I am using a laptop. It has a dual 3 GHz CPU with 1.25 GB RAM. That is
more often than not not the limiting factor for performance. Mostly
for gaming, a more neglected critical bottle neck is the slow HD
transfer speeds and RAM bandwidth. Is there a resource monitor that is
sophisticated enough to monitor all of these and other little-known
performance limiting factors?

This could be a separate question:
While we are at monitors, is there software that will also monitor and
CHANGE fan speeds for laptops? Out of the few that even exist, none
could be set to leave the fan on at full speed, since I know that I
would like the temperature to stay down at all costs during some
applications.

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Request for Question Clarification by endo-ga on 16 Jan 2006 14:33 PST

Hi,

Have a look at these freeware applications please and see if you like
any of them. I think a combination of them might be able to fulfil
your requirements.

Process Explorer
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html

Filemon for Windows
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html

Please let me know if this helps.

Thanks.
endo

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Clarification of Question by eestudent-ga on 16 Jan 2006 15:42 PST

Just like with the other question, what I ask here (memory and
harddrive bandwidth) is not practically answerable. I am aware of both
the windows Performance section as well as other programs on the Net.
None that I have seen could ever tell me how much of the memory
bandwidth is used. I suspect it would be hard to implement that in
software.

I am willing to see your links posted as answers, however, if you want
to, please let me change the price to 7.50. Or I should close this
question so it doesn't even attract more attention.

Use the Performance Monitor included with Windows (under Control Panel
> Administrative Tools > Performance).

For example, under the category PhysicalDisk there are the following
items available:
% Disk Read Time
% Disk Time
% Disk Write Time
% Idle Time
Avg. Disk Bytes/Read
Avg. Disk Bytes/Transfer
Avg. Disk Bytes/Write
Avg. Disk Queue Length
Avg. Disk Read Queue Length
Avg. Disk sec/Read
Avg. Disk sec/Transfer
Avg. Disk sec/Write
Avg. Disk Write Queue Length
Current Disk Queue Length
Disk Bytes/sec
Disk Read Bytes/sec
Disk Reads/sec
Disk Transfers/sec
Disk Write Bytes/sec
Disk Writes/sec
Split IO/Sec

I think that Windows tools are not enough. I would be interested in a
good program that will specifically log RAM and HD bandwidth used. I
suspect that it is of no use for the processor to do 20 instructions
before it can make a SINGLE access to a RAM! At least now they are
putting 667 MHz RAM in desktops.
I would like to build a desktop with 800 MHz ECC memory and 15,000 RPM
SCSI HD. That should keep a 3.6 GHz supplied with data to process!