Best RAM and HD Performance?

I need to upgrade my current generation MacBook to 4gb of RAM. I have an option of having heat sinks and I have two questions: One, will the RAM with heat sinks (or heat spreaders) fit into the slots on the laptop? Two, because of the small size of the RAM bay and over all thinness of the computer, would it make any difference even having heat sinks?
Also, I need some professional/informed advice about what HD to buy for the laptop. I have these options: 320GB/5400/8MB, 320GB/7200/16MB, or 400GB/5400/8MB. Then second option costs more then the other two, and the last costs 20 more then the first. What is the performance advantage of the second compared too the others?
I have been informed that data density, in addition to cache size and rpm, is a performance factor as well. All are 3.0Gb/s.
I do video/photo/sound/finishing/ editing, and, on a more personal note, I do some hard core gaming on the machine as well.

lvguts wrote:
Awesome. I won't be spending extra for the heat sinks then.
I don't know of many people who use heat spreaders sinks except for people who build "show" computers and serious gamers or overclockers. If you want to, you could always add aftermarket heat spreaders if you've got an issue.
As far as the HD is concerned, you said that the cache would help with writes, do you know the increase in performance? As far as size is concerned, you seemed to intimate that the larger the drive the slower the unit would run. Is that correct? If so, the 400 would be knocked out. However, would the increase in RPM and cache size of the 2nd over the 1st overcome the slowness due to the large size (320GB)?
The buffer is just DRAM. It should be able to accept data as fast as it comes on the interface. Once it's maxed out, you're going to be limited by the speed that your drive media can take it. When you check specs, remember that's just the maximum transfer rate and you won't always be achieving that rate.
There's no doubt that a 7200 RPM should result in higher performance. It's probably only a matter of squeezing a little more performance unless you're doing something that's constantly accessing the drive for large amounts of data. It might help when you're starting up applications. If I were going to get another drive, it probably would be another 7200 RPM drive. If you think what you're doing is disk intensive, why not just run Activity Monitor and check on Disk Activity. You should get a good idea if what you're doing is taxing the drive.
I just said the boot time was a little longer. I'm not 100% why, although I vaguely recall someone saying it just takes a little bit longer for some sort of disk check at startup, if that makes any sense. It doesn't bother me since I usually put my machine to sleep instead of shutting down.

Similar Messages

How to check the usage of ram and cpu Performance for the particular application like sqlserver ,ms word

how to check the usage of ram and cpu Performance for the particular application like sqlserver ,ms word
ranki

Hi,
You can use Performance Monitor and add the required counters.
Check the below Technet article on Performance Monitor.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749249.aspx
Below are the steps to monitor the process in Performance Monitor.
- Go to the Performance Monitor.
- Right-click on the graph and select "Add Counters".
- In the "Available counters" list, open the "Process" section by clicking on the down arrow next to it. Select "% Processor Time" (and any other counter you want).
- In the "Instances of selected object" list, select the process you want to track. Then click on "Add >>" button. Click on OK.
Regards,
Jack
www.jijitechnologies.com

T400s Question of RAM and overall performance

I have a T400s. P9600 @ 3.53 GHz, 4 GB of RAM, Windows 7 64bit, 64 GB Solid state hard drive
Recently while writing my Masters thesis using microsoft word, the computer was very slow and had difficulties switching between Microsoft office 2003 Word and Excel. The Word doc. became rather large, filled with pics and files, etc. However working on other desktop computers with much slower processors and less RAM available I had no difficulties.
Furthermore, I used my wife's notebook, from another company, that has the same processor and RAM but operates on a 32 bit system and has a much better video card with 512 MB of memory with no problems. Also, when monitoring the system performance I never see the RAM operating at higher than 34% which the 64 bit system needs to operate. The last observation is what leads me to believe something is not working properly with my notebook that is only 6 months old.
Other than this issue this is the best computer I have ever owned, but I bought it mainly because it was ranked as the most powerful notebook in the industry, and I have problems with Microsoft office??
Is there a problem with using Office 2003 with windows 7 64bit?
Is this caused by the performance of the video card?
Or is there an issue with my RAM or Notebook?

A few questions:
1) Has the performance always been this way, or is it a new occurance.
2) Which video card do you have? If you are using the integrated intel video make sure you have the most up to date Windows7 drivers from Lenovo, if that doesn't seem to help you could try different releases to see which performs the best, a good way to see if the video is the issue is to do something video intensive (1080p video or the likes). It is somewhat unlikely that the video driver could influence the speed of office however since for the most part these are non-graphic intensive apps. Another thing would be to try using the Windows Basic theme, if you still have issues it is unlikely the video card.
3) There are alot of factors which can influence memory usage in 64bit windows, keep in mind in most situations only 64 bit applications can access memory above 3gb. What is the size of the page file? If the system is reporting the full amount of memory it is unlikely that it isn't available to the system. 34% of your ram seems high for just the system since my 3gb system has 1.1 gb in use with firefox, aim, openoffice.org and all the lenovo apps and avira anti virus going.
4) What antivirus software are you using, has the system been scanned recently and have you tried to reproduce the issue with the antivirus disabled?
5) How full is your HD. Even with SSD's things slow down quite a bit as the drive reaches it's capacity.. 64GB is a little on the tight side for Windows7.
Thinkpad T500-2081 CTO | T9400 2.53GHz | 8 GB RAM | ATI HD3650 + Intel GM45 | 15.4" LED WXGA+ | Windows 8 | ATI Catalyst 13.1 (non-switchable)
Thinkpad 390x | PII 333 | 256mb ram | NeoMagic 256AV | SVGA LCD | OS/2 v4.52

W520 with 32 GB RAM and slow performance

hi all
I post this info for those of you running into similar problems when upgrading the W520 to 32 GB RAM.
I've a W520 2720QM with Windows Server 2008R2 installed which I upgraded to 32 GB RAM with 4x8 GB CORSAIR Value RAM Modules. After doing this, the Laptop was incredibliy slow on performance and starting of programs took a long time.
I solved this with changing the Grafic option from Optiums to Integrated in the BIOS (1.35). After that, performace is back as before. In the BIOS there is a message saying, that the Optimus setting should be set only if Windows 7 is installed. As I'm not running W7 I had to change the setting.

Hmm, currently another guy with 24GB of RAM have similar issues here
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/W520-nVidia-optimus-does-not-work-after-memory...
Have a nice day!
Peter
W520 (4284-A99)
Does someone’s post help you? Give them kudos as a reward, as they will do better to improve | Mark it as solved if the solution works for you, so it could be reference for others in the future
=====================================
Sound Enthusiast and Enhancement (Post comments, share mixes, etc.)
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/General-Discussion/Dolby-Home-Theater-v4-for-most-Lenovo-Laptops/td-p/62...

Best option for better performance? Graphics card, RAM or new machine

Hi,
When running After Effects CS4 and rendering a layered effects scene I've notice the system and rendering time seem a little sluggish so I'm wanting to improve the systems performance and I'm wondering what my best route would be to achieve this.
New Graphics card?
More Ram?
Upgrade Mac for new model?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I currently have the following spec:
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 5 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B08
Graphics Card
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT:
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0602
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: 3233
Displays:
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected
Cinema HD:
Resolution: 2560 x 1600
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Thanks
Mark

> I found this under After Effects features, So is this a lie?
Native
64-bit operating system support, multiprocessor utilization, and
OpenGL acceleration help you work faster, taking full advantage of your
computer's power. Unmatched integration with other Adobe software
further streamlines your workflow.
Of the three things mentioned (64-bit, multiprocessing, and OpenGL), two are hugely important and one is minor.
> OpenGL—Interactive or OpenGL—Always On
OpenGL
mode provides high-quality previews that require less rendering time
than other playback modes. OpenGL can also be used to speed up rendering
to final output. OpenGL features in After Effects rely on OpenGL
features of your video hardware.
Yep. It can speed things up. Some. And at the expense of fidelity with the CPU renderer. The OpenGL-Interactive mode is the only one that most people use.
> So you'll need to explain the above comment because I'm not clear about
what you're stating, or at least the part about OpenGl not being
relevant to AE at all.
I said that "OpenGL is not very relevant at all to After Effects", not that it isn't relevant at all.
To use a car metaphor: If I wanted a car that went fast, I'd focus on horsepower, low-weight materials, and good tires first. Then, if I'd maxed all of those factors and still had some money left over, I might buy a spoiler for the back. But that wouldn't be my first area of focus.
Graphics cards can be very expensive. I see far too many people spend all of their budget on this less-important item and neglect the less expensive and more important factors like extra RAM and a second fast hard disk. I'm trying to keep you from making the same mistake.
BTW, the graphics card is much, much more important for Premiere Pro CS5. But that's a conversation for the Premiere Pro hardware forum.

Performance with 2GB RAM and SSD

I own a late 2010 MBA, 13" baseline model with 2GB RAM, w/SSD. I am using Snow Leopard, and it runs perfectly. I would like to upgrade to ML to sync with ipad, but a concerned with performance. I use my MBA for word processing, emails, and internet surfing, including occasional movie downloads. I cannot upgrade the RAM on this model. I would therefore very much appreciate if someone who has run the latest versio of ML on this model can inform me of its performance w/2GB RAM and an SSD drive. (I know it can run; I want to know how it runs). Thanks very much!

Just went through the same situation with my 2006 iMac. Technically my memory tops out at 3gigs, but I can get 4 in there if I insist (though the machine won't take full advantage).
After a considerable amount of research, and hearing some horror stories of some folks who dove straight into Lion on older machines, I opted on upgrading memory to 3gig, backing up all my data, then running a clean install of Snow Leopard. I then reinstalled all my stuff, followed with a run of Monolingual (a shareware program that removes unnecessary languages and builds), then ran OnyX (another shareware) to run scripts and check/repair permissions.
Works fantastic. Machine is operating perfectly on 10.6.8 and with the memory upgrade and clean drive its running faster than ever. Definite new breath of life in the machine.
As per memory upgrade, I'd recommend going to Crucial. They're very Mac friendly, customer oriented, and reasonably priced. They have a small program you can download that scans your machine to determine the correct chip required, then brings you stright to an info and ordering page. I managed to get a 2gig chip with shipping for about $25. With the Snow Leopard upgrade total cost was under $60 for resuscitation.

Premiere Elements 10 Bad/No performance on Win 8 64-bit Core i5-4440 16gig ram and GeForce GTX-650

Since just over a year i'm the owner of Premiere Elements 10, however it has never pleased me due to bad and inconsistant performance. Just putting video's one after another without any transitions works so-so a few frames per second (which is rediculus). But when i start doing things like motion keyframes, i have no preview at all just a bit of choppy audio. First i thought it was my laptop (a win 7 64-bit core i7 3rd gen, with geforce 610m and 8gig of ram) not bad but i thought well it is a laptop so it might be a bit slower, i'll have to deal with it. However since a few months i own a new PC (specs above), and experience the very same issue. No performance! Every time i think about editing a video i start the program and within a few minutes i get so angry with it that i close it and leave the video's be.
Pre-Rendering the workspace also has no effect at all. I have no red bar above the timeline (sometimes even green).
And worst of all it keeps messing up the timing of the video while editing. If you change a clip in the timeline all clips following (the motion edits) are destroyed. Which is only visible after a few hours of rendering, since live preview is only audio.
What in the world can be done to fix this problem. As you probably can read i'm pretty annoyed.
The free video editing software that comes with the gopro moves rotates and scales smoothly in live playback, so it is not impossible on the machine. (too bad the functionality of this program is so limited, else i could finally throw Premiere Elements away!).
Is there anybody who can help me in my despair?

nVidia Driver Rollback PreElements-10 http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1317675 may help

I purchased and installed Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac, I now have to purchase the Microsoft Word software, is the student edition my best bet? I have a MacBook with 2 gig of RAM, and am curious as to any advice anyone has, thank you.

I purchased and installedParallels Desktop 8 for Mac, I now have to purchase the Microsoft Word software, is the student edition my best bet? I have a MacBook with 2 gig of RAM, and am curious as to any advice anyone has, thank you.
I currently have 71.88 GB out of 118.86 of HD memory available
These is the system overview:
Model Name:          MacBook
Model Identifier:          MacBook2,1
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          2.16 GHz
Number of Processors:          1
Total Number of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          4 MB
Memory:          2 GB
Bus Speed:          667 MHz
Boot ROM Version:          MB21.00A5.B07
SMC Version (system):          1.17f0
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State:          Enabled

the student edition is the best of you are a student and can get the discount.

I am looking to make the switch from pc to mac and have been eyeing the MBP 13". I would like to know whether it is fine to add RAM and SSD myself? any compatibility or warranty problems? what brand/type of RAM and SSD is the best fit? thank you.

i am looking to make the switch from pc to mac and have been eyeing the MBP 13". I would like to know whether it is fine to add RAM and SSD myself? any compatibility or warranty problems? what brand/type of RAM and SSD is the best fit? thank you.

Chamar wrote:
I'm possibly wrong here but I suspect opening a brand new MBP to add parts yourself will void the warranty. It is probably in the small print. I certainly would not risk it for an expensive Apple product.
Some (Windows) laptops have easy access to memory and disk slots that do not necessitate taking the complete back cover off. However, Apple does not make life easy for you.
However, if you are going for a 'used' machine it is probably worth a try.
Not possibly, definitely wrong, Ram and Hard Drive are considered user replaceable and will not void the warranty if changed.

Coherence Best Practices and Performance

I'm starting to use coherence and I'd to know if someone could point me out some doc on Best Practices and Performance optimizations when using it.
BTW, I haven't had the time to go through the entire Oracle documentation.
Regards

Hi
If you are new to Coherence (or even for people who are not that new) one of the best things you can do is read this book http://www.packtpub.com/oracle-coherence-35/book I know it says Coherence 3.5 and we are currently on 3.7 but it is still very relevant.
You don't need to go through all the documentation but at least try the introductions and try out some of the examples. You need to know the basics otherwise it makes it harder for people to either understand what you want or give you detailed enough answers to questions.
For performance optimizations it depends a lot on your use cases and what you are doing; there are a number of things you can do with Coherence to help performance but as with anything there are trade-offs. Coherence on the server-side is a Java process and often when tuning, sorting out issues and performance I spend a lot of time with the usual tools for Java such as VisualVM (or JConsole), tuning GC, looking at thread dumps and stack traces.
Finally, there are plenty of people on these forums happy to answer your questions in return for a few forum points, so just ask.
JK

Best Ram for audio and video

This has probably been discussed here many times, I did a search and didn't really find an answer so here goes
What is the best ram to put in a G5 2.5 dual. does quality vary much from company to company. I have heard of a few horror stories about buying cheap ram and Apples pro apps (Logic) did not run properly. So for those of you that have been through it, let me know what your experiences are
Thanks

Hello! Buy guaranteed ram from a reputable company such as Crucial or OWC. I've got cheap Kingston ram for a compaq for my G4 running 10.3.9 with no problems but I like to tinker and I'll try anything once. If you're not a tinkerer stick to the qualifications previous. Tom

I am considering a base 21" iMac ($1099 @ Best Buy) for home use. It would be my first Mac. Is the base model powerful enough for everyday home use and some light video editing or should I upgrade the CPU, Ram and to a Fusion drive?

I am considering a base 21" iMac ($1099 @ Best Buy) for home use. It would be my first Mac. Is the base model powerful enough for everyday home use and some light video editing or should I upgrade the CPU, Ram and to a Fusion drive?
Purchasing with the upgrades through Apple would add about $800 over the Black Friday deal at Best Buy. Just looking for some advice if I will be satisfied with the based model.

All models will do what you want. Upgraded models will do it faster than the standard models.
Just why are you thinking of switching to a Mac?

Best methods to speed up and increase performance of Linux?

I would like this thread to be dedicated to various speed up techniques and performance tweaks for Linux and especially arch.
K.Mandla offers quite a bit of interesting tweaks in the guide "Howto: Set up Hardy for speed", most of it applies to all linux distros.
http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2008/05/04 … for-speed/
If you have come across any interesting information relating to getting faster and better performance from Linux please do not hesitate to post. Thanks.

PrimoTurbo wrote:
I would like this thread to be dedicated to various speed up techniques and performance tweaks for Linux and especially arch.
K.Mandla offers quite a bit of interesting tweaks in the guide "Howto: Set up Hardy for speed", most of it applies to all linux distros.
http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2008/05/04 … for-speed/
If you have come across any interesting information relating to getting faster and better performance from Linux please do not hesitate to post. Thanks.
You will most likely end up wasting a lot of time for very little gain.
There are no miracle solutions, you either use faster apps or buy faster hardware.
The tweaks which are truly interesting without major drawbacks usually make their way on a default system, one way or another.
For example, for directory index on ext3 :
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ext … ystem_Tips : "Note: Directory indexing is activated by default in Archlinux via /etc/mke2fs.conf"
So if you want an advice, there are areas more interesting to explore, like programming for instance. You might end up having the capability to really improve apps performance, or write your own lighter alternatives.

A64 Tweaker and Improving Performance

I noticed a little utility called "A64 Tweaker" being mentioned in an increasing number of posts, so I decided to track down a copy and try it out...basically, it's a memory tweaking tool, and it actually is possible to get a decent (though not earth-shattering by any means) performance boost with it. It also lacks any real documentation as far as I can find, so I decided to make a guide type thing to help out users who would otherwise just not bother with it.
Anyways, first things first, you can get a copy of A64 Tweaker here: http://www.akiba-pc.com/download.php?view.40
Now that that's out of the way, I'll walk through all of the important settings, minus Tcl, Tras, Trcd, and Trp, as these are the typical RAM settings that everyone is always referring to when they go "CL2.5-3-3-7", so information on them is widely available, and everyone knows that for these settings, lower always = better. Note that for each setting, I will list the measured cange in my SiSoft Sandra memory bandwidth score over the default setting. If a setting produces a change of < 10 MB/sec, its effects will be listed as "negligible" (though note that it still adds up, and a setting that has a negligible impact on throughput may still have an important impact on memory latency, which is just as important). As for the rest of the settings (I'll do the important things on the left hand side first, then the things on the right hand side...the things at the bottom are HTT settings that I'm not going to muck with):
Tref - I found this setting to have the largest impact on performance out of all the available settings. In a nutshell, this setting controls how your RAM refreshes are timed...basically, RAM can be thought of as a vast series of leaky buckets (except in the case of RAM, the buckets hold electrons and not water), where a bucket filled beyond a certain point registers as a '1' while a bucket with less than that registers as a '0', so in order for a '1' bucket to stay a '1', it must be periodically refilled (i.e. "refreshed"). The way I understand this setting, the frequency (100 MHz, 133 MHz, etc.) controls how often the refreshes happen, while the time parameter (3.9 microsecs, 1.95 microsecs, etc.) controls how long the refresh cycle lasts (i.e. how long new electrons are pumped into the buckets). This is important because while the RAM is being refreshed, other requests must wait. Therefore, intuitively it would seem that what we want are short, infrequent refreshes (the 100 MHz, 1.95 microsec option). Experimentation almost confirms this, as my sweet spot was 133 MHz, 1.95 microsecs...I don't know why I had better performance with this setting, but I did. Benchmark change from default setting of 166 MHz, 3.9 microsecs: + 50 MB/sec
Trfc - This setting offered the next largest improvement...I'm not sure exactly what this setting controls, but it is doubtless similar to the above setting. Again, lower would seem to be better, but although I was stable down to '12' for the setting, the sweet spot here for my RAM was '18'. Selecting '10' caused a spontaneous reboot. Benchmark change from the default setting of 24: +50 MB/sec
Trtw - This setting specifies how long the system must wait after it reads a value before it tries to overwrite the value. This is necessary due to various technical aspects related to the fact that we run superscalar, multiple-issues CPU's that I don't feel like getting into, but basically, smaller numbers are better here. I was stable at '2', selecting '1' resulted in a spontaneou reboot. Benchmark change from default setting of 4: +10 MB/sec
Twr - This specifies how much delay is applied after a write occurs before the new information can be accessed. Again, lower is better. I could run as low as 2, but didn't see a huge change in benchmark scores as a result. It is also not too likely that this setting affects memory latency in an appreciable way. Benchmark change from default setting of 3: negligible
Trrd - This controls the delay between a row address strobe (RAS) and a seccond row address strobe. Basically, think of memory as a two-dimensional grid...to access a location in a grid, you need both a row and column number. The way memory accesses work is that the system first asserts the column that is wants (the column address strobe, or CAS), and then asserts the row that it wants (row address strobe). Because of a number of factors (prefetching, block addressing, the way data gets laid out in memory), the system will often access multiple rows from the same column at once to improve performance (so you get one CAS, followed by several RAS strobes). I was able to run stably with a setting of 1 for this value, although I didn't get an appreciable increase in throughput. It is likely however that this setting has a significant impact on latency. Benchmark change from default setting of 2: negligible
Trc - I'm not completely sure what this setting controls, although I found it had very little impact on my benchmark score regardless of what values I specified. I would assume that lower is better, and I was stable down to 8 (lower than this caused a spontaneous reboot), and I was also stable at the max possible setting. It is possible that this setting has an effect on memory latency even though it doesn't seem to impact throughput. Benchmark change from default setting of 12: negligible
Dynamic Idle Cycle Counter - I'm not sure what this is, and although it sounds like a good thing, I actually post a better score when running with it disabled. No impact on stability either way. Benchmark change from default setting of enabled: +10 MB/sec
Idle Cycle Limit - Again, not sure exactly what this is, but testing showed that both extremely high and extremely low settings degrade performance by about 20 MB/sec. Values in the middle offer the best performance. I settled on 32 clks as my optimal setting, although the difference was fairly minimal over the default setting. This setting had no impact on stability. Benchmark change from default setting of 16 clks: negligible
Read Preamble - As I understand it, this is basically how much of a "grace period" is given to the RAM when a read is asserted before the results are expected. As such, lower values should offer better performance. I was stable down to 3.5 ns, lower than that and I would get freezes/crashes. This did not change my benchmark scores much, though in theory it should have a significant impact on latency. Benchmark change from default setting of 6.0 ns: negligible
Read Write Queue Bypass - Not sure what it does, although there are slight performance increases as the value gets higher. I was stable at 16x, though the change over the 8x default was small. It is possible, though I think unlikely, that this improves latency as well. Benchmark change from default setting of 8x: negligible
Bypass Max - Again not sure what this does, but as with the above setting, higher values perform slightly better. Again I feel that it is possible, though not likely, that this improves latency as well. I was stable at the max of 7x. Benchmark change from the default setting of 4x: negligible
Asynch latency - A complete mystery. Trying to run *any* setting other than default results in a spontaneous reboot for me. No idea how it affects anything, though presumably lower would be better, if you can select lower values without crashing.
...and there you have it. With the tweaks mentioned above, I was able to gain +160 MB/sec on my Sandra score, +50 on my PCMark score, and +400 on my 3dMark 2001 SE score. Like I said, not earth-shattering, but a solid performance boost, and it's free to boot. Settings what I felt had no use in tweaking the RAM for added performance, or which are self-explanatory, have been left out. The above tests were performed on Corsair XMS PC4000 RAM @ 264 MHz, CL2.5-3-4-6 1T.

Quote
Hm...I wonder which one is telling the truth, the BIOS or A64 tweaker.
I've wondered this myself. From my understanding it the next logic step from the WCREDIT programs. I understand how clock gen can misreport frequency because it's probably not measuring frequency itself but rather a mathmatical representation of a few numbers it's gathered and one clk frequency(HTT maybe?), and the non supported dividers messes up the math...but I think the tweaker just extracts hex values strait from the registers and displays in "English", I mean it could be wrong, but seeing how I watch the BIOS on The SLI Plat change the memory timings in the POST screen to values other then SPD when it Auto with agressive timings in disabled, I actually want to side with the A64 tweaker in this case.
Hey anyone know what Tref in A64 relates to in the BIOS. i.e 200 1.95us = what in the BIOS. 1x4028, 1x4000, I'm just making up numbers here but it's different then 200 1.95, last time I searched I didn't find anything. Well I found ALOT but not waht I wanted..

Best way to improve performance?

I'm using a Dual Core Intel Xeon and starting to do video work on it with Final Cut Pro, etc.
I've got 8GB of DDR2 FB-DIMM at 667MHz.
I'm using a Cinema HD display, driven by a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT.
What would be your best advice at improving performance (if there is any). I doubt more RAM would help; not sure if there is anything faster than 667Mhz for this machine; Could a newer video card help rendering speed?
I'm generally very happy with how things work, can't afford a new MacPro, and am simply wondering if I should invest in something more affordable that could give me a slightly better kick?
Many thanks,
Czet

One thing that's always useful is to make sure you've got iStat installed and see how much of your RAM is actually being used because 8Gb is a lot, even for HD but it doesn't rule out a lack of RAM.
The 'biggest' increase in speed I've ever seen on any of my kit was a SSD. I've setup my Mac Pro with 2 x 128Gb SSD in the 2nd optical bay (in a 3.5" RAID 0 caddy) and setup Final Cut Pro to use 2 x 1.5Tb Seagate 7200.4's in software RAID 0 and everything flies. A 256Gb SSD is far more expensive (and slower) than 2 x 128Gb's in a RAID 0 caddy so a no brainer.
Graphics cards always help but in my experience the only place you'll notice significant improvements are Games and software such as Motion/Aperture where you really must have a decent card.

Best RAM and HD Performance?

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