Would a dual core processor help me with this?

My guess is it's not a processor bottleneck.

Run Windows Performance monitor to see what is going on. Compare
before copying and during copying. Check

- percentage processor time
- percentage disk time for each hard disk (programs and DVD database)
- page faults / second

I don't have XP with me now but on win2k performance monitor is under
control panel / administrative tools / performance
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 00:11:35 -0600, Don
<don.DeleteThis@NO-SPAMdonsautomotive.com> wrote:

>Would a dual-core (my choice in processors has always been AMD) setup
>make:
>1. A theoretical difference but not really noticeable to the user?
>2. A noticeable difference?
>3. A spectacular difference?

It would likely help based on my limited experience with
Hyperthreading (Intel's cheap version of dual core before dual core
came around). I get program stutters/freeze when large amount of data
is copied suddenly (i.e. when a large download completes and get
shifted from temp folder on one drive to final destination on other
drive). However, for a brief period of time I was on a HT P4 machine,
this did not affect the other programs. Once I went back to a
non-Hyperthreading single core A64, the problem came back again.

While I've not empirically investigated this issue, I'm highly
inclined to believe that having a second virtual core helped as one
core is stalled on the disk transfer, the other can still do work.
I've no idea why this happens since in theory, DMA is supposed to use
very little CPU power.

--
A Lost Angel, fallen from heaven
Lost in dreams, Lost in aspirations,
Lost to the world, Lost to myself
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 00:11:35 -0600, Don
<don.DeleteThis@NO-SPAMdonsautomotive.com> wrote:

>Periodically I have to refresh a couple of databases by copying a
>stack of DVDs to a harddrive. One susbscription consists of 10 DVDs
>and the other 6, so there is no way this can be made to run at night.
>The computer to which these DVDs are being copied has the following
>specs: AMD Athlon 3000, 786 ram, IDE harddrives and DVD drive, DMA
>enabled on all drives, Windows XP SP2. The hard drive to which the
>data is copied is NOT the one from which the programs run. It is way
>more than fast enough at all times except when this data is being
>copied -- at which time it becomes so painfully slow as to be almost
>useless. The programs I run are all business apps none of them
>cutting edge enough to be written for a dual-core processor.
>
>Would a dual-core (my choice in processors has always been AMD) setup
>make:
>1. A theoretical difference but not really noticeable to the user?
>2. A noticeable difference?
>3. A spectacular difference?
>
>My concern is not so much to reduce the copy time as it is to be able
>to keep using the box when UPS bring a stack of DVDs.

I would throw out a guess that you would probably be at about the
"noticeable difference" level if you were to go from an Athlon64 3000+
to something like an Athlon64 X2 3800+. Dual core should definitely
help keep the system more responsive and usable when copying these
DVDs. That being said though, you're probably also going to be
running into some memory limitations in addition to processor
limitations, hence the reason why you probably wouldn't see a really
spectacular difference.

Of course, if you've currently got an AthlonXP 3000+ instead of the
newer Athlon64 3000+, then the difference may well be spectacular.
Going from the AthlonXP up to an Athlon64 X2 not only would get you
dual cores, but also each core would be faster individually AND you
would be getting more memory bandwidth and lower latency. Even going
from a Socket 754 Athlon64 3000+ to a Socket 939 Athlon64 X2 3800+
should help on the memory front, though not by nearly as much as the
jump from an AthlonXP chip.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 00:11:35 -0600, Don
<don DeleteThis @NO-SPAMdonsautomotive.com> wrote:

>Periodically I have to refresh a couple of databases by copying a
>stack of DVDs to a harddrive. One susbscription consists of 10 DVDs
>and the other 6, so there is no way this can be made to run at night.
>The computer to which these DVDs are being copied has the following
>specs: AMD Athlon 3000, 786 ram, IDE harddrives and DVD drive, DMA
>enabled on all drives, Windows XP SP2. The hard drive to which the
>data is copied is NOT the one from which the programs run. It is way
>more than fast enough at all times except when this data is being
>copied -- at which time it becomes so painfully slow as to be almost
>useless. The programs I run are all business apps none of them
>cutting edge enough to be written for a dual-core processor.
>
>Would a dual-core (my choice in processors has always been AMD) setup
>make:
>1. A theoretical difference but not really noticeable to the user?
>2. A noticeable difference?
>3. A spectacular difference?
>
>My concern is not so much to reduce the copy time as it is to be able
>to keep using the box when UPS bring a stack of DVDs.
>
>Don
>www.donsautomotive.com

Dual core will make a noticeable difference, but probably somewhat
short of spectacular. Some heavy HDD activities slow down my dual
Opteron rig noticeably, even though CPU load stays fairly low. SCSI
drive(s) probably will make an impact as big as A64X2, if not even
bigger (for the task). Ever thought why servers with heavy I/O load
such as database are all SCSI? It's up to you though to decide if
this investment makes sense to you because SCSI, especially a RAID
config (RAID controller + 3 drives min. for data + separate system
drive) will cost you more than A64X2, even high end one.

NNN
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 03:18:53 GMT, "nobody@nowhere.net"
<mygarbage2000.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 00:11:35 -0600, Don
><don.DeleteThis@NO-SPAMdonsautomotive.com> wrote:
>
>>Periodically I have to refresh a couple of databases by copying a
>>stack of DVDs to a harddrive. One susbscription consists of 10 DVDs
>>and the other 6, so there is no way this can be made to run at night.
>>The computer to which these DVDs are being copied has the following
>>specs: AMD Athlon 3000, 786 ram, IDE harddrives and DVD drive, DMA
>>enabled on all drives, Windows XP SP2. The hard drive to which the
>>data is copied is NOT the one from which the programs run. It is way
>>more than fast enough at all times except when this data is being
>>copied -- at which time it becomes so painfully slow as to be almost
>>useless. The programs I run are all business apps none of them
>>cutting edge enough to be written for a dual-core processor.
>>
>>Would a dual-core (my choice in processors has always been AMD) setup
>>make:
>>1. A theoretical difference but not really noticeable to the user?
>>2. A noticeable difference?
>>3. A spectacular difference?
>>
>>My concern is not so much to reduce the copy time as it is to be able
>>to keep using the box when UPS bring a stack of DVDs.
>>
>>Don
>>www.donsautomotive.com
>
>Dual core will make a noticeable difference, but probably somewhat
>short of spectacular. Some heavy HDD activities slow down my dual
>Opteron rig noticeably, even though CPU load stays fairly low. SCSI
>drive(s) probably will make an impact as big as A64X2, if not even
>bigger (for the task). Ever thought why servers with heavy I/O load
>such as database are all SCSI? It's up to you though to decide if
>this investment makes sense to you because SCSI, especially a RAID
>config (RAID controller + 3 drives min. for data + separate system
>drive) will cost you more than A64X2, even high end one.

Is this SCSI advantage still true vs. a modern SATA-II system? I'm talking
about comparable spin & platter speeds for the drives - not the 15000rpm
SCSI jobs. In fact if the SCSI has to run off a PCI Bus card, vs. a PCI-X
one, I'd think the SATA-II, which usually has the controller integrated
into the chipset internal paths, thus bypassing PCI, would be a hands down
winner.

--
Rgds, George Macdonald
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 18:00:18 -0500, George Macdonald
<fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:

>
>So what is it about SCSI that is better which makes it the choice? I tend
>to think blame for your unreponsiveness during Symantec AV update is shared
>mainly between M$ and Symantec. Try a full system scan with Symantec AV
>and you won't see the same unreponsive behavior if you have the default
>(low) priority set for the scan. Of course it could be that Symantec sees
>AV defn update as an urgent, necessarily higher priority task. Personally
>I'm in utter digust with Symantec and they will not see one more single red
>cent from me.

Not being an expert in the theory of computer architecture, I know
that when the hard drive becomes the main bottleneck the solution is
SCSI (or one of SCSI RAID configs). As for Symantec AV, I usually
install whatever is required by my current employer to VPN in. Most
of the time it is Symantec Corporate AV (whatever release is current -
went from 7 to 10). Only once it was McAfee. But hey, it was
provided to me for free, and it does its job, so a few seconds of low
responsiveness is not that bad a price. And the corporate version
seems to never expire - updates keep coming for free.

NNN
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:29:10 -0500, George Macdonald
<fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:
>On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 03:18:53 GMT, "nobody@nowhere.net"
><mygarbage2000.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Dual core will make a noticeable difference, but probably somewhat
>>short of spectacular. Some heavy HDD activities slow down my dual
>>Opteron rig noticeably, even though CPU load stays fairly low. SCSI
>>drive(s) probably will make an impact as big as A64X2, if not even
>>bigger (for the task). Ever thought why servers with heavy I/O load
>>such as database are all SCSI? It's up to you though to decide if
>>this investment makes sense to you because SCSI, especially a RAID
>>config (RAID controller + 3 drives min. for data + separate system
>>drive) will cost you more than A64X2, even high end one.
>
>Is this SCSI advantage still true vs. a modern SATA-II system? I'm talking
>about comparable spin & platter speeds for the drives - not the 15000rpm
>SCSI jobs. In fact if the SCSI has to run off a PCI Bus card, vs. a PCI-X
>one, I'd think the SATA-II, which usually has the controller integrated
>into the chipset internal paths, thus bypassing PCI, would be a hands down
>winner.

As usual, it depends. The performance characteristics of SCSI vs.
SATA drives are somewhat different, and not just because of the
interface used. SCSI drives tend to be designed and tuned for
different types of disk access relative to SATA drives. As a result,
some things will be faster on a comparable SCSI drive and some things
will be slower. Generally speaking, lots of small and random accesses
will favor SCSI, lots of larger linear accesses will favor SATA.

In the case of the original poster, he's going to be doing mostly
large linear disk access, so SCSI would be a total waste of money.
Chances are that it would end up being slower than bog-standard SATA
disks unless you go for a 15Krpm RAID array, and even then the
difference will be rather unimpressive.

A much better speedup could probably occur simply by having a second
SATA drive and using that for the data files while loading the OS and
all program files and basically everything that is NOT related to the
disk backup onto the first drive. Actually I can't remember now, but
I think the original poster might have said that he already has such a
setup.


FWIW if you're interested in a more in-depth comparison of IDE vs.
SCSI, check out www.storagereview.com. They have research this sort
of stuff numerous times over the year and have got a fairly good
handle on where one does better than the other.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 23:23:36 GMT, "nobody@nowhere.net"
<mygarbage2000.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote:

>On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 18:00:18 -0500, George Macdonald
><fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>So what is it about SCSI that is better which makes it the choice? I tend
>>to think blame for your unreponsiveness during Symantec AV update is shared
>>mainly between M$ and Symantec. Try a full system scan with Symantec AV
>>and you won't see the same unreponsive behavior if you have the default
>>(low) priority set for the scan. Of course it could be that Symantec sees
>>AV defn update as an urgent, necessarily higher priority task. Personally
>>I'm in utter digust with Symantec and they will not see one more single red
>>cent from me.
>
>Not being an expert in the theory of computer architecture, I know
>that when the hard drive becomes the main bottleneck the solution is
>SCSI (or one of SCSI RAID configs).

In a server or workstation with multiple simultaneous tasks that was
generally the case - it may still be if you count the 15,000 RPM drives but
ATA/SATA has come a long way and for the usual drives most of us use, I
don't see what advantage SCSI could possibly have.

> As for Symantec AV, I usually
>install whatever is required by my current employer to VPN in. Most
>of the time it is Symantec Corporate AV (whatever release is current -
>went from 7 to 10). Only once it was McAfee. But hey, it was
>provided to me for free, and it does its job, so a few seconds of low
>responsiveness is not that bad a price. And the corporate version
>seems to never expire - updates keep coming for free.

I believe corporate IT is supposed to handle the annual corporate
subscription payments for AV defn updates. My beef with them is that it
breaks several parts of the underlying mechanisms of the documented Windows
API, the most noticable being network DDE... and their lack of warranty
(fitness for use if you like) and bug fixes is a disgrace. Bottom line:
they sell software which does not work, they will not supply fixes without
registering and then jumping through hoops -- and preferably some extra $$.
The day you buy it you're supposed to sign up for "Gold Insurance" to
ensure some kind of functionality.

--
Rgds, George Macdonald
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 06:07:02 -0400, Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20.RemoveThis@yahoo.ca>
wrote:

>On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:29:10 -0500, George Macdonald
><fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:
>>On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 03:18:53 GMT, "nobody@nowhere.net"
>><mygarbage2000.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>Dual core will make a noticeable difference, but probably somewhat
>>>short of spectacular. Some heavy HDD activities slow down my dual
>>>Opteron rig noticeably, even though CPU load stays fairly low. SCSI
>>>drive(s) probably will make an impact as big as A64X2, if not even
>>>bigger (for the task). Ever thought why servers with heavy I/O load
>>>such as database are all SCSI? It's up to you though to decide if
>>>this investment makes sense to you because SCSI, especially a RAID
>>>config (RAID controller + 3 drives min. for data + separate system
>>>drive) will cost you more than A64X2, even high end one.
>>
>>Is this SCSI advantage still true vs. a modern SATA-II system? I'm talking
>>about comparable spin & platter speeds for the drives - not the 15000rpm
>>SCSI jobs. In fact if the SCSI has to run off a PCI Bus card, vs. a PCI-X
>>one, I'd think the SATA-II, which usually has the controller integrated
>>into the chipset internal paths, thus bypassing PCI, would be a hands down
>>winner.
>
>As usual, it depends. The performance characteristics of SCSI vs.
>SATA drives are somewhat different, and not just because of the
>interface used. SCSI drives tend to be designed and tuned for
>different types of disk access relative to SATA drives. As a result,
>some things will be faster on a comparable SCSI drive and some things
>will be slower. Generally speaking, lots of small and random accesses
>will favor SCSI, lots of larger linear accesses will favor SATA.

Uh, my question was more rhetorical than may have appeared. With the
NCQ of SATA-II, SCSI has lost some more of its advantage, though I'm not
sure how the two queues differ in length and characteristics. If you add
in the by-passing of PCI in integrated SATA-II controllers, I think SCSI
starts to look even less attractive for even a small server system...
though it seems that some folks are finding it (SATA-II NCQ) a bugger to
get working with controller/disk incompatibilities.

>In the case of the original poster, he's going to be doing mostly
>large linear disk access, so SCSI would be a total waste of money.
>Chances are that it would end up being slower than bog-standard SATA
>disks unless you go for a 15Krpm RAID array, and even then the
>difference will be rather unimpressive.
>
>A much better speedup could probably occur simply by having a second
>SATA drive and using that for the data files while loading the OS and
>all program files and basically everything that is NOT related to the
>disk backup onto the first drive. Actually I can't remember now, but
>I think the original poster might have said that he already has such a
>setup.

Some of the slowness he's experienced could be due to the M$ file system -
if NTFS (assuming he used it) is not set up right you can get lots of
churning; also the WinXP defrag is a bit of a dog in some situations. I
wish he'd given more detailed info.

--
Rgds, George Macdonald
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 17:35:03 -0400, George Macdonald
<fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:

>On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 06:07:02 -0400, Tony Hill <hilla_nospam_20 RemoveThis @yahoo.ca>
>wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:29:10 -0500, George Macdonald
>><fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:
>>>On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 03:18:53 GMT, "nobody@nowhere.net"
>>><mygarbage2000 RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>Dual core will make a noticeable difference, but probably somewhat
>>>>short of spectacular. Some heavy HDD activities slow down my dual
>>>>Opteron rig noticeably, even though CPU load stays fairly low. SCSI
>>>>drive(s) probably will make an impact as big as A64X2, if not even
>>>>bigger (for the task). Ever thought why servers with heavy I/O load
>>>>such as database are all SCSI? It's up to you though to decide if
>>>>this investment makes sense to you because SCSI, especially a RAID
>>>>config (RAID controller + 3 drives min. for data + separate system
>>>>drive) will cost you more than A64X2, even high end one.
>>>
>>>Is this SCSI advantage still true vs. a modern SATA-II system? I'm talking
>>>about comparable spin & platter speeds for the drives - not the 15000rpm
>>>SCSI jobs. In fact if the SCSI has to run off a PCI Bus card, vs. a PCI-X
>>>one, I'd think the SATA-II, which usually has the controller integrated
>>>into the chipset internal paths, thus bypassing PCI, would be a hands down
>>>winner.
>>
>>As usual, it depends. The performance characteristics of SCSI vs.
>>SATA drives are somewhat different, and not just because of the
>>interface used. SCSI drives tend to be designed and tuned for
>>different types of disk access relative to SATA drives. As a result,
>>some things will be faster on a comparable SCSI drive and some things
>>will be slower. Generally speaking, lots of small and random accesses
>>will favor SCSI, lots of larger linear accesses will favor SATA.
>
>Uh, my question was more rhetorical than may have appeared. With the
>NCQ of SATA-II, SCSI has lost some more of its advantage, though I'm not
>sure how the two queues differ in length and characteristics. If you add
>in the by-passing of PCI in integrated SATA-II controllers, I think SCSI
>starts to look even less attractive for even a small server system...
>though it seems that some folks are finding it (SATA-II NCQ) a bugger to
>get working with controller/disk incompatibilities.
>
>>In the case of the original poster, he's going to be doing mostly
>>large linear disk access, so SCSI would be a total waste of money.
>>Chances are that it would end up being slower than bog-standard SATA
>>disks unless you go for a 15Krpm RAID array, and even then the
>>difference will be rather unimpressive.
>>
>>A much better speedup could probably occur simply by having a second
>>SATA drive and using that for the data files while loading the OS and
>>all program files and basically everything that is NOT related to the
>>disk backup onto the first drive. Actually I can't remember now, but
>>I think the original poster might have said that he already has such a
>>setup.

Not SATA, but otherwise yes, that is how it is arranged.
>
>Some of the slowness he's experienced could be due to the M$ file system -
>if NTFS (assuming he used it) is not set up right you can get lots of
>churning; also the WinXP defrag is a bit of a dog in some situations. I
>wish he'd given more detailed info.

Sorry abut that! Yes the drive dedicated to all the data copied from
DVDs is NTFS. The drive is ide DMA 6, NOT sata. I just checked it
and it was pretty fragmented, but the data is read off the drive by
both programs with no noticeable delay. To further clarify, when I do
my quarterly updates the entire folders are deleted before copying
begins. Of course, there could still be fragmentation from the other
database -- the subscriptions rarely arrive on the same day. There
are two databases -- one has relatively few very big files, the other
uses thousands of little files. Loading either database from new DVDs
causes the PC to behave about the same. The light on the DVD drive is
pretty much on all the time when copying either one . The DVD drive
is, I think, DMA2. For some reason, I suspect the DVD drive of being
the biggest hog but I will look in task manager next time UPS brings a
stack of discs.

What else can I tell you?

Don
www.donsautomotive.com
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

So how about this? I just logged in to the PC under discussion from
my home using NetOp remote control while the data drive under
discussion is being defragmented. Between the remote access and the
defragment operation being performed you would think the PC would be
VERY unresponsive but it wasn't bad at all. There seems to be
something specific to XCopy from DVD that particularly bogs it down.

Don
www.donsautomotive.com
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 23:13:12 -0500, Don
<don DeleteThis @NO-SPAMdonsautomotive.com> wrote:

>something specific to XCopy from DVD that particularly bogs it down.

Sorry, but XCopy as in the DOS xcopy?

--
A Lost Angel, fallen from heaven
Lost in dreams, Lost in aspirations,
Lost to the world, Lost to myself
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this? 

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 15:40:30 -0700, archmage.TakeThisOut@sfchat.org (Nate Edel) wrote:

>George Macdonald <fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:
>> So what is it about SCSI that is better which makes it the choice?
>
>As a bus, it beats SATA2 marginally (320MBytes/sec vs 300) and allows for
>multiple drives per channel (and continues to with SAS, through expanders).

20MB/s is a pretty small nit and is going to need PCI-X or a 2-lane PCIe
card?

>As a protocol, I'm not sure if the command queueing in SATA2 has caught up
>with SCSI or not; the NCQ implementation through SATA1 drives was definitely
>less powerful than the SCSI implementation.

Probably not but what SATA-II has does extend its reach up into previously
SCSI-only territory.

>As for controllers, and this is not inherent to SCSI itself, they tend to do
>a lot more offload from the processor. This can actually be disadvantageous
>for raw bandwidth given how fast processor speeds are, but can be a big
>advantage in terms of random access/transaction processing performance. This
>is not as big an advantage with say a $150 Adaptec board or similar (or the
>motherboard-integrated SCSI chips); also, many of the hardware RAID
>SATA/SATA2 solutions (like 3ware sort of thing) have equally powerful
>offload abilities to comparably priced SCSI solutions.

Processor load, as you say given modern CPU speeds, has not been a problem
for IDE since UDMA-33. More recently, one thing SCSI, as an add-in card,
cannot have is the integration into internal chipset data paths.

>Also, in an earlier post, you mentioned "not counting 15k rpm sorts of
>things" but of course that's part of the picture; for serious TP workloads,
>those make a huge difference and as far as I know are still only available
>for SCSI (though there's nothing inherent in that, just marketing - there's
>little advantage for home users and a lot higher cost/lower capacity.)

Well yeah - big servers could benefit but the market for SCSI is shrinking
rapidly. In fact, in the workstation/small server, much of the continued
"recommendation" for it is based on myth & legacy folklore. In the context
of the current discussion, it seems like a red herring to me.

--
Rgds, George Macdonald
 >> Stay informed about: Would a dual core processor help me with this?