Is there a IDE/compiler PC benchmark I can use to compare my PCs performance?

Question

I'm looking for a benchmark (and results on other PCs) which would give me an idea of the development performance gain I could get by upgrading my PC, also the benchmark could be used to justify the upgrade to my boss.

I use Visual Studio 2008 for my development, so I'd like to get an idea of by what factor the build times would be improved, and also it would be good if the benchmark could incorporate IDE performance (i.e. when editing, using intellisense, opening code files etc) into its result.

I currently have an AMD 3800x2, with 2GB RAM on Vista 32. For example, I'd like to know what kind of performance gain I'd see in Visual Studio 2008 with a Q6600, 4GB RAM on Vista 64. And also with other processors, and other RAM sizes... also see whether hard disk performance is a big factor.

EDIT: I mentioned Vista 64 because I'm aware that Vista 32 can only use 3GB RAM maximum. So I'd presume that wanting to use more RAM would require Vista 64, but perhaps it could still be slower overall there is a large overhead in using the 32 bit VS 2008 on 64 bit OS.

Answer 1

I don't know of any benchmarks that compare Visual Studio.... but I can tell you this; the biggest bang for your buck would be buying a faster harddrive (like the 300GB Velociraptor) and making sure you have sufficient RAM.

Answer 2

Sorry, I don't know of any benchmarks for the IDE specifically.

However, Vista-64 won't run VS any faster than Vista-32 because VS is 32-bit. If anything it will run slightly slower on Vista-64 - see http://blog.momeli.com/blog/_archives/2008/12/4/4007272.html

Better RAM and disk performance will certainly help. VS does a lot of disk IO when you're building.

Scott has a good post about this: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/01/tip-trick-hard-drive-speed-and-visual-studio-performance.aspx

Answer 3

Please read this blog post from Patrick Smacchia. It's clear enough to me that the difference is in the HDD/SSD so go for a SSD.

Answer 4

I just can say, that an overview of clients within an environment of "incredibuild"-enhanced network could give you such a speed-comparison. we use this with 10 clients (all equal in hardware, though :( )

maybe here are some developers of bigger companies than i work at to give you interesting information?!