Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Hardware degradation

On Fri, Jan 19, 2007 at 11:33:57 +0000 (+0000), Alan Pope wrote:
> /dev/sda:
> Timing cached reads: 7586 MB in 2.00 seconds = 3796.47 MB/sec
> Timing buffered disk reads: 208 MB in 3.00 seconds = 69.25 MB/sec

Disk bandwidth when streaming is rarely a problem (they have sped up
from ~15MBs->85MB/s these days), it's more latency that kills you
(hence why having a defragmented disk is helpful). I seriously
considered getting WD Raptors (10Krpm) rather than normal SATA disks
for my new PC but in the end couldn't justify the cost.

I think you also end up with a lot of cruft (and on windows, spyware
and viruses) which can have a serious effect on performance - I had to
fix a friend's computer which was virtually unusable due to such
programs.

On windows, I really do think a reinstall is the only way - I don't
know _why_ it has such an effect (lots of cruft in the registry?),
there are various other thigns to try - clearly the preload cache and
dllcache to force them to be rebuilt. OTOH I only have windows to
play games so I don't actually care much about windows itself :-)

On linux, I've never bothered, I know I have huge amounts of cruft on
it! My PCs generally end up being more server than desktop.

Adrian
--
Adrian Bridgett - adrian@???
GPG key available on public key servers