Pokertracker load time

[Richard Berg]

Jesus Christ, read what I wrote. I told him to upgrade to a blazing fast, modern SATA hard drive and 512MB of RAM (adding 256MB to his existing system).

He can spend 2-3X that amount on a more complete upgrade along the lines you suggest; I'm just telling him how to get the most bang for the cheapest buck. Personally, when spending over $300 on upgrades, I prefer to buy a separate box so that I have a backup machine, fileserver, network gateway, spare workstation for the gf, old DOS games, or whatever.

The 192MB machine was an EXAMPLE of SOMEONE ELSE'S MACHINE that was running MS WORD (NOT POKER DATABASES) on a WIN9X KERNEL. I hate to shout on a nontechnical internet forum, but geez the atmosphere is dense today.

[BradleyT]

You've written SSE code? Wow you must know everything there is to know about configuring hardware. And you're right. I don't know what I was thinking when I said that Windows XP needed tweaked. It runs optimally straight out of the box.

[BradleyT]

It's not like poker clients are getting more efficient. And it's not like new applications coming out need less RAM and less of a CPU than before.

Your suggestions remind of the mechanics that tell people to keep their old cars even though the repair costs are equal to or above the yearly costs of owning a new vehicle.

[Danenania]

Nerdfight!

[edrugtrader]

[ QUOTE ]
interesting software background. that says absolutely nothing about your understanding of hardware.

[/ QUOTE ]

i'm done with this thread and wont even read the rest of your post.

a master in computer science has almost nothing to do with software. it is nearly all hardware related... we write operating systems, extending the simple XINU OS to learn every aspect of what the OS does IN RELATION TO WHAT HARDWARE IT IS RUNNING ON... we wire mini computers using logic gates and write compilers that will generate programs to run on them... we study computer languages (NOT computer programs) to figure out what strong and weak points they have. we study architecture and probability to design the best CPU pipeline. believe me, you don't know ANYTHING about computers other than "mhtz = good, ram = good, GB = good".

you know how to USE a computer... you may even consider yourself a guru... but you don't know the fundamentals.

as for everyone else fighting about RAM... that is also silly.

256 megs is MORE THAN ENOUGH to run windows XP and poker tracker with any feasibly sized database. sure if you want to do that with 10 other programs runnings and your nightly de-frag at the same, it wont be enough... but to do JUST what you need to do at one time, it is more than enough.

If you have 1GB or RAM and your OS is constantly doing RAM swaps to disk while you JUST surf the web, you have problems. sure there will be disk access as your computer caches images and updates disk cookies... perhaps you are confusing normal disk access with memory paging, who knows.

what i do know is i've read a lot of bad advice already on this thread, and a lot of hard heads refusing to let the truth through. good luck to all of you in your next quake 3 national deathmatch tournaments with your hyperthreading CPU that boosts framerates 125 times because the electrons go faster, because "it is hyper!"

[censored] idiots.

summerize:
de-frag: not necessary if your disk is mainly empty and you run newer operating systems (which implies newer filesystems)

memeory: you don't need more unless you're running applications that need to have constant access to more data than you have free memory after your operating system has loaded. someone claimed, "you only have 64 megs left for programs!" uh... and how big is your poker tracker database? probably under 64 megs. this thread is about making poker tracker run faster, not doom 3. close all your other programs, get a spyware checker (likely the case), and try again.

you're hardware is more than likely good enough to run a program that does SIMPLE MATH on a relatively TINY database. if things are going slow, it is probably a virus. today's viruses don't destroy like the ones 10 years ago... rather they send email, or participate in net attacks all while propegating themselves. 99 times out of 100, a recent slowdown can be blamed on a new virus.

no one should listen to any advice in this thread...

[astroglide]

[ QUOTE ]
a master in computer science has almost nothing to do with software. it is nearly all hardware related... we write operating systems, extending the simple XINU OS to learn every aspect of what the OS does IN RELATION TO WHAT HARDWARE IT IS RUNNING ON... we wire mini computers using logic gates and write compilers that will generate programs to run on them... we study computer languages (NOT computer programs) to figure out what strong and weak points they have. we study architecture and probability to design the best CPU pipeline.

[/ QUOTE ]

very interesting. now, what does that have to do with a deep understanding of the design and operation of hard drives?

[ QUOTE ]
believe me, you don't know ANYTHING about computers other than "mhtz = good, ram = good, GB = good"

[/ QUOTE ]

when have you ever seen "mhtz" as an abbreviation for megahertz? anyway, i've been working in the industry for 11 years. i can assure you that i know more than those things.

[ QUOTE ]
256 megs is MORE THAN ENOUGH to run windows XP and poker tracker with any feasibly sized database. sure if you want to do that with 10 other programs runnings and your nightly de-frag at the same, it wont be enough... but to do JUST what you need to do at one time, it is more than enough.

[/ QUOTE ]

really? it's only been a day or so since i have rebooted. i have only used thunderbird (1 process), firefox (1 process), pokertracker, excel (1 spreadsheet), and 6-tabled on party. other misc crap, but not much simultaneously. i have a peak commit charge of 470,212K which would have resulted in a lot of swapping with 256MB of ram. having 1GB matters especially when running VMs, but it also allows me to disable my paging file entirely with no ill effects (which reduces HDD seeking).

your assumption that PT databases are 64MB is laughable, as is the underestimation of the amount of calculations it does (none of which are cached). i have retired databases due to size restrictions. my current one has about 160k hands in it: 680MB + 548MB for a total of ~1.2GB.

i already provided clear and complete proof that you were dead wrong about your 50% freespace assertion. if somebody wants optimal performance, nightly defrags are perfectly acceptable. weekly/bi-weekly is good for most people, and less than monthly is simply a bad idea for all but the lightest of users (e.g. grandparents).

[ThePopinjay]

astro, what are your thoughts on how fast my pt database will be with this computer i am thinking of building:

3.4e w/HT p4
1gb ram
2x36.7gb 15k SCSI drives in RAID 0

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
Jesus Christ, read what I wrote. I told him to upgrade to a blazing fast, modern SATA hard drive and 512MB of RAM (adding 256MB to his existing system).

He can spend 2-3X that amount on a more complete upgrade along the lines you suggest; I'm just telling him how to get the most bang for the cheapest buck. Personally, when spending over $300 on upgrades, I prefer to buy a separate box so that I have a backup machine, fileserver, network gateway, spare workstation for the gf, old DOS games, or whatever.

The 192MB machine was an EXAMPLE of SOMEONE ELSE'S MACHINE that was running MS WORD (NOT POKER DATABASES) on a WIN9X KERNEL. I hate to shout on a nontechnical internet forum, but geez the atmosphere is dense today.

[/ QUOTE ]

For goodness sake, can't you apply the specific to the general without tripping over yout train of thought? It's not a matter of technical expertise to use common sense.

I don't care who owns the 192 meg machine. I was talking about your saying it's "zippy." Why the hell should I care who owns the damn thing?

Your standards for what is "zippy" seem to truly suck to me. 192 megs of RAM sucks, period. Like you say you do too, I prefer to get a new machine, and then have two machines, including one for back-up. You find it's a better way to spend your money, and I do too -- yet you recommend others do it a different way. Go figure!

As another poster notes, it's not like they're writing software programs any slower these days. They're getting more bloated all the time.

And -- pokertracker databases and programs of that type are obviously the kind of software it's very apropos to talk about people using and having the power to use with reasonable speed on, umm...a poker forum.

Just because you can keep a computer from being utterly useless or dying, doesn't mean you've spent your money well. And it sure doesn't make it "zippy." It's more on the order of an anecdote.

I'd recommend people spend money not to have a cool project or an old boat that somehow miraculously is still alive, but on something that fits todays and tomorrow's needs better. Plugging a raptor into an ancient machine to me is an absurd way to try to get "value" for your money.

I think I'm talking to a Victor Von Frankenstein, who wants to build a Frankenputer.

[astroglide]

i'll assume you mean prescott cores and not "extreme" cache (horrendously overpriced). prescotts are basically hotter, slightly slower cpus than northwoods. 15k scsi drives have no tangible difference over a raptor for desktop usage, and neither does striping. a socket 939 athlon64 and a raptor should do the trick for much less. if you're more comfortable with intel chipsets i can't find fault with that.

[astroglide]

if one elected to buy a new pc for speed, it would be dumb to get anything less than a FAST drive (raptor, maxline iii, 7k400/7k250). hard drives are the most overlooked aspect of pc performance by a mile. i wouldn't want a 733 for a variety of app reasons, but for general browsing and nerding around with a raptor it should be quite snappy.