>>The P4, or the NIC, are the likely culprits.
>
>It's just so wierd that _only_ table open times are slow. All other files access is fast.
>
>I would sure like to hear with someone else using a box with a P4.

I just saw a concrete example of the P4's underwhelming performance - two new boxes were installed for one of my clients, the first a Dell 4100 with a 1GHz PIII and 256MB RAM, the other a Dell 8100 with a 1.4GHz P4 and 256MB RAM, both with Win2K Pro, both had a NetGear FA310TX NIC, on the same LAN segment, with virtually identical configurations of Win2K and general apps deployed. I ran a couple of tests running a VFP app that generated a prediction of stock exhaustion interpolated from historical monthly inventory activity summaries extended over time based on trends of general behavior for similar types of material; ie, the common cyclical ordering and returns associated with college textbooks, expected seasonal demands for gardening books or calendars and such. Running this for the roughly 10K products they handle using up to 4 years of historical behavior is a real workout with a strong mix of database and statistical mathematical activity. I ran the same task on both boxes under VFP 6 SP4. The PIII was easily 40% faster than the P4 box which had more memory and a 'faster' processor and more memory, which worked at higher speed (the P4 used RDRAM, while the PIII uses PC133 SDRAM). The amount of memory probably wasn't a real factor - neither box called for it's buffer ceiling allowed to VFP (both stations were permitted up to 160MB for buffers using SYS(3050,1) and 80MB using SYS(3050,2), and neither went over about 120MB used by VFP during the test.) I ran the tests twice on each machine consecutively, and took the second run for the comparison, so that server and local caching were similar, and the network was otherwise idle, so bandwidth and packet collisions were not affecting the network performance - full duplex 100BaseTX through a NetGear Ethernet switch, reading data from a NetWare server with lots of RAM and reading from a mirrored SCSI volume, and temp files set to each machine's local drive, in an NTFS partition.

Needless to say, I was not too impressed with the considerably more expensive 8100. Fortunately, it was given to a pointy-haired manager, while the 4100 went to a customer service rep who pounds on the database constantly doing her job, so the right machine went to the right person accidentally. BTW, the Dell 4100 with the 933MHz or 1GHz PIII looks to be a really good box; with 128MB, 1GHz PIII, 20MB 7200 RPM IDE drive, 12x CD-ROM, modem, the harmon carden THX speakers, SB Live! Value card and 32MB nVidia GeForce video (no monitor or NIC; the ViewSonic GS790 19" small footprint monitor (~$375 from CDW) is less than Dell's 19" monitor, weighs less and needs considerably less desk space, and the NetGear NIC is their standard Workstation NIC; they have spares on hand, the configuration is uniform, and the cost is under $25 locally) was under $1200 with shipping. While I'd much rather have the Matrox G450 dual-head video card, more RAM and SCSI, I could make do with this box for development, and the price is far less than what I'd pay for assembling a custom box to my specs.

My specs would greatly increase the cost of the system (I'm getting ready to get a new system in the next month or two), using the Asus CUV4X-DLS and 1GHz PIII Socket370 CPU, 256MB PC133 SDRAM, move the latest 18GB Cheetah drive from my current development box into it, the Matrox G450 dual-head video card, SB Live! Value card, an 8x CD-RW drive and 12x DVD (these can be IDE). It's probably time for a new DAT drive, too. In a PCP&C mid-tower case with their TurboCool supply. This leaves a second socket for another processor, on-board Ultra-160 SCSI (I have too much SCSI stuff to jump into FireWire) and Intel 82559 100MBit Ethernet NIC, and plenty of RAM expansion room (4 DIMM slots supporting up to 4GB using a 133MHz FSB) and tons of SCSI device connections. It should be adequate for 2-3 years before getting replaced as my first-line workstation, unless I hit the lottery...

The development box gets RAM added to expand it to 384MB, the second NIC for ADSL, and the SCSI drives from the current server box to become the main server (install Win2K Server fresh over the current Win2K Server install to upgrade the chipset drivers for the motherboard and adjust the IRQs.) It loses the audio card, and I may swap the G450 with the G200 in the ME box, since both are stable and I can use the improved video performance for gaming on the ME box. The existing server gets the SB Live! and the 9GB Quantum pulled from the reworked server, and then has to find a home. It ends up a dual PII-333, 256MB PC100 SDRAM, DVD, SB Live! Value, 3C905TX, 9GB Quantum Atlas 3 SCSI drive and either the G200 or the spare ATI All-In-Wonder I have shelved for the moment, since there's no cable TV connection in the office, and the G200 is totally reliable and stable under any OS I run it under (it's important to me, since that box is usually the one that gets used for testing installs; I have already installed Win98, NT 4.0, Win2K and Win ME and written them out as images; when I need to test, I image the current disk out, blow away the partition and drop in my pre-built test image for it, and I have a baseline system to test (I do update the image with the current patches/SPs, and if it's a significant update, create a new image before testing starts - I use Adaptec's Image Backup from EZ-SCSI 5.0 to save images to DAT tape; I can get a full image stored on a single tape rather than several CD-Rs or Jaz cartridges, and it's less prone to cause a silly error than my old trick of switching to boot off the Jaz cartridge, mounting a Jaz with a current boot volume, when I might do something that overwrote the base image on the Jaz without adequate backup. If I have images, it's just a matter of wiping the drive and blowing on the image to get back to the start point, and I can see if the latest SPs are needed to install my app by blowing on an older image. DAT tapes are cheap compared to Jaz cartridges, and hold significantly more data than a Jaz cartridge (at least 8GB for under $20 on a DAT vs $80 for a Jaz cartridge holding 1 or 2GB). I do have a Jaz cartridge with Win98 and the Adaptec Image Backup software, so I can fully restore an image even if I'm left with an unbootable box - boot from the Jaz, FDISK the boot drive with an empty partition table, and restore my image from tape onto the frobbed box. Saves lots of time reinstalling the OS and apps if something happens to a drive from my own insanity, destructive infections, or hardware failure. I'd hate to have to reinstall Win2K, O2K, VS6, VS.Net and the collection of other toys I regularly have on hand because I lost the first few tracks on the system disk, so I back up the current image regularly, especially before adding something like SP5 or the .Net beta. I can work on another machine, or sleep, or even read or talk to real people while the backup is running.