Linux, Windows, now, future - Page 2

Ted Striker · September 3, 2003, 10:25

I think it will elijah

Asher knows better than me though

Asher · September 3, 2003, 10:40

Quote:

Originally posted by elijah
Asher: Will WinXP run faster than 2k on my box, baring in mind p4 optimisations etc? If so, I'm switching.

Incidentally, Win 2000 Pro, P4 2.8GHz, 512Mb DDRRAM, Geforce 4 MX440 SE 128Mb.

It's hard to say, you wouldn't notice a difference on a 2.8GHz with 512MB of DDR anyway.

One thing though, XP loads your most common programs faster after a few weeks of use. It keeps track of how many times each program is run, and the programs that get accessed the most get moved when the computer is idle to the fastest part of the harddrive, in contiguous form. It's a more improved version of defragmenting, basically, but it's done behind the scenes during idle time for a minute or so. You can set a registry key to set the threshold for it, from 0 (disabled) to 5 (aggressive).

It also has prefetching which will improve the boot performance after a week or so of use, too. It analyzes the boot order and rearranges the loading order of programs so there are less bottlenecks (some will hammer the CPU when starting, others the HD, that kind of thing -- this spreads it out for faster startup). And if one program uses mostly CPU to start (like Trillian), it'll prefetch the data for the next program into the RAM while the CPU is in use.

Whaleboy · September 3, 2003, 10:47

Thats enough for me, I'm just backing up my files and externel programs.

Asher · September 3, 2003, 10:52

You shouldn't need to back anything up. Just pop in the XP CD and select Upgrade as your install type.

It preserves all of your data, installations, and registry.

Whaleboy · September 3, 2003, 10:56

Excellent

Asher · September 3, 2003, 11:01

Like Linux, the NT kernel is having lots of "locks" removed in the kernel each iteration. There are "locks" on certain parts of the kernel code that can't be preempted by another task, but they're becoming fewer and fewer. Windows 2000 had less than NT4.0, XP has less than 2000, and 2003 has less than XP.

It lets it have even better latency, which helps with responsiveness to the user and scalability on servers.

Whaleboy · September 3, 2003, 11:04

That would explain how the 2.6 linux kernels's preemptive thing works. It's actually a pretty nice improvement, when I tested it, shaved a few seconds off boot time.