[kwlug-disc] upgrading hardware/64bit OS

[Insurance Squared Inc.]

Good point, maybe it is the processor.  The processor fan on the machine 
spins way loud when we open up windows, it's working the CPU like a dog 
:).  I know that can get complicated though, not enough mem can make the 
processor work harder.  I normally just assume though that more ram 
makes my worries go away.  Perhaps just a cpu upgrade (or more 
specifically an upgrade to a machine with a better CPU) is the way to go.

What's out there these days for good cpu's?  I don't know even the lingo 
anymore, buying old XP boxes off kijiji and ebay have worked so well for 
me over the last 3-5 years.



On 30/08/10 01:04 PM, unsolicited wrote:
> You should be able to upgrade to 4GB RAM without any software changes, 
> and see a difference, if there is a difference to be seen. i.e. If 
> it's, or the machine, is memory starved, this should get you over a 
> hump. One vm with 4GB RAM hard, 2GB for VM, should be more than 
> sufficient no matter how much memory you have. i.e. If not running 
> multiple more vm's, 4GB would be sufficient - 32/64 bit won't be an 
> issue, and more RAM isn't going to help.
>
> Since it's a vm, you could try it on different machines you have, and 
> see to what extent you see a performance gain. e.g. More RAM on one 
> machine vs. a faster CPU on another.
>
> FWIW, on a Windows machine, virtualbox was so slow I went back to 
> vmware player. YMMV. You could try this vm under windows and just peek 
> if there are any noticeable performance changes.
>
> Any 64 bit OS can vm a 32 bit OS, but the reverse is not true. You 
> could also run the vm against physical disk partitions. (Not 
> recommended for Windows - it gets very unhappy at the hardware 
> changes. But if you only ever boot it that way / the vm hardware 
> doesn't change, you'd be OK.) [hw change as in dual boot AND vm boot.]
>
> So, you could copy the vm to a usb key, go to different machines, and 
> see if you can spot a difference. For that matter, I suspect with a 
> live cd and this vm on a usb key, you could walk around trying 
> hardware / speed.
>
> Do you have any sense as to the cause of the slowness? Is it lack of 
> memory, are you CPU bound, is the video slow?
>
> Insurance Squared Inc. wrote, On 08/30/2010 10:43 AM:
>> My wife is running Mandriva(32bit) on her business computer with a 
>> couple of gigs of ram.  Everything runs fine except her windows 
>> bookkeeping app.  I've got virtualbox installed to run windows and 
>> it's just slow -  slow enough that she mentions it.
>>
>> My thinking is that she needs more RAM.  To get more RAM, she really 
>> needs a 64 bit OS.  For a 64 bit OS, I need a machine that has a 
>> processor that will work with that (is that correct?  I've tried to 
>> install mandriva 64bit before on other machines and it objected 
>> because the hardware wasn't 64 bit).
>>
>> Am I on the right track here?  Upgrade her hardware to a new 
>> processor with lots of RAM, then upgrade the OS to take advantage of 
>> the RAM, then virtualbox will run faster?  If so, what kind of 
>> hardware should I be looking at, processor-wise and how much ram 
>> would you get?
>
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-- 
Glenn Cooke
Insurance Squared Inc.
(866) 779-1499
www.insurancesquared.com

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