Craig Ringer wrote: > John Beardmore wrote: >> Amount of memory doesn't seem to be a bottleneck, so my guess is that >> CPU and memory speed are likely to be the main rate determining >> characteristics. > > Do keep an eye on your free RAM during heavy operations. Scribus likes > *LOTS* of RAM, and if you're swapping even a little bit your performance > will suffer considerably.
I don't think that's been the problem. > It's often informative to run the command "vmstat 5" in a terminal. > That'll print some summary system activity data every 5 seconds. You are > interested in the "swap" columns - you do not want to see anything but > zeroes in the "si" and "so" columns most of the time. If your system > starts swapping more than very occasionally, and especially if it does > so when the "cache" memory column in vmstat begins falling rapidly, then > you might benefit from more RAM. Unfortunately I don't have such a tool for XP. >> I guess faster memory and CPU might improve editing speed a little, but >> I assume given Craigs comment, that the extra CPU core won't help much >> there. Is that right ? >> > Correct. It will help the rest of your system remain more responsive > while Scribus is hogging the CPU, but it will not detectably improve > Scribus's performance. A second core can help single threaded > applications if they're doing lots of async I/O or network > communication, but Scribus does neither of those and won't benefit. OK. >> But will a second core help more with printing ? In other words, does >> any part of the printing process run in a separate thread that might >> benefit from a second core ? >> > Probably not any part that takes a significant amount of time. You'll > find that almost all the time is spent in the Scribus process preparing > the job; the later parts of the printing process probably happen very > quickly. You can verify this by running: > > "watch lpstat" Again not on XP. I was wondering if GDI calls might be taking a lot of resource, but I don't know. > and kicking off a Scribus print job. When a job appears in the "watch > lpstat" window, Scribus has handed the print job off to the print system > for processing. Before that a second core will not help. After that, > though, Scribus is probably basically idle, and the print system will > most likely only use one core for processing the job. However, you'll > find that the print system gets it done quickly enough that you won't care. > > If you're thinking of upgrading it's certainly best to focus on maximum > performance per core rather than on the number of cores. Yes. > By the way, many applications (but not Scribus most of of the time) > benefit quite significantly from a fast hard disk, as does general > system responsiveness. I have the same laptop as two of my workmates, > but they got it with only 2GB of RAM and with a 5400rpm HDD. My machine > is *massively* faster, and it's almost all down to the 7200rpm hard disk > though the extra 2GB of RAM does help with caching. Similarly, a friend > built a desktop with a Western Digital Raptor 150 (a 10,000rpm SATA hard > disk) and the performance benefits are quite impressive. Boot times and > program launch times are massively improved as well. So - if you're > using lots of other apps on there, not just Scribus, or you value > general system responsiveness a fast disk is worth thinking about. Don't > bother for Scribus, though, as it will not gain very much from a fast disk. OK - an interesting point. I get the impression that this laptop doesn't spend much time accessing the hard disk, so hadn't thought of going for a faster one, though I guess that at least the first time a program is launched will be disk limited. I suppose the other point is that a faster disk would probably use more power. Many thanks, J/. -- John Beardmore, MSc EDM (Open), B.A. Chem (Oxon), CMIOSH, AIEMA, MEI Managing Director, T4 Sustainability Limited. http://www.T4sLtd.co.uk/ Carbon Trust Consultant: Energy Audit, Carbon Footprint, Design Advice Energy Efficiency Accreditation Scheme, (EEAS), Registered Assessor Phone: 0845 4561332 Mobile: 07785 563116 Skype: t4sustainability
