Low performance - High spec

Hi there, I'm looking for ideas why my computer is not fully utilizing
the resources. I have a Core i7 920 with 12GB Corsair RAM.

For example of the low resource utilization, I am currently unzipping
10 Virtual machine RARs (so several GB apiece) yet the CPU utilization
is only 15% and only 2GB RAM. It's not struggling or anything, I can do
plenty of other tasks without any problems but it doesn't seem to be
consuming the resources it should or performing as it should. The unzip
actions are going to take hours.

I'm fully defragged (reg and disk) and cleaned up. Plenty of disk
space. about 200GB left on the OS Partition and 600GB free on the
"stuff" partition

Any ideas while I'm tooling around with the vista performance monitor
tools?

Thanks,


--
whitik

"whitik" <guest@unknown-email.com> wrote in message
news:ea8634c1cfb3f0176a2287d60a328f48@nntp-gateway.com...
>
> Hi there, I'm looking for ideas why my computer is not fully utilizing
> the resources. I have a Core i7 920 with 12GB Corsair RAM.
>
> For example of the low resource utilization, I am currently unzipping
> 10 Virtual machine RARs (so several GB apiece) yet the CPU utilization
> is only 15% and only 2GB RAM. It's not struggling or anything, I can do
> plenty of other tasks without any problems but it doesn't seem to be
> consuming the resources it should or performing as it should. The unzip
> actions are going to take hours.
>
> I'm fully defragged (reg and disk) and cleaned up. Plenty of disk
> space. about 200GB left on the OS Partition and 600GB free on the
> "stuff" partition
>
> Any ideas while I'm tooling around with the vista performance monitor
> tools?
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> --
> whitik


The slowest component determines the fastest speed a system can accomplish a
task.

The slowest operation would be writing out the decompressed data on the hard
drive. You have multiple file (reading and writing) operations going on, so
that would further limit write operation and there is also latency since the
read/write head would have to move around a lot at periods in which neither
reading nor writing is done.

Check Highest Active Time for Disk operation in Performance monitor. If
it's pegged at 100% and your CPU is only using 12% that's your speed limit.


Ways to improve that maybe use another drive to write to. Read and write
operations all on one drive, you have higher operational overhead. R/W head
moving around more and operational bandwidth split to reading and writing,

Where as if you have a second drive just for writing out the decompressed
data the R/W head doesn't have to move around as much. Reading and writing
can occur be done at the same time.

RAID (striping) - alternately writes to two drives at once.

RAID (striping) + another drive. Read from the single drive and write out
to the RAID drive. Writing takes significantly longer than reading.

Maybe try SSDs (solid-state memory storage device)? I hate calling them
drives, since they don't have a motor.

RAM-Disk.

My setup:
1TB - RAID 5 (striping + error correcting) for OS and Programs
1TB - Single drive - pagefile (virtual memory) also for data storage and
backup
4GB - RAMdisk temporary files and search index

"whitik" <guest@unknown-email.com> wrote in message
news:ea8634c1cfb3f0176a2287d60a328f48@nntp-gateway.com...
>
> Hi there, I'm looking for ideas why my computer is not fully utilizing
> the resources. I have a Core i7 920 with 12GB Corsair RAM.
>
> For example of the low resource utilization, I am currently unzipping
> 10 Virtual machine RARs (so several GB apiece) yet the CPU utilization
> is only 15% and only 2GB RAM. It's not struggling or anything, I can do
> plenty of other tasks without any problems but it doesn't seem to be
> consuming the resources it should or performing as it should. The unzip
> actions are going to take hours.
>
> I'm fully defragged (reg and disk) and cleaned up. Plenty of disk
> space. about 200GB left on the OS Partition and 600GB free on the
> "stuff" partition
>
> Any ideas while I'm tooling around with the vista performance monitor
> tools?
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> --
> whitik

The i7 has 4 cores, 0 through 3, and each core has 2 HT units,
0 & 1. HT doesn't increase the processing power of a core.
It allows for more efficient processing of HT aware processes
by better thread scheduling.

Your unzipping application is probably not designed for multicore,
or HT processing, so it's using a single HT unit at 100%, resulting in
a total CPU utilization of about 15%. I don't see much benefit from
HT, so I have it disabled in BIOS. Try disabling HT in BIOS. That
may allow you to use 100% of a full core, resulting in 25% CPU
utilization.

Re your memory usage, 32 bit Windows memory mapping allows
2GB of virtual memory space for apps, and 2GB for the OS. As
a result, most 32 bit apps can only utilize 2GB of memory. The
32 bit apps that can utilize 3 or 4GB of memory are large address
aware, and have a header to that effect in the program code,
which will flag 64 bit Windows to allocate more memory to the
application.

There are some limitations that may be found at the Bios level, reboot
you machine and hit F2 and enter the BIOS, see if there is a memory
count limit on your motherboard.

Other than that You *are* running your system at its full potential.
You just don't have anything that will use *all of your computers
resources at once*. Short of running several Graphics programs(Maya,
Photoshop, and 3d Studio Max), while having Media Player(fully loaded
with media) in background, and a game playing all at the same time (all
if which I have done), you are not going to fully use all 12 GB of ram
at one time. I've barely been able to max out just 2 GB. The only
reason your system is even using 15% of ram is because of Vista's
SuperFetch feature caching your pagefile and frequently used programs in
ram, which is very good at memory management.


--
JayD

Out of curiosity, why are you running 10 virtual machines?


--
lemur

::If *ANYONE* in this forum helps you, please click on
their *REP* icon. Thanks! (the middle scale icon in the upper right
corner)::

Thanks for the reply JayD.

How about the low CPU utilization? Compressing and Uncompressing files
is a CPU intensive task. why is my CPU so low when I am uncompressing
about 10 large RARs at the same time it was still less than 15%.

Also, yes I am aware of Vistas Superfetch and Readyboost and such (I
also have a 4GB 33mb/s Readyboost device). Which is also why I am
disappointed I gave it so much memory so it could use all it needs but
unless I run 4 or 5 Virtual Machines it hardly uses any of it


--
whitik

lemur;1159197 Wrote:
> Out of curiosity, why are you running 10 virtual machines?

Not running, I was -unzipping- 10 VM RARs. I was just using them as an
example because the RARs are huge and the uncompression should eat up
CPU cycles easy so I can't figure out why the CPU is barely working at
all.


--
whitik

Prime95 will fully test your CPU


--
lemur

::If *ANYONE* in this forum helps you, please click on
their *REP* icon. Thanks! (the middle scale icon in the upper right
corner)::

lemur;1159211 Wrote:
> Prime95 will fully test your CPU

Cool. I'll try it out. Thanks.


--
whitik

lemur;1159211 Wrote:
> Prime95 will fully test your CPU

well i tried this on my machine and i think this is the only thing
that's ever got my CPU to 100% and my ram to 95% :shock:


--
JayD