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Fritters
10-20-2009, 03:00 PM
I've configured HEM/Postgres using the info here and 2+2 to give me the best performance out of my system (ie. opacity, defragging, vacumming, purging, postgres configuration changes, etc...) and I can easily run 18 tables without difficulty (pokerstars, tableninja, xpadder, and HEM w/ HUD). However, I get a noticeable slowdown at 19 and it seems to grow exponentially from there (nearly 0.5 second delay w/ 20 tables). Ideally I'd like to play 25 and up to 30 at some times and I'm not sure where the bottleneck in my system is:

AMD Athlon X2 (socket AM3) OC to ~3.2 GHz
4 GB DDR3 RAM (~ 3 GB effective)
512 MB ATI Card (exact model escapes me, but I don't think this is the problem)
7200 rpm WD HD

While running a full 20 tables, my processor has each core running ~50% and less than 2GB of RAM is being used. I'm under the assumption my HD is limiting me now so I guess my question is:

1.) Is my HD speed the bottleneck here?
2.) Would adding another drive in Raid 0 give me enough performance increase to play 30 tables?
3.) Any obscure options I can try before buying new hardware?

tl;dr

~ Fritters

fozzy71
10-20-2009, 04:43 PM
Hard drive is going to the best way to get more performance from that cpu/motherboard.

I imagine the prevailing advice would be to add a SSD dedicated for postgresql, and if you can afford it, add 2 of them in RAID0 instead of a single drive.

This is exactly what I hope to do some time this winter.

I have a brand new Ci7 920, 9gb RAM and get great performance, especially for as little as I play. I just want to be a geek and have a hi-performance DB for my poker. :D

Fritters
10-20-2009, 07:35 PM
That's what I figured. Any idea if just adding another 7200 rpm drive in raid0 will be enough to get me where I want to be? SSD doesn't seem worth it just yet since a relatively small drive seems to cost ~$150, but I can get another 7200 drive for $60 (that arguement is assuming that SSD is overkill since I'm pretty close to where I'd like to be).

I just don't want to pony up for another drive only to have the same problem when I load up 21 tables instead of 20...

Also, as a side note - if I do add another drive for a raid0 setup do I need to reformat/re-install my other or will they start working together without clearing my original?

Fritters
10-20-2009, 07:37 PM
Also, I'd have a hard time justifiying putting an SSD in my computer since I just built it for ~$500 by slimming down on everything but the mobo.