Why does no iteration of Windows load balance?

I've gone to Windows 7 build 7000 on my E8400@ 3.6Ghz Raptor RAID0 system
and I'm very impresssed (this is what Vista should have been, but that's
another rant) it doesn't seem to load balance programs any better than
previous iterations of Windows. In this respect it's not materially improved
over XP. I've never installed Vista but others I know who do use it say the
same thing.....poor load balancing by the OS. Running a virus scan, or other
background task still impacts the system performance a huge amount, far more
than it should. Is this just the OS design or is it common to other OS's
running on similar hardware? Why does Windows 2000/ XP/ Vista / 7 act like
this? It uses 2 or 4 cores, but does not seem to do it intelligently. I
presume Server 2003 or 2008 doesn't behave this way.....

Augustus wrote:
I've gone to Windows 7 build 7000 on my E8400@ 3.6Ghz Raptor RAID0 system
and I'm very impresssed (this is what Vista should have been, but that's
another rant) it doesn't seem to load balance programs any better than
previous iterations of Windows. In this respect it's not materially improved
over XP. I've never installed Vista but others I know who do use it say the
same thing.....poor load balancing by the OS. Running a virus scan, or other
background task still impacts the system performance a huge amount, far more
than it should. Is this just the OS design or is it common to other OS's
running on similar hardware? Why does Windows 2000/ XP/ Vista / 7 act like
this? It uses 2 or 4 cores, but does not seem to do it intelligently. I
presume Server 2003 or 2008 doesn't behave this way.....



You can see some of the features that Vista has built in, for
scheduling, and Windows 7 should be similar. The question is,
whether the Task Manager is really presenting a very good
view of what is going on.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/m...stakernel.aspx

Paul

Paul wrote:
Augustus wrote:
I've gone to Windows 7 build 7000 on my E8400@ 3.6Ghz Raptor RAID0
system and I'm very impresssed (this is what Vista should have been,
but that's another rant) it doesn't seem to load balance programs any
better than previous iterations of Windows. In this respect it's not
materially improved over XP. I've never installed Vista but others I
know who do use it say the same thing.....poor load balancing by the
OS. Running a virus scan, or other background task still impacts the
system performance a huge amount, far more than it should. Is this
just the OS design or is it common to other OS's running on similar
hardware? Why does Windows 2000/ XP/ Vista / 7 act like this? It uses
2 or 4 cores, but does not seem to do it intelligently. I presume
Server 2003 or 2008 doesn't behave this way.....


You can see some of the features that Vista has built in, for
scheduling, and Windows 7 should be similar. The question is,
whether the Task Manager is really presenting a very good
view of what is going on.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/m...stakernel.aspx

Paul

Some other thoughts that come to mind.

1) On some other OSes I've worked with, file system usage
spoils the notion of fair sharing at the user level. For
example, if multiple users were logged to a Unix macnine,
and one of the users was annoyed with the usage patterns of
the other users, they could start a file system intensive
task (ls -R), which would compromise everyone's ability
to work. File I/O would spend time in the kernel, and the
kernel was under no obligation to play nice.

2) Have you played with the "affinity" setting in Task Manager ?
Does Vista still have such a notion ? If so, while the
virus scan is running, force it to stay on just one core.
Then see if the system is more responsive. The affinity
setting can be used to prevent process migration, as some
older software may not be tuned for such behavior. Some
games suffer from issues with migration, and for those,
changing the affinity, or using a program launcher (runfirst?)
that sets the affinity at launch, can give a measure of relief.

3) Anandtech noted that for HTPC usage, when an AMD processor
was used, that movie playback was smoother when Cool N' Quiet
was disabled. There was no explanation available at the time,
why that caused an issue. Processors can have power states changed
something like 30 times a second, in response to system load,
and it is supposed to respond fast enough to not cause variable
performance at the application level. Yet, the folks at
Anandtech did see enough of an issue, to mention it in a
review article, and change their test procedure.

HTH,
Paul

Paul wrote:
Augustus wrote:
I've gone to Windows 7 build 7000 on my E8400@ 3.6Ghz Raptor RAID0
system and I'm very impresssed (this is what Vista should have been,
but that's another rant) it doesn't seem to load balance programs any
better than previous iterations of Windows. In this respect it's not
materially improved over XP. I've never installed Vista but others I
know who do use it say the same thing.....poor load balancing by the
OS. Running a virus scan, or other background task still impacts the
system performance a huge amount, far more than it should. Is this
just the OS design or is it common to other OS's running on similar
hardware? Why does Windows 2000/ XP/ Vista / 7 act like this? It uses
2 or 4 cores, but does not seem to do it intelligently. I presume
Server 2003 or 2008 doesn't behave this way.....


You can see some of the features that Vista has built in, for
scheduling, and Windows 7 should be similar. The question is,
whether the Task Manager is really presenting a very good
view of what is going on.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/m...stakernel.aspx

Paul

Some other thoughts that come to mind.

1) On some other OSes I've worked with, file system usage
spoils the notion of fair sharing at the user level. For
example, if multiple users were logged to a Unix macnine,
and one of the users was annoyed with the usage patterns of
the other users, they could start a file system intensive
task (ls -R), which would compromise everyone's ability
to work. File I/O would spend time in the kernel, and the
kernel was under no obligation to play nice.

2) Have you played with the "affinity" setting in Task Manager ?
Does Vista still have such a notion ? If so, while the
virus scan is running, force it to stay on just one core.
Then see if the system is more responsive. The affinity
setting can be used to prevent process migration, as some
older software may not be tuned for such behavior. Some
games suffer from issues with migration, and for those,
changing the affinity, or using a program launcher (runfirst?)
that sets the affinity at launch, can give a measure of relief.

3) Anandtech noted that for HTPC usage, when an AMD processor
was used, that movie playback was smoother when Cool N' Quiet
was disabled. There was no explanation available at the time,
why that caused an issue. Processors can have power states changed
something like 30 times a second, in response to system load,
and it is supposed to respond fast enough to not cause variable
performance at the application level. Yet, the folks at
Anandtech did see enough of an issue, to mention it in a
review article, and change their test procedure.

HTH,
Paul

Paul wrote:
Augustus wrote:
I've gone to Windows 7 build 7000 on my E8400@ 3.6Ghz Raptor RAID0
system and I'm very impresssed (this is what Vista should have been,
but that's another rant) it doesn't seem to load balance programs any
better than previous iterations of Windows. In this respect it's not
materially improved over XP. I've never installed Vista but others I
know who do use it say the same thing.....poor load balancing by the
OS. Running a virus scan, or other background task still impacts the
system performance a huge amount, far more than it should. Is this
just the OS design or is it common to other OS's running on similar
hardware? Why does Windows 2000/ XP/ Vista / 7 act like this? It uses
2 or 4 cores, but does not seem to do it intelligently. I presume
Server 2003 or 2008 doesn't behave this way.....


You can see some of the features that Vista has built in, for
scheduling, and Windows 7 should be similar. The question is,
whether the Task Manager is really presenting a very good
view of what is going on.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/m...stakernel.aspx

Paul

Some other thoughts that come to mind.

1) On some other OSes I've worked with, file system usage
spoils the notion of fair sharing at the user level. For
example, if multiple users were logged to a Unix machine,
and one of the users was annoyed with the usage patterns of
the other users, they could start a file system intensive
task (ls -R), which would compromise everyone's ability
to work. File I/O would spend time in the kernel, and the
kernel was under no obligation to play nice.

2) Have you played with the "affinity" setting in Task Manager ?
Does Vista still have such a notion ? If so, while the
virus scan is running, force it to stay on just one core.
Then see if the system is more responsive. The affinity
setting can be used to prevent process migration, as some
older software may not be tuned for such behavior. Some
games suffer from issues with migration, and for those,
changing the affinity, or using a program launcher (runfirst?)
that sets the affinity at launch, can give a measure of relief.

3) Anandtech noted that for HTPC usage, when an AMD processor
was used, that movie playback was smoother when Cool N' Quiet
was disabled. There was no explanation available at the time,
why that caused an issue. Processors can have power states changed
something like 30 times a second, in response to system load,
and it is supposed to respond fast enough to not cause variable
performance at the application level. Yet, the folks at
Anandtech did see enough of an issue, to mention it in a
review article, and change their test procedure.

HTH,
Paul

Augustus wrote:
I've gone to Windows 7 build 7000 on my E8400@ 3.6Ghz Raptor RAID0
system and I'm very impresssed (this is what Vista should have been, but
that's another rant) it doesn't seem to load balance programs any better
than previous iterations of Windows. In this respect it's not materially
improved over XP. I've never installed Vista but others I know who do use
it say the same thing.....poor load balancing by the OS. Running a virus
scan, or other background task still impacts the system performance a
huge amount, far more than it should. Is this just the OS design or is it
common to other OS's running on similar hardware? Why does Windows
2000/ XP/ Vista / 7 act like this? It uses 2 or 4 cores, but does not seem
to do it intelligently. I presume Server 2003 or 2008 doesn't behave this
way.....

Yeah, it's always the I/O intensive stuff that I have trouble with, even if it's
on different drives. Does Windows 7 still effectively lock-up Explorer for
a while when you insert a CD or DVD?

In message "Fishface"
was claimed to have wrote:

Augustus wrote:
I've gone to Windows 7 build 7000 on my E8400@ 3.6Ghz Raptor RAID0
system and I'm very impresssed (this is what Vista should have been, but
that's another rant) it doesn't seem to load balance programs any better
than previous iterations of Windows. In this respect it's not materially
improved over XP. I've never installed Vista but others I know who do use
it say the same thing.....poor load balancing by the OS. Running a virus
scan, or other background task still impacts the system performance a
huge amount, far more than it should. Is this just the OS design or is it
common to other OS's running on similar hardware? Why does Windows
2000/ XP/ Vista / 7 act like this? It uses 2 or 4 cores, but does not seem
to do it intelligently. I presume Server 2003 or 2008 doesn't behave this
way.....

Yeah, it's always the I/O intensive stuff that I have trouble with, even if it's
on different drives.

Vista introduced a disk queue with a priority system, it works
reasonably well for things like indexing and defragmenting, but it's not
as fantastic as I (for one) had hoped at handling multiple applications
fighting over disk access, or worse, one application can still
monopolize disk access.

Does Windows 7 still effectively lock-up Explorer for
a while when you insert a CD or DVD?

This is a little different, it's a case of Explorer blocking, rather
then intensive I/O.