Would I benefit from more memory?

pealy

I have a pretty low-spec PC which Is struggling to cope with the what I'm expecting of it. It's a fanless mini-itx set-up which sits in my hifi rack, it has a passively cooled CPU (ie no fan) which only runs at 533mhz. I don't want to upgrade to a faster CPU as I need the silence of a fanless approach.

My question is whether adding to the 512MB of memory would speed it up at all, I'm running a web site using IIS under XP Pro and it really struggles. I'm wondering how I can tell what the bottleneck is, CPU, Memory, I/O, something else? I've tried looking at the performance measures in taks manager but Commit Charge, Handles, Threads, Kernel Memory etc mean nothing to me.

Any ideas?

irnbru_2

Is the box doing anything else other than serving web pages?

Is it serving static pages?

Running a database too?

illmonkey

memory is the cheapest way to boost a computers power. I would go for it, you can get memory so cheap now, its worth it.

How much does it have in it at the moment?

alared

Run this free check to see what it comes up with.
I would`nt think adding anything above 512mb would make much difference.

http://www.pcpitstop.com/

pealy

irnbru wrote:

Is the box doing anything else other than serving web pages?

Is it serving static pages?

Running a database too?

It's doing quite alot for a humble processor.. It's running IIS which is essentially an MP3 jukebox (single user) so the pages are far from static. The web site interfaces with a local web service which actually controls the MP3 playing software. All this works over a 802.11g wireless connection. on the plus side there's no video output as it's all controlled remotely.

pealy

alared wrote:

Run this free check to see what it comes up with.
http://www.pcpitstop.com/

pcpitstop helpfully suggested that replacing my PC would be more cost effective than trying to upgrade it - great!

Chippy_Minton

Have a look here for explanations of the performance measures and conclusions you can make from your performance figures.

irnbru_2

pealy wrote:

pcpitstop helpfully suggested that replacing my PC would be more cost effective than trying to upgrade it - great!

Oh dear :eek:

irnbru_2

pealy wrote:

It's doing quite alot for a humble processor.. It's running IIS which is essentially an MP3 jukebox (single user) so the pages are far from static. The web site interfaces with a local web service which actually controls the MP3 playing software. All this works over a 802.11g wireless connection. on the plus side there's no video output as it's all controlled remotely.

Are the mp3 files and the webserver all on the same box?

pealy

irnbru wrote:

Are the mp3 files and the webserver all on the same box?

I'm starting to think I should draw a picture..!

Everything's on the same box but the MP3's are dragged off a server to the local box prior to playing.

I was considering moving the web server to the MP3 server but it's an awful lot of trouble and in reality I'd like to get it all down to one fanless box..

LSM_2

run some basic performance monitor tests for processor time %, memory available mbytes, disk time %, pages/sec & Processor queue length. post min, max & avg results & we will tell u!