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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC )

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To: Dave Hanson who wrote (1543)	6/25/1998 7:49:00 PM
From: Zeuspaul	Read Replies (3) of 14778

Processor Speed..vs..64 MB RAM..vs..128 MB RAM I have been monitoring RAM and CPU utilization on my two NT machines. This is new to me so I am not sure that I am interpreting the graphs correctly. One machine is dual Pentium pro 200 with 128 MB RAM. The other machine (just got it ) is dual PII 333 with 512 MB RAM (2 sticks 256 MB as 4 x 128 MB had problems) The task manager has two sets of graphs as described by Spots in an earlier post. Both machines show a lot of activity on the processor graphs but nothing on the memory graph. I am guessing that the memory graph represents virtual memory? as it shows no activity. To me this indicates that there is sufficient RAM and speed is being affected by the processors in these applications. The dual Pentium pro machine receives data from a half dozen serial ports and does calcs real time. This might be similar to a trade machine in some ways. The processors are stable at 51 percent utilization. I would guess that if the machine had one processor the utilization would be 100 percent. The dual PII 333 also never shows any RAM movement on the graphs. If I execute a command in a small project ( 8000 data points) the CPU utilization graphs max out at 100 percent for 10 seconds. This is a cad application. The equivalent DOS application handles 2 million points in 512 MB RAM. My guess is that the NT version will start to access the harddrive with larger data sets. In the first example there does not seem to be a bottleneck but processor speed does seem to be fully utilized. In the second example the dual processors seem to be the bottleneck. I am not convinced that fast processors are overkill. I can see some advantage to opting for a faster processor and adding RAM as required. It is difficult to know the RAM requirements for one's application without a real world test. If one opts for the faster processor and underestimates the RAM requirement there is no loss as one just adds RAM. If the CPU is slow the only fix is to eat the first one and buy a second one. My personal preference is to start with a 128 MB stick for the reasons you state. However 64 MB of RAM in a Win98 machine is a substantial start. With 2 additional DIMM slots one can still end up with 320 MB RAM. My guess is that a PII 333 with 64 MB RAM is faster than a PII 233 with 128 MB RAM for many web surfing and some trading machine tasks. Zeuspaul

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