Hi Al,

>However, there are many other CPU consumers that don't show up in Task >Manager and which only come into play once you "do something" with your >system. Good examples are the memory/cache/bus controller(s), and IDE disk >and video drivers.

These tasks *can* (at least some of them) be seen in the Task Manager. If you are running an NT on IDE without Busmaster/DMA (which is the default out of the box up to SP6a), there will be lots of CPU cycles spent in disk-intensive routines. These will be reflected in a higher "systems" task, and can be estimated in the graphic if you enable "kernel times". Compressing files in NT will also use up CPU-cycles, but will give you most of the times better performance reading the data (especially redaing again, as more "data" will be buffered). I had some direct experience with this a few months back while optimizing a system which showed serious performance loss with larger sets of data. Percentage of kernel cpu dropped from 45% to 15% and execution times were nearly cut into half just by setting up the system according to today's standards.

To get back to the main thread: AFAIK these "system" cycles could be loaded off to a second CPU.

my 2 c's (EUR)

thomas