent prioritization 
>> of
>> tasks.
>>
>> AB2TC - Knut
>>
>>
>> Al Lorona wrote:
>>
>>> Just a minor point: There might be a misconception that high CPU
>>> utilization means your computer is inadequate for the task.
>>>
>>> Actually, you want the CPU to work hard for you. It isn't only CPU you
>>> should worry about, it's what is called the 'run queue'. The run queue
>>> determines how long your job has to wait until it's serviced by the
>>> computer. It's okay to have 100% CPU (and in fact you want it) if you
>>> don't have to wait at all.
>>>
>>> A person assessing the performance of a computer looks at several other
>>> things besides CPU when determining what to tune for better performance.
>>>
>>>
>>> Don Wilhelm-4 wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> I am using a 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 with 1 GB of RAM, running
>>>> WinXP Pro and the CPU utilization ranges from 50% to 90%, so anyone
>>>> thinking of choosing this alternative with a lesser computer had better
>>>> think about a new computer first.
>>>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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