Underlying Factors

The speed of a machine depends on several underlying factors. These factors determine the maximum performance level after tuning. Think of these factors using a car analogy. A perfectly tuned Mazda Miata won't be as fast as a slightly out of tune Porsche 996 due to the underlying factor of power to weight ratio and other related factors. If you want to go fast, the way to go is to spend the money and get the Porsche, not tune your Miata. This section covers the major factors that separate the Miatas from the Porsches in the world of Windows 2000 Professional.

Hard Disk Speed

There is nothing other than lack of RAM that will slow down a Windows 2000 Professional setup like a pokey hard disk. Windows 2000 uses a sophisticated algorithm to start hard disk virtual memory (VRAM or the paging file) well before physical RAM is exhausted. The reason is so that the step to VRAM isn't sudden, as it would be if 2000 waited until all physical RAM was used and then suddenly switched to a large unit of disk RAM. Because of this, the paging file comes into use even on very heavy workstations with greater than 1GIG RAM. Actually, you'd be surprised how fast today's applications eat RAM. Figure 5.1 shows the Performance Monitor with the Page File Use counter opened. This shows a 128MB computer running Microsoft Word 2000, Excel 2000, Access 2000, and Paint Shop Pro. Each program has a small document loaded. Note that the system is using a small percentage of the created paging file, instead relying mostly on the physical RAM in this machine.