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XPS Gen 2 Multitasking

post #1 of 9
7/7/05 at 5:11pm
Thread Starter 
I know that the XPS Gen 2's video card, along with the Pentium M 760, make it one hell of a machine for gaming. But what about for multitasking? If I want to have a total of around 25-30 firefox tabs open, Word open, and want to run Photoshop CS 2 while virus scanning, will the 760 lag a lot? What do current XPS Gen 2 owners think of its multitasking abilities?

I know that when Yonah comes out, it'll tear Dothan apart, which is another thing I'm concerned about (especially since we'll be seeing Yonah in just 6-8 months)
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post #2 of 9
7/7/05 at 5:13pm
25-30? Lots of porn?
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post #3 of 9
7/7/05 at 5:31pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by cutwolf
25-30? Lots of porn?
Nope, I open Firefox tabs and leave them open if there's something in them I need to remember. I have 8 tabs that I always open - one for each of three email accounts, CNN, weather, stocks, banking, and blogging, and then I open a new window to surf in for anything I have to lookup.

Like a few minutes ago, I was googling to find out some resources on how to use one of LaTeX's more interesting features, and I just right-click-open-link-in-new-tabbed my way down the page
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post #4 of 9
7/7/05 at 5:34pm
Lies.. it's porn.
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post #5 of 9
7/7/05 at 5:55pm
Thread Starter 
Okay okay, but what about my question? Can any XPS users comment on multitasking? I don't want to trust 3rd party reviewers because they aren't always necessarily reliable.
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post #6 of 9
7/7/05 at 5:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by toasterking
I know that the XPS Gen 2's video card, along with the Pentium M 760, make it one hell of a machine for gaming. But what about for multitasking? If I want to have a total of around 25-30 firefox tabs open, Word open, and want to run Photoshop CS 2 while virus scanning, will the 760 lag a lot? What do current XPS Gen 2 owners think of its multitasking abilities?

I know that when Yonah comes out, it'll tear Dothan apart, which is another thing I'm concerned about (especially since we'll be seeing Yonah in just 6-8 months)
Virus Scanning accesses the hard drive. So the bottle neck is the access time to the hard disk. Yonah will not see any increase to virus scanning performance. It may see a decrease in lagg to other apps caused by virus scanning, providing the apps you are using while scanning do not access the hard disk.
Since windows XP always uses the hard disk for the Page File (Virtual Ram) the OS will slow down some when something is bogging down the pipe to the hard disk regardless of what you do.
Also, the other apps you mentioned firefox, word, and Photoshop, are all event based applictions, meaning they only do work when the user does something (like clicking). This means the CPU is doing nothing most of the time. The lag you experience when choosing a new window or pictue in photoshop is caused by windows trying to swap the image or appliction data sent to the page file back into system memory. More ram is what is requred in your case, not more CPU oomph. A faster hard disk would help too.
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post #7 of 9
7/7/05 at 6:06pm
Thread Starter 
Ah, very good, very good. My current customization includes a 100 GB 5400 RPM drive; although 5400 RPM is a drop from 7200, I've heard that the higher density on the 100 GB disk makes it quicker to access. Is there any truth to this?

Concurrently, I'm thinking of 1.25GB of RAM, which is quite a step up from the 512 I have now (and experience lags with). I can also set up a giant page file on the drive if that helps, correct?
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post #8 of 9
7/7/05 at 6:07pm
Here's my desktop at work...


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post #9 of 9
7/7/05 at 6:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by toasterking
Ah, very good, very good. My current customization includes a 100 GB 5400 RPM drive; although 5400 RPM is a drop from 7200, I've heard that the higher density on the 100 GB disk makes it quicker to access. Is there any truth to this?

Concurrently, I'm thinking of 1.25GB of RAM, which is quite a step up from the 512 I have now (and experience lags with). I can also set up a giant page file on the drive if that helps, correct?
Upgrading from 512 to 1.25 will have a HUGE effect in your case.


The hard disk upgrade would help some, but not nearly as much, especially in a ($cost/performance increase) ratio. I have an 80Gb 5400k drive and its acceptable for now. I plan to upgrade to a 100Gb 7200k or better in a year or so when the prices come down, so i have some future performance growth room with my current system.
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