PC Configuration Needed for Optimal Performance with ATX

[joelgilb]

Looking into replacing my computer to see if I can speed up ATX. I have found over the years that although a good program, it has always had speed issues compared to its competitors. Was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on compenents that would make a real difference. Note that I personally do not believe "state of the Art" when purchasing a new machine, but rather a mix of compromises on the various compents, to get the best bang for the buck.

Here is what I am looking at:

1. CPU - AMD Athlon x2 6400, fastest of the AMD core 2 chips, as although Intel is currently faster, not sure it is worth the extra money or really adds anything to ATX.

2. Single PCI Express - Geoforce 8800 GTS graphics card with 320 mb of memory.

3. 1st HD - Western Digital Raptor 150 gb SATA 10,000 rpm hard disk with 16 mb Buffer

4. 2nd HD 500GB SATA -II 7200 RPM hard disk with 16 mb Buffer - "The Data Drive" for the most part.

5. two 1024 DDR2 mb 800hz / PC6400 memory cards (was thinking of going to 4 gb, but not sure it is worth the extra money)

6. Windows XP Professional 32bit, as ATX prior to 2005 won't run on VISTA

Rest of the system is not a real issue in my mind as I don't think anything else really effects operating speed

THx

Joel

[GeneInAlabama]

Joel, I am running a pentium 4, 3.4 GHz with 1 GB of RAM. On most returns, calculations and going from form to form is instantaneous except when I am doing a return with lots of forms. Then, I have to wait a second or 2 when going to another form. More RAM would probably help there. I am using MAX.

Gene

[Medlin Software, Dennis]

Soapbox on

The SLOWEST part of modern computing is hard drive access. I venture to guess that while some improvements have been made over the years, it is nowhere near as much improvement as any other area.

Fastest access times on the hard drive will help the most. (Old timers will remember that starting with DOS version 5.0 through today disk caching has been around trying to improve in this area - and causing problems!) Next up would be display speed (video card, drivers, monitor, etc.) if the program has lots of colors, shapes, graphics, and so on.

Memory - if you can rin Windows, you have enough. Sure, certain programs work better with more, but usually that is only noticed when you keep many programs open at the same time.

Chip speed is nice, but other than high end games, anything you buy is good.

I am not all that familiar with ATX, but from what I gather there are lots of forms to open and close. If you notice a delay during this time, then the forms are not likely preloaded so hard drive speed is critical, not memory or graphic speed.

One thing you can do to help almost any hard drive is make it LOUDER. Most drives come setup to reduce noise (and speed). There are many free utilities that you can use to set your drive to not lower noise (make it faster). Search for "acoustic management" for more information. While most will say removing the noise management will result in only a small performance gain, a small gain with the slowest part of computing will be noticed.

Soapbox off

Looking at your specs, I would put programs and data on the fastest drive and use the second drive for backups and other things not speed critical. Two cores are nice. It helps with multi-tasking. Data programs may never use both cores as they need straight line processing (can't go ahead with a second calculation until the first is done). If you are a one program at a time person, then a single core may be faster.

[Wayne Brasch]

Looking into replacing my computer to see if I can speed up ATX. I have found over the years that although a good program, it has always had speed issues compared to its competitors. Was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on compenents that would make a real difference. Note that I personally do not believe "state of the Art" when purchasing a new machine, but rather a mix of compromises on the various compents, to get the best bang for the buck.

Here is what I am looking at:

1. CPU - AMD Athlon x2 6400, fastest of the AMD core 2 chips, as although Intel is currently faster, not sure it is worth the extra money or really adds anything to ATX.

2. Single PCI Express - Geoforce 8800 GTS graphics card with 320 mb of memory.

3. 1st HD - Western Digital Raptor 150 gb SATA 10,000 rpm hard disk with 16 mb Buffer

4. 2nd HD 500GB SATA -II 7200 RPM hard disk with 16 mb Buffer - "The Data Drive" for the most part.

5. two 1024 DDR2 mb 800hz / PC6400 memory cards (was thinking of going to 4 gb, but not sure it is worth the extra money)

6. Windows XP Professional 32bit, as ATX prior to 2005 won't run on VISTA

Rest of the system is not a real issue in my mind as I don't think anything else really effects operating speed

THx

Joel

Joel,

Right after April 30, 2007 after I had finished all Sales tax and Payroll returns that were due after April 15, I installed Windows Vista Ultimate. I had and still have ATX products dated back to 1998 that run perfectly well on Vista. The program is not slow at all for any of those years. I don't know who may have told you that ATX and Vista cannot work together, but they are not correct.

Wayne

[joelgilb]

Joel,

Right after April 30, 2007 after I had finished all Sales tax and Payroll returns that were due after April 15, I installed Windows Vista Ultimate. I had and still have ATX products dated back to 1998 that run perfectly well on Vista. The program is not slow at all for any of those years. I don't know who may have told you that ATX and Vista cannot work together, but they are not correct.

Wayne

Deb at ATX Tech Support said the older programs would not run. I am glad to hear that is not true, as I would like to upgrade to at least Vista 32 bit, although I would prefer 64 bit to be able to access more than 4 gb of ram. Or should I say at least 4 gb ram as the graphics cards and other systems will cause Win 32 bit operating systems to be unable to access all the memory.

Joel

[joelgilb]

Joel,

Right after April 30, 2007 after I had finished all Sales tax and Payroll returns that were due after April 15, I installed Windows Vista Ultimate. I had and still have ATX products dated back to 1998 that run perfectly well on Vista. The program is not slow at all for any of those years. I don't know who may have told you that ATX and Vista cannot work together, but they are not correct.

Wayne

Wayne, one question, are you using 32 bit Vista or 64 bit Vista. I hear a lot of problems with 64 bit, but really want to jump to 64 bit computing?

Shame the Microsoft can't do what the Linux world can with 64 bit operating systems! Maybe we just need to have a dual + boot system... Win Xp32, Vista Ultimate 32, Vista Ultimate 64, GOOD OLD SPEEDY DOS (my personal favorite BTW - with QEMM and DesqView I multi-tasked with stability and a misbehaving program only crashed the misbehaving program).

Joel

[Medlin Software, Dennis]

Older programs. I still use Norton Commander for some file stuff (with Vista 32) - a version from 1991. Old habits are hard to break. A couple times a year I get someone wanting to buy our DOS based version.

For our software (Medlin), we tell people we have only tested the current versions with Vista. Older versions may work, but we did not try them enough to make any promises. Our time is likely better spent with current and coming versions, not making sure a program written in 1999 works with a newer OS. I am not niave enough to try to tell someone one of our programs won't work with Vista so I have to (smile) use honesty.

For grins, I just opened one of our 1987 DOS based programs and it opens and runs fine. A 1999 Win 3.1 (16 bit) based program installed and opened fine as well. We don't use any wierd OS dependent things in our programs. I did not use any compatibility settings. The strangest we do are a couple of "undocumented" API calls to Windows that Windows itself uses and keeps updated. Even for those, if they fail, we have an alternate method that would keep the program functioning.

added: Older programs will usually run faster with a new OS as you have usually updated the hardware. In our case, our DOS based programs which were lightening quick at the time appear even faster now - because we had to spend so much time optimizing for that environment and for the hardware of the day. Now, for most straight line programs (single task, one user) one spends very little time optimizing code because the computer can do things faster than one can type/click/read/print. I still dabble in low level programming for certain things, but that it a personal choice - end users can't see the difference any more. In other words, software/code bloat has very little penalty with current hardware.

MS has made a living on not outdating software with each new OS, and despite their effort to kill DOS/16bit/32bit stuff (to get you to upgrade), it still exists, is used, and functions fine. The only problems are programmer induced problems, such as trying to access hardware directly instead of through the OS.

Dennis

[Wayne Brasch]

Wayne, one question, are you using 32 bit Vista or 64 bit Vista. I hear a lot of problems with 64 bit, but really want to jump to 64 bit computing?

Shame the Microsoft can't do what the Linux world can with 64 bit operating systems! Maybe we just need to have a dual + boot system... Win Xp32, Vista Ultimate 32, Vista Ultimate 64, GOOD OLD SPEEDY DOS (my personal favorite BTW - with QEMM and DesqView I multi-tasked with stability and a misbehaving program only crashed the misbehaving program).

Joel

Joel,

I'm using 32 bit Vista Ultimate.

Wayne

[redux]

Older programs. I still use Norton Commander for some file stuff (with Vista 32) - a version from 1991. Old habits are hard to break.

My Norton Commander has a modified date of 09/16/1988, 2:01:00 PM and it works fine on XP.

[bardon719]

6. Windows XP Professional 32bit, as ATX prior to 2005 won't run on VISTA

Not true! I just purchased a new laptop with Vista Business, and I loaded all info from 2004 thru 2006. ATX states they will not support 2004 on Vista, but since it's loaded, I have no problems.

Don W

[Eric]

I just skimmed, so sorry if this has already been mentioned, but number 2 on that list is overkill for tax prep workstation. You're not going to get any speed boost out of ATX software with that video card. A beefy video card like that helps out the performance of games and 3D accelerated applications, but there is little advantage for most 2D desktop applications. If you really want to spend the money my suggestion is to get a $50 video card with dual outputs and spend the difference on the processor or RAM.

[Mel in Hawaii]

I just skimmed, so sorry if this has already been mentioned, but number 2 on that list is overkill for tax prep workstation. You're not going to get any speed boost out of ATX software with that video card. A beefy video card like that helps out the performance of games and 3D accelerated applications, but there is little advantage for most 2D desktop applications. If you really want to spend the money my suggestion is to, get a $50 video card with dual outputs and spend the difference on the processor or RAM.

I agree... Video card is only going to help with the 'fun' parts of your workstation. Faster processor and increased RAM are my recommendations. Hard drive speeds are somewhat of a factor, but modern hard drives all seem to perform just about the same for every day use. If you opt for gigantic hard disks, make sure your backup solution is comparable and up to the task.

[kcjenkins]

And keep in mind that if your case has room, multiple smaller hard drives may make good sense in several ways. One gigantic drive means everything is all in one basket. Two 80 gigs may be a better choice than one 160 gig drive.