Time for a hardware upgrade

[Daklu]

So my Dell Vostro 1500 laptop is struggling while running the Labview dev environment. I suspect data is moving at near light speed which is causing time dialation and means from my perspective everything is veeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyy ssssllllloooooowwwww. Something as simple as activating a context menu by right clicking on a wire means I have to wait ~5 seconds for the UI to respond. Trying to enter or exit palette customization mode means I get a good 15+ seconds to get up and stretch.

Admittedly I usually have lots of other background processes running simultaneously and the slowdown isn't limited to Labview. It takes a good 5 minutes for my comp to boot and load Outlook. I'm really curious about what real world performance others have experienced when upgrading hardware/os. With that in mind...

• I know part of the sluggishness is due to dated hardware, but I have seen comments about Labview slowing down when multiple classes are loaded. With better hardware does Labview performance scale similarly to other applications or are there some inherent inefficiencies within Labview source code that cause the dev environment to perform poorly? (My current project has only 8 classes and one lvlib.)
  
• Conventional wisdom says the first thing to do to improve system performance is increase RAM. I have 2 GB currently but in XP the usable memory is limited to 3 GB, leading me to think I should move on to Vista to take advantage of a full 4 GB available memory. Is the extra 1 GB going to make much difference?
  
• Does LV run in 64-bit OS's, and if so, does it benefit much from the increased memory that is available?
  
• Has anyone run into issues with developing applications in Vista and deploying them to XP computers, either as executables or as applications running in the dev environment? (Other than font changes.)
  
• Is the Labview dev environment designed to take advantage of multiple processors? My laptop has two cores but still runs like a dog. Does LV itself benefit from quad core processors? (Again, I'm referring to the dev environment, not LV applications I write.)
  

[Neville D]

QUOTE (Daklu @ Sep 19 2008, 11:10 AM)

Admittedly I usually have lots of other background processes running simultaneously and the slowdown isn't limited to Labview. It takes a good 5 minutes for my comp to boot and load Outlook. I'm really curious about what real world performance others have experienced when upgrading hardware/os. With that in mind...

• Conventional wisdom says the first thing to do to improve system performance is increase RAM. I have 2 GB currently but in XP the usable memory is limited to 3 GB, leading me to think I should move on to Vista to take advantage of a full 4 GB available memory. Is the extra 1 GB going to make much difference?
  

The extra Gig will definitely help a bit. Get a faster hard drive as well. I find applications on my desktop load much faster than my laptop which has a slower HD.

QUOTE (Daklu @ Sep 19 2008, 11:10 AM)

• Does
  LV
  run in 64-bit OS's, and if so, does it benefit much from the increased memory that is available?
  
  
• 
  
• 
  
• Is the Labview dev environment designed to take advantage of multiple processors? My laptop has two cores but still runs like a dog. Does
  LV
  itself benefit from quad core processors? (Again, I'm referring to the dev environment, not
  LV
  applications I write.)
  
  

I think LV does run on 64-bit Vista but not in "native" mode, so it is not able to access the extra memory. There is a LV 64-bit Beta program that you can join if you are interested.

LV applications do take advantage of multi-core, but i don't see much performance difference in the development environment. Loading an application's project is still painfully slow as compared to just opening the top-level VI. Starting up LV 8x is still quite slow 6-8 s on my quad-core DELL desktop. Opening the Search menu for the first time after boot-up still takes a good 4-5 s to open as well.

N.

[crelf]

QUOTE (Daklu @ Sep 19 2008, 02:10 PM)

So my Dell Vostro 1500 laptop is struggling while running the Labview dev environment. I suspect data is moving at near light speed which is causing time dialation and means from my perspective everything is veeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyy ssssllllloooooowwwww.

When was the last time you reinstalled everything, from the OS up? I find that a reinstall once every year or so helps...

QUOTE (Daklu @ Sep 19 2008, 02:10 PM)

I have seen comments about Labview slowing down when multiple classes are loaded. My current project has only 8 classes and one lvlib.

That should be fine. How complex are your classes?

QUOTE (Daklu @ Sep 19 2008, 02:10 PM)

Conventional wisdom says the first thing to do to improve system performance is increase RAM. I have 2 GB currently... Is [an] extra 1 GB going to make much difference?

Probably not. I agree that the first place to look to speed up your system is to up the RAM, but unless you've got some much going in the background that your virtual RAM is being used extensively, then it probably won't help. Besides, 2Gb is plenty of RAM for general use.

QUOTE (Neville D @ Sep 19 2008, 06:11 PM)

Get a faster hard drive as well. I find applications on my desktop load much faster than my laptop which has a slower HD.

Oooo - that's a really good point. ...and it should force you to do a reinstall of everything too (see above)

[Daklu]

QUOTE (crelf)

When was the last time you reinstalled everything, from the OS up? I find that a reinstall once every year or so helps...

Not that long... maybe 5 or 6 months.

QUOTE (crelf)

That should be fine. How complex are your classes?

Most of them are not that complex at all. It ranges from 5 to maybe 50 (at most) VIs. I have three different class trees with my main top level classes containing the base class of the two other class trees as private data.

QUOTE (crelf)

Probably not. I agree that the first place to look to speed up your system is to up the RAM, but unless you've got some much going in the background that your virtual RAM is being used extensively, then it probably won't help. Besides, 2Gb is plenty of RAM for general use.

That's what I thought. After a little more digging I found one of the svchost processes occasionally takes over the processors and had nearly 12 million page faults. THAT can't be good for performance. It's odd though... Task Manager indicates I never hit 2 GB of memory use, yet it appears things are still being paged to disk.

QUOTE (crelf)

Oooo - that's a really good point. ...and it should force you to do a reinstall of everything too (see above)

Yes, that is a good point that I hadn't really considered. Investing in a nice 10k rpm drive should help things considerably. I think my notebook disk is using an old phonograph motor.

[crelf]

QUOTE (Daklu @ Sep 23 2008, 04:38 PM)

I think my notebook disk is using an old phonograph motor.

Don't forget to crank it between each http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramophone_record#78_rpm_disc_developments' rel='nofollow' target="_blank">78