Windows XP Hacks

Check Your PC’s Pulse and Tweak It for Better Performance

Find out how well your PC performs, peer under the hood to get diagnostic information, and get advice on tuning it, with Sandra.

Do you know how well your PC is really performing? How well do you think it does compares to other systems? And do you have any idea of nitty-gritty information like its memory bank layout, the current video refresh rate, which currently running process consumes the most memory, or which services you can most likely safely disable [Hack #4]?

Better yet—how about using that information to get tips to get your PC to run faster?

My favorite hardware analysis and tune-up program, Sandra (http://www.3bsoftware.com), will do all that and more. Sandra is shareware and free to try for 30 days, but if you use it beyond that you’ll have to buy Sandra Pro for $29. Sandra Pro also gives you access to about a half-dozen analysis modules that Sandra doesn’t have, such as modules about your network or fonts.

When you first run Sandra, you may well be overwhelmed, because you’ll see several dozen icons, each of which runs a different diagnostic and benchmark test when double-clicked upon. For example, run the Memory Bandwidth Benchmark and Sandra returns results similar to the results shown in Figure 12-5, which measure the performance of one of my PCs. As you can see, it measures the speed of your memory and compares it to other memory chipsets. It also shows you the layout of your motherboard’s memory bank, including ...