Datamine / Computer Speed issue

[BluEsiNsOuL]

I am doing 16-table datamine right now, my PC is slowing down tremendously. I also have bittorrent on and thats it. I am at 2.4G P4 and 512MB, do you think upgrade to 1G RAM will help?

[SamIAm]

Hit ctrl-alt-del, and use the task manager to see what resource you're maxing-out. I imagine your processor is full before your RAM is.

Are you importing hands as you mine, or doing them all at once later? Are you autorating players, too? What speed harddrive do you have? That makes a big difference.
-Sam

[BluEsiNsOuL]

I had the timer set to 1 minute, but it actually took about 3 minutes to import. Yeah I had the autorate on, which I shouldn't. What is the best way to do that? Import hands all at once when I am AFK?

[SamIAm]

[ QUOTE ]
I had the timer set to 1 minute, but it actually took about 3 minutes to import. Yeah I had the autorate on, which I shouldn't. What is the best way to do that? Import hands all at once when I am AFK?

[/ QUOTE ]
Ugh. It takes you 3 minutes to import 16 hands? You definitely need to push-back the import rate. If you're not playing, there's no reason to import so often. Try importing every 20 minutes. If that still takes more than 20 minutes, then you're in trouble. You'll have to import after you've stopped mining.
-Sam

[LVGamb00ler]

I run XP Pro and there is a tool that is better than the task manager for determining what resource is your throughput bottleneck. To access it, using Windows Explorer navigate to C:\Windows\System32\perfmon.exe and double click or just go to Start->Run and enter perfmon and click OK. I'm not sure if this tool is available on other version of WinXP.

It displays the following three crucial resource performance measures: CPU utilization, average disk request queue length(ADQL) and page fault rate(PFR).

CPU utilization is obvious, but the other two may require some explanation. ADQL indicates how busy your disk drives are and PFR indicates if you have enough RAM memory to efficiently run the programs you require concurrently. The ADQL and PFR numbers are also interdependant. A high PFR will drive your ADQL higher because it is your disk drives that ultimately deal with page faults.

If you are seeing a constantly high PFR (yellow line on the graph) you should probably install more RAM. In this case your ADQL(blue line) is probably also high.

If ADQL (blue line) is high and your throughput is unsatisfactory, then you will need to upgrade your hard drive system somehow. If your computer has multiple hard drives, try to spread the total work load over all the drives by putting your Page file on a separate drive from the database. If you only have a single drive, then your options are limited. One of your solutions in this case is to make sure that your hard drive is not severly fragmented. If you are going to buy a new hard drive, buy a large one and move your database to it and use the old drive for the paging file.

Notes about my setup:
- 3 GHz P4 with hyperthreading
- 1 GB RAM
- 1 Serial ATA (SATA) drive
- WinXP Pro

I simultaneously datamine 20 tables on this computer. I run PT with 30 minute update cycle. The poker programs and tables only use about 4% of the CPU (run them all minimized!). The CPU load runs about 60% during the PT hand loading phase. During the load process there are a series of short term spikes in the PFR and ADQL. My interpretation of this is that my system if fairly well configured for this work load. If I were to invest some more money in it, my first choice would be to buy more memory because it is the simplest upgrade and relatively inexpensive.

[housenuts]

i data mine 12-tables on my Athlon 550 with 384mb RAM using Win XP Pro on a 10 minute cycle. takes about 5 minutes to import.

[SamIAm]

[ QUOTE ]
If I were to invest some more money in it, my first choice would be to buy more memory because it is the simplest upgrade and relatively inexpensive.

[/ QUOTE ]Also note that buying a BUNCH more RAM will let you move the database into a RAM disk, instead of harddrive. (This was easy with the Access backend. Do you think it would work with SQL?)

You'd get much faster reads that way.
-Sam

[BluEsiNsOuL]

Thanks a lot guys. Well actually it took me 3 minutes to import 45 hands from 16 tables. Last night I set it to 60 minutes and it worked fine. =D

BTW, what software do you use for datamine on party?