Boot Camp slowdown

[Mattheng]

I do occasionally have to work in the perfidious world of Windows so I have XP SP3 on a boot camp partition when I do. I have Fusion but it runs like treacle so I never use it.

I read reviews that windows on macs was one of the fastest experiences you could have in the wintel world.

Well it doesn't seem to be the case with Vectorworks.

I downloaded a Mac and a Windows version of 2012 so that I could continue working no matter which partition I was in and the Windows version is about 5X slower.

Is this normal?

Matt

[IanH]

You don't mention what bits are 5x slower.

I have recently moved from Windows to Mac and must say that the experience is very much the same between the two - neither stands out as a better platform than the other. My Mac is 4 years newer than my PC and its video card but speed differences are as I would have expected. Faster renders due to more cores on my Mac and a bit quicker screen redraws due to the newer video card. But otherwise, I don't think there is anything that cannot be attributed to anything other than more modern hardware.

Maybe something is crippling your Windows performance on the Mac hardware, like drivers or something.

[Mattheng]

Sorry, it's the rendering that is slow.

Have checked all XP updates, Boot Camp drivers etc and Office runs as quickly as I'd expect.

I really can't see why it's so slow on exactly the same computer...?

Matt

[IanH]

Is your Mac multi processor? Different versions of Windows are licensed to use different numbers of processors. If the version of Windows that you are using is licensed for less than the number of processors that you have on your Mac then the extra processors will not be recognised.

I had an old quad processor PC and had to run Windows Server for it to recognise all available processors otherwise I could only run 2 processors.

Look in task manager to see how many processors are available to you. Each processor, core or hyper thread (if enabled) should show up in the task manager. Ie A 2 processor, quad core, hyper threaded machine should show 16 graphs in the performance monitor tab.

[Tamsin Slatter]

Matt

XP is a 32 bit operating system so it won't be able to take advantage of all your Mac has to offer. Renderworks is 64 bit. It will definitely run slower on a 32 bit OS.

[IanH]

XP is 32 bit or 64 bit. Matt doesn't say what it is. Renderworks is 32 bit on a 32 bit OS otherwise it would not work.

Render speed between 32 bit and 64 bit addressing is generally going to be minimal difference, especially with Windows which has a slightly more efficient 32 bit virtual memory architecture than OS X. There will be the odd exception to the rule, but in my experience of running identical VW11 renders on Windows 32 and OS X 64, Renderworks is not one of them. The benefit of 64 bit address space is the amount of virtual memory that a single application can address, not speed - its 64 bit data (rather than address) word length that greatly benefits speed and that has been around for years irrespective of whether you run 32 or 64 bit OS.

If virtual memory is exhausted - it will simply run out of memory and give an error. With a 32bit OS, this limit is going to be somewhere between 2GB and 4GB (configuration specific but 2GB default on Windows. With 64 bit addressing, virtual memory limits will not be a factor with current technology.

If you don't run out of virtual address space, then a 64 bit OS has given you very little.

[Mattheng]

To be clear it's 32 bit Windows XP SP3, Mac OS 10.6.8 (64 bit?) and both OS's recognise both cores.

Thank you both but unfortunately, even though I have learnt a lot from your erudite answers, I still can't completely see why it's so slow and how to fix it.

I have spent days updating all the drivers and it still runs like treacle. I feel like I'm going nuts...

Matt

[IanH]

What Mac are you using?

Whilst you were rendering, if you could do a screen dump of the task manager performance monitor screen (the bit showing the CPU, memory, disk graphs and usage figures) and post it here, I can take a look at trying to see if there is a bottleneck somewhere. Also, if you could, go to the processes tab and sort based on descending CPU to see if any other processes are hogging the CPU.

The Windows licensing has nothing to do with cores (processors within a single physical processor), its physical processors. However am I right to think that you have a single processor dual core Mac?

Windows XP was available in a number of forms. XP Home does not support multiple processors (but does support multiple cores), XP Pro supports multiple processors, I forget if it supports more than 2, ie quad.

For instance, if you had an Apple Mac Pro, a dual processor machine each say with quad cores, if you were running Windows XP home, you would only be able to use one of the physical processors and will see 4 of the cores in the task manager, so 50% of the total CPU power will be available to you. If you were running XP Pro, then you would get the advantage of both physical processors and will therefor see 8 cores in the task manager.

I cannot think of any other explanation why you would see render times 5x slower on the Windows partition than your OS X one. However, I have never run Windows on Mac hardware other than in Virtual Box and even there performance in a graphics based app was quite reasonable compared with running same app on my MBP. It sounds like something is fundamentally wrong - possibly you could post your virtual memory page file settings and also available disc space on the Windows partition.

PS. As I understand it, whether a Mac runs true 32 bit or 64 bit is down to the machine. Some Mac models boot in 32 bit kernel (the heart of the OS) mode by default, even though 10.6 is 64 bit. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3770

[Mattheng]

Ian,

It's a MacBook Pro core 2 duo 2.33 ghz with 3 gb of Ram.

150 gb hard drive partitioned 50/50 for Mac OS 10.6.8 and Win XP SP3 32 bit.

I have an external FireWire 400 500gb G tech hard drive that I use as a Time Machine backup and a 1Tb Western Digital Passport USB 2.0 hard drive that I have partitioned mainly as Mac journaled that I use for additional storage.

I also have Fusion 3 for running Windows under Mac OS but it's too slow for words and MacDrive to enable me to read the Mac partition files when I am running under Boot Camp.

Vectorworks 2012 SP1, Mac office 2004 and 2011 and Win office 2003.

Struggling a bit with the screen dump under Windows but Win XP is definitely recognising both cores in the task manager.

And I think that's about it.

Matt