System Performance

What can you do to improve your system performance?

If you are experiencing slow system performance, and would like to know what you can do to improve things, if adding more RAM will help or perhaps Increasing the page file size or setup, or how about increasing the amount of free hard drive space.

So what do you need to do?
Your machine is running embarrassingly slowly, the project manager is breathing down your neck, you need to deliver… before you complain to IT you need to better understand the reasons behind the poor performance. Whilst your IT staff may be able to assist with problems occurring due to Network Infrastructure and server issues, it is rare that they have a CAD expert amongst them and it is invariably more common that you need to provide that element of CAD support to IT, as well as your CAD Team.
Depending on your operating system, you can use the System or Performance Monitor to track system performance. These programs allow you to track information such as processor, physical memory, and paging file usage. Using these tools can assist you in determining whether you will see performance improvements by adding RAM, increasing page file size or configuration, or increasing the amount of free hard drive space.

Of course it is also worth looking at what else you have running on your PC. We all typically run a number of “base” programs that we just can’t live without… Email, Web Browser’s, Office Applications, Instant Messaging etc. etc.
We generally may not be able to live without these applications, but when it comes to working with CAD Applications, and we have a particularly large dataset or reference files and images etc. we can temporarily disable some of these memory hungry background applications.

We have probably all come across an “out of memory” error at some point. These errors occur because your computer runs out of usable memory before it is able to complete an operation.

“Out of memory” errors can typically occur during operations involving a large number of objects or files, or working with files that contain large reference files and/or images, or if you have several other programs running while you work.

Here are a few ideas on how to maximise the amount of available memory, as mentioned in the previous preamble article, you can find these suggestions on various web sites, I have added some additional notes for reference…

• Install more RAM. The great cure all, let’s face it, whatever your system can manage, throwing as much RAM at a system generally won’t hurt performance. If you can get more RAM into your computer, Windows dependence on the swap file is reduced, and the performance increases.
  
  In addition: If you are restricted by a 32 Bit Operating System and can only get 4GB of RAM, you have the option of using the /3GB boot switch

  To clarify, a 32-bit processor uses 32 bits to refer to the location of each byte of memory. 2^32 = 4.2 billion, which means a memory address that's limited to 32 bits can only refer to 4.2 billion unique locations (i.e. 4 GB).

  If you have 3GB of RAM installed in your PC, then 1GB will be dedicated for kernel usage, and the remaining 2GB is left for application usage.

  If you then upgrade to 4GB of RAM, then 2GB will be dedicated for kernel usage, and the remaining 2GB is left for application usage. This setup may be useful for a 32 bit server, but does nothing for the performance of your applications on your desktop machine.

  In order for your applications to take advantage of this extra 1GB you need to make use of the /3GB boot.ini switch. This switch configures 3GB of memory for applications, leaving 1GB for the kernel.
  

• Close unnecessary programs. Identify all those programs you are running and then shut down the ones that you don’t really need. You can use the Windows Task Manager, or similar applications to identify the applications and processes that are running and use the “End Task” capability to shut down any unnecessary applications. You can also review the Performance tab to try and determine which applications are using your systems resources.
  
  In addition: As you review the applications that you can actually live without temporarily while you work on that huge dataset, why not identify those applications once, then compile a batch file or script to unload all of those applications prior to starting up your CAD applications.
  
  I will follow up with a separate article on unloading and loading of applications using a simple batch file…
   
• Check the space available on the hard disk drive. Not only is space needed for various temporary files, but it is also needed for the Windows swap file. If your swap file is dynamic (grows and shrinks in size as needed) then freeing up space by deleting files or removing programs you no longer need will give the swap file more room to grow. If the swap file size is static (does not change), then freeing up more space on the hard drive will allow you to adjust the size of the swap file.
• Check and adjust system swap file settings. When Windows runs out of available RAM, it writes some of the information in RAM to the swap file so it can clear that area of RAM and reuse it. If your swap file is set to let the operating system manage your swap file settings, you may not need to make any changes; performance may suffer, however. If you prefer a static swap file, you may need to increase the maximum size of your swap file to avoid the out of memory errors.
  
  In addition: My preference is to run systems with a static swap file. This of course requires the hard drive to be of sufficient size to maintain a large amount of free space.
  In addition to maintaining a sufficiently large static swap file, you can further improve performance by ensuring that this file is maintained in an un-fragmented state.
  
  I will follow up with a separate article on setting up a static swap file and a tool to monitor and defragment your swap file…

Comments

[Tony C]

Great post. Yeah my computer at work sucks and is terribly slow. In addition, I'm always running out of system and virtual memory. I think civil 3d 2009 has a memory link. I always have to closed C3D after about 2 hrs of work because it gets to about 90% system memory about that time. Luckily I have a very powerful gaming PC at home.

Tony