RIP running slow....

[buzzgraphics]

Hey Guys, I've got a Dell Optiplex that I bought about 3 years ago to run flexi. It's only purpose is to act as a RIP for my mutoh and graphtec and I do no design work on it (illustrator and photoshop on my mac for that). It's running xp 2002 version on it as well. This thing has been connected to the internet off and on over the last few years, but is currently not (sneakernet works fine). However, the thing just really seems to be dragging lately, especially on larger rip files. I've done some searching around the web for optimization guides specific for this type of system but usually just find ones that are trying to make web browsing more snappy. Anybody got a link to an guide that would be more specific to my situation, as well as recommendations for upgrades that may help as well? It's currently a 3ghz P4 with 992mb RAM and a 250 gig hard drive that's about half full.

thanks in advance,
Rich

 

[choucove]

In a Dell system like this, about the only thing that I could suggest right away to help with speed is RAM and lots of it. Find out the memory type and speed compatible and put as much in as you can. With a Windows XP system (I'm assuming 32-bit) the maximum that you can use is a little under 4 GB. I would see if that could help out your performance. Adding another dedicated hard drive for temp files in Flexi could also help possibly, but the RAM would be more beneficial.

 

[buzzgraphics]

should i be dumping temp files from flexi? it just feels like somethings really dragging things down. I've been running large wrap files since day one - most are already rasterized in photoshop before transferring them to flexi - and I swear they didn't used to take hours to rip.

 

[Letterbox Mike]

Hours to RIP? Like literally hours? If it takes hours per file to RIP you should be able to justify buying a new beast of a computer, the time savings will make up for the cost in no time.

But in the mean time, add as much RAM as possible and add a second fast SATA hard drive for a scratch disk for Flexi (do not use USB or Firewire, they're not fast enough). You biggest problem currently is the RAM, but lack of scratch disk isn't helping.

 

[Keith Rae]

Its not all the time the amount of ram you have in a machine ( although more helps ) but whats using it. have you clicked on the Run command in the start menu and typed msconfig it will open the system configuration utility. click on selective start-up and then the start tab. every item selected is preloading and using system resources. If all your using the computer for is ripping and printing from you can disable just about everything just keep your video and printer drivers. Also check the startup directory to make sure no programs are being loaded there. Programs that you uncheck will still run they will just load completely from the harddrive.

 

[buzzgraphics]

thanks for the help guys. I've shut down everything I could and it's still ripping pretty dog slow. I think it's time for an upgrade - I've been checking around and 300-400 buys a pretty substantial computer right now.

 

[smdgrfx]

Last year I installed a SSD drive in my dedicated Rip station and it makes a world of difference. Rips 350 mb files in under 2 minutes - what used to take about 10 minutes. I'm running winXP with 4gb ram and a Intel 2.83mhz quad core.