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The bottlenecks of any computer, what to look for? [closed]

The bottlenecks of any computer, what to look for? [closed]

Whether it is a laptop or a desktop, any computer is made up of several pieces of hardware that communicate with each other. Sending data back and forth to ensure that the user gets the desired results.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 302
Total answers/comments: 3
Guest [Entry]

"As always, it depends.

It helps to know what, exactly, you need the machine to do. Ask a couple of friends who use theirs the same way to let you look at their performance, and try to determine exactly what is the bottleneck for their machine. Then take you best guess.

I've generally found that it is worth given up a little bit of processor frequency in favor of more RAM or a faster hard-drive
  • . But that was for running medium-to-largish physics simulation and analysis codes. (These codes hold a lot in memory and do a lot of looking things up in on-disk databases, logging, and flushing of buffers to insure against large data losses in the event of a crash; thus the biggest demand is for RAM and fast disks...)

    If you are trying to build a very general purpose machine, I would recommend trying to get all your components just below the price point where you hit diminishing returns for that widget. That should work out pretty well.

  • ""Fast"" for hard drives means both high throughput and a large cache."
  • Guest [Entry]

    "In my personal experience the slowest component of any modern PC is the hard drive.

    Proof: pay attention to what operations make you wait the most in front of the PC, and note if HDD diode is flashing or not during those wait times.

    So if you intend to max-out all the components of your new PC as far as performance per dollar is concerned, your HDD will be the slowest component.

    RAID could help, but that really adds noise and vibration - unless you make a RAID of SSDs."
    Guest [Entry]

    "Q: Which is the biggest bottleneck?

    A: The hard disk. Most of the PC users still use the good old rotating hard disks. Those are the real bottlenecks when it comes to data transfer.

    The CPU, the RAM, the Cache and the GPU are pretty much ""fast"" except the HDD.

    Try getting your hands on an SSD and you'll see the difference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Jz7IMwBt4&feature=related"