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- From: hosp@uni-paderborn.de (Holger Spangardt)
- Subject: Re: Optimizing 386SX-16's for Windows
- Message-ID: <1992Aug12.121839.12941@uni-paderborn.de>
- Sender: news@uni-paderborn.de (News Uni-Paderborn)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: ahorn
- Organization: Uni-GH Paderborn
- References: <Bsu89r.3K6@cs.dal.ca>
- Distribution: na
- Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 12:18:39 GMT
- Lines: 47
-
- goldrick@ug.cs.dal.ca (Majeed Goldrick) writes:
-
- >Hi everyone,
-
- >I am doing a bit of work for an office with a bunch of 386SX 16MHz machines.
- >They are using monochrome monitors (!!!).I would like to get them going on
- >some Windows applications, but it would seem to me that this would be
- >extremely slow in the current setup. The question is - how can I optimize
- >these machines for Windows at a reasonable price. Do I:
-
- >1) Buy new vga/svga cards/monitors for them - how much faster would
- > this make them?
- Though Windows is an graphic-oriented-shell the speed of the graphiccard is not
- important, a Herculescard might be faster than a vga-card, but a colorscreen
- makes more fun working with Windows.(of course expensive)
-
- >2) Add lots of ram (would RAM + a Cache be a good way to go?)
- The best way to tune the system with Windows is to buy as much RAM as possible.
- A Cachecontroller makes the system much faster,too, but this is not very cheap.
-
- >3) Invest in coprocessors?
- A coproc has hardly influence on the speed of Windows. There are only few
- apps like Winword that use this coproc.
-
- >4) Try something else (suggestions anyone???), or
- First of all, the WIN.INI and the SYSTEM.INI should be optimized.
- E.g.: You can use the SWAPFILE which makes Windows faster using the tempfiles.
- Do not load any pictures in the Background and start Windows with "win :" which
- suppresses the Windowslogo at the beginning.
- A fast Harddisk is very important,too. It should be a fast SCSI-HD, cause the
- datatransfer is very important.(SCSI is about 2times faster then IDE)
- The configuration of the system, like HD-Cache,Buffers,...to speed up DOS.
-
- >5) Give up and go home?
- Of course the best way to make Windows faster is to sell the 386SX (UUGH)
- and buy 486/50MHz, 256 Cache, 32MB RAM(50ns), 70HzSVGA-Card, 24``Monitor,
- 1GB SCSI (12ms,1500Kbps),etc
-
- >Please keep in mind that cost IS a factor. I would appreciate hearing what
- >your opinions are - if there is sufficient interest (ie. if this question
- >isn't too trivial) I'll summarize on le net.
- "There are no trivial questions" (don`t know who said that)
-
- >Later,
-
- >Majeed.
-
-