How to potentially speed up your PC in one easy step

DeZmond

DeZmond

Junior Administrator
Here's a power tip for those looking to speed up their PCs, although it might not work for everyone. Basically, if you find that any time you try to access a network resource (or even just try to search for other PC's in your workgroup) your PC slows down, this tip is definitely for you.

Using this tool, Latency Config, you can adjust the PCI latency of the attached devices in your PC - graphics cards, network cards, soundcards, the lot. You'll see each device has a set latency - the higher the number the greater the latency and typically the time taken for it to be accessed. This tool will allow you to change these values.

Before we go any further, a warning and disclaimer: invalid values can potentially cause system instability or damage to components. Be careful when using this tool and technique.

In my case, I ran the tool on my laptop to find that my network card had a ridiculous latency of ~240. Using this tool I dropped it to 64 (since new values have to be in a multiple of 8) and noticed an immediate increase in general system responsiveness, as well as a definite decrease in the time taken for my card to find other PC's when searching via Windows. In short, it worked wonders.

This tool has reputedly helped people get better performance in BF2 et all, so in good faith I pass it on. May it help your performance :).

Another forum discussion on this tool and issue: http://www.tweaksrus.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t5100.html
 
Haven

Haven

Administrator
Staff member
should be renamed to mangling your WINDOWS install in one easy step :)

*carries on enjoying high performance on his laptop with gentoo*
 
DeZmond

DeZmond

Junior Administrator
Heh, point taken given the potential to set any crazy values you wish :)... also updated the link as it was outdated - can now download from Guru3d - thanks for pointing that out, Ronin.
 
Pestcontrol

Pestcontrol

In Cryo Sleep
Ltcyconfig only gives you a very tiny speedup if any, i see it as more of a problem solving tool (audio clicks and pops for example). Also modern PC's have all the critical hardware going either over dedicated pci lanes called pci-express or integrated into the southbridge, PCI latency is irrelevant in either case. It only does something if you have multiple PCI cards. Also low latency is not better, in fact devices that you want to give priority should have a higher latency than other devices so they can use the PCI bus for longer. It isn't access latency but rather the amount of cycles a device can use the PCI bus, and the amount of cycles that other devices have to wait.

Example: For a network card a latency of 240 cycles means 240 x 4 = 960 bytes can be transferred in one access, and that at most 2 accesses are needed to transfer a 1500 byte packet. A latency of 32 only allows for 128 bytes per access and so 12 accesses are needed, wasting more cycles on overhead.

In general it's not worth messing with.

I'm fairly sure you experienced a placebo effect, Dez.
 
DeZmond

DeZmond

Junior Administrator
Perhaps, but to be fair, my network card was operating inexplicably slowly...

In most cases this tweak has been recommended by people using the AGP bus since the graphics card would theoretically hog all the access to the bus, in my case it could have been the network - oh well, no definitive conclusions on this one. Onto the next mirage...
 
Pestcontrol

Pestcontrol

In Cryo Sleep
DeZmond said:
Perhaps, but to be fair, my network card was operating inexplicably slowly...

In most cases this tweak has been recommended by people using the AGP bus since the graphics card would theoretically hog all the access to the bus, in my case it could have been the network - oh well, no definitive conclusions on this one. Onto the next mirage...
Click to expand...

Well, i haven't used your PC so i can't say whether it has sped up or not. It may have been that your NIC was hogging the bus somehow and reducing it's latency gave more room for other devices. 240 is an odd number anyway, defaults are usually 16 or 32, is it a PCI nic or an internal one?

AGP cards are on a dedicated bus and should always have the maximum possible latency, which is either 255 or 248 (just set it at 255 and see what it becomes). In some cases it wasn't set correctly and you would effectively lose AGP bandwidth. That's where this tweak helped and another is in recording environments where low latency audio recording is required or when you get pops and clicks because your soundcard is choked for data.

I'm not sure what is correct on dual head cards, sometimes the secondary monitor has a latency of 0, i haven't noticed any difference yet when changing that.

Also be sure to leave the latencies of the bus controllers and bridges at 0.
 
waterproofbob

waterproofbob

Junior Administrator
Taffy said:
Kinda makes me wish I knew anything about computers....
Click to expand...

its all about getting a cheap duff old pc and tinkering.

its not all that complicated once u start getting ur head around it.
^^^^^thats the secret PC world don't want you to find out.
 
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