Dual Core Laptop vs. Quad Core Desktop
Recently I purchased a dual-core AMD Turion laptop with 4 GB of memory running Win7. After installing Logos 4 on the new laptop I did a side-by-side comparison with my Intel i7 quad-core machine with 6 GB of memory also running Win7. This resulted in some interesting observations:
Startup: In starting Logos from a cold-boot, the quad-core beat out the dual-core hands down. I was still waiting for the home page to come up on the laptop.
Searching: This came as the biggest surprise to me - the dual-core laptop runs circles around the quad-core desktop when doing any sort of search. I did a lookup of James 1 on both machines - the laptop was done a full minute before the desktop.
At first I hypothesized that it was because of a fresh install of Logos vs. an entrenched install that has seen many updates and multiple indexes - but support assures me that the latest version of Logos always has one index file - so this is likely not the case.
I was wondering if anyone else out there has noticed this as an issue - why is my quad-core machine that much slower than a dual-core laptop with less (and slower) memory? Is Logos designed to work with multi-core processors, or does Logos get confused with multiple processors (especially with hyper-threading enabled)?
Would love to hear your experiences with this!
Comments
- intel i7-920 (2.66 ghz)
- 6GB kingston hyperx pc3-16000 (ddr3 2000)
- 1.5 TB 7200 RPM seagate hard drive
- ASUS Geforce GTS 250 with 1 GB DDR3 pci-express video card.
- ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 Mobo
Chris,
It would be helpful to have a little more information. Maybe you could tell us the exact search or searches you've performed. You might also let us know what if anything was running in the background of your newer machine. The size of your library would also be of interest, but the exact search and what group you ran it on and what output you specified (Ranked, By Title, or By Count) would be the most useful to us.
I have a new quad core laptop and find it to be faster in every way over my older duo-core laptop. This is especially noticeable during indexing and running searches.
IMHO no search should be taking you 1 minute.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
Hi Mark!
I did mention that I did a search for James 1 - just a basic passage guide search, nothing fancy.
I did not have anything (other than dropbox and Microsoft Security Essentials) running in the background - I keep a tight reign on programs starting up with Windows.
Both machines are running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit with SP 1 installed.
I have an older AMD machine that only has 2 GB of memory, Win7 Home Premium 32 bit with SP 1, and is also a dual-core. Doing the same search on it took 1 minute 47 seconds. So having searches go over a minute is nothing new to me. As I mentioned in my response to Tom - this is still way faster then trying to go through a ton of books in a physical library - so despite the wait it's still fantastic!
I am also working with Scholar's Silver (ver 4) as well as a few addons including the Essential IVP Reference Collection (and a few other book titles).
I hope that helps - let me know if you would like more information 
Thanks,
Chris
just a basic passage guide search,
I'm glad you said this because search and passage guide are two separate things. True the passage guide uses search technology but when you said search I was thinking the specific search tool.
It is a bit harder to compare passage guide results between people with different sets of resources, but from one machine to another with the same resources, you should expect to see the quad core machine work faster.
When I run a Passage Guide on my quad core I see three or more CPUs running under Task Manager. That means more than the two you have onn your dual core machine.
When I run a PG on James 1 on my quad core machine it finishes in 20 seconds (I have over 3500 resources, but may not be running all the sections of the PG you are). Running that same PG on my dual core machine takes over 2 minutes. In fact I am not sure how much over 2 minutes it takes as it freezes up a couple of times while running. It is probably more like 3 minutes.
I wonder if anything else is running and slowing down your quad core machine? You could check Task Manager and see what processes are running and if any are taking a significant portion of the CPUs' time.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
Hey Mark,
Glad I was able to clarify that for you! My PG search takes way more than 20 seconds - and other than those programs listed previously, I did not have anything else running in the background. In fact, when I get home I'll time it and see what the actual time is. I'll also be sure to watch and see how many cores are in use. With hyperthreading i have 8 threads available, will be interesting to see how well it makes use of those.
As far as hardware on my quad-core goes:
Oh - and my Novabench score is 1083 (laptop was only 247)
I did not have anything (other than dropbox and Microsoft Security Essentials) running in the background - I keep a tight reign on programs starting up with Windows.
that reminded me... in this thread http://community.logos.com/forums/p/25696/190112.aspx Fred wrote about a significant slow-down caused presumably by MSE:
Maybe you can try disabling it - or turn in some detailed logs to the guru's here. The experience that some users are okay with Logos speed at slow machines and others are not with fast machines most often can be attributed to large libraries, large collections, note-files, internet access speed etc. that all shouldn't come in as factors in your situation.
Have joy in the Lord! 
Hi Chris:
My guess would be:
1. The Desktop boots Logos quicker because it likely has a faster harddrive. Most Desktop Hardrives are 7200 rpm, while laptops often operate at slower speeds.
2. Logos 4 I believe (from memory) is not multi-core? If that is so, then the number of cores would not make as much difference as the speed of the individual cores. The Dual core processor may have fewer cores, but the cores may be faster individually, and if Logos 4 only can use one core, there would be a speed advantage.
1. The Desktop boots Logos quicker because it likely has a faster harddrive. Most Desktop Hardrives are 7200 rpm, while laptops often operate at slower speeds.
Actually - this particular laptop is also running a 7200 rpm hard drive - so that is not the issue.
2. Logos 4 I believe (from memory) is not multi-core? If that is so, then the number of cores would not make as much difference as the speed of the individual cores. The Dual core processor may have fewer cores, but the cores may be faster individually, and if Logos 4 only can use one core, there would be a speed advantage.
On this thought - even though it is evidenced in performance monitor that it does use multiple cores - the laptop is running at 2.3 ghz while the desktop is running 2.66 ghz - so that again does not add up.
Thanks for the great thoughts though
On this thought - even though it is evidenced in performance monitor that it does use multiple cores - the laptop is running at 2.3 ghz while the desktop is running 2.66 ghz - so that again does not add up.
My Laptop is slightly slower than Desktop generating a PG (see specs below), but I don't use sections with web content. Note that Logos 4 is multi-threaded so will use multiple cores as needed. The difference between quad core and dual core is more evident with the proper (timed) Searches and when indexing your library.
Dave
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Windows 11 & Android 13
Hi Chris, I recently updated from a core duo 3.2ghz with 3gb of ram running vista to a quad core i5 3.1ghz with 8gb of ram desktop machine running windows 7. I noticed that the new machine runs rings around the older one. Since I am using the 64 bit operating system I chose to get 8gb of ram ot maximise performance. Perhaps you would find your new PC would operate faster on 64 but with a bit more ram.
Steve Caswell
Edit I ran a passage guide on James 1 and the whole thing was populated in about 35 seconds.
My comp with i7 2600, 16gb ram, 1gb graphics card, 7200rpm hd, blows away my dual core lap top.
The i7 comp with 7200rpm is almost instant with L4, I can't imagine what it would do with a ssd.
@Stave Clevenger
Yeah - I would love to upgrade to an SSD - I am sure that would definitely give L4 a boost
16 gb of memory eh? Nice!
The i7 comp with 7200rpm is almost instant with L4, I can't imagine what it would do with a ssd.
It might start guessing your next research question. [;)]
Chris,
Until you figure out what is slowing down you desktop system, may I suggest that you close all you PG sections before you close Logos. There is no point in populating PG sections until you are ready to use them.
As for your speed issue, your desktop should not be running that slowly, even with all my sections open and on a slower system, my computer completes the PG under 1 minute. Something is not right with your desktop system somewhere.
Did some poking around on my quadcore system this past weekend and discovered something that helped improve performance exponentially! At some point in time I had installed IIS on my computer in order to do some web development testing and had forgot that it was running in the background. After uninstalling it my performance with L4 jumped up considerably. Now passage guide search happens within 10-15 seconds with all resources scoured. So for those of you who thought it was something running in the background - you were right - it just wasn't a process, but a service
Hey Chris,
Just bought a Thinkpad W520 quadcore with 16G RAM and dedicated graphics. While it is much faster than it was, it is still slow.... I bought this computer because tech support said I needed dedicated graphics, so I replaced my T61 duo core with 4 GB RAM with this one so it would fly.... well, if this is flying I need a new bible software package! I really miss my old Logos. Much less functionality, but it did get a couple searches done done before my coffee got cold! Ok, I am stretching the truth a bit, but not too much!
IMAC - 2.7GHz Intel Core I5 - 12GB 1333 MHz DDR3 - Mac OS X - Logos 4 Gold
Hi Daniel!
Welcome to the Logos Forums!
Wow - the machine you got should be able to handle Logos without a problem! At least from a hardware point of view! I wonder why it is running so slow for you! Do you know how fast the hard drive in your new machine is? Also, what are you running for Anti-virus/Malware protection? Wondering if those are causing you to have some major slowdowns.
Chris
Thanks Chris!
I am running ESET. My computer is a 64 bit Windows 7 machine. I received some tips and tweaks and asked ESET to disregard my Logos 4 file. I am still wondering where the bottleneck is? Perhaps I would have been better off purchasing a gamily laptop with a 4GB graphics card. Apprarently my more powerful processor, more system memory, and larger cache was not the answer. Logos techincal support has not shared the secrets yet... but I hope to get an answer at some point... Don't get me wrong, my system is supporting Logos, but I want it to be much more responsive...
IMAC - 2.7GHz Intel Core I5 - 12GB 1333 MHz DDR3 - Mac OS X - Logos 4 Gold
Perhaps I would have been better off purchasing a gamily laptop with a 4GB graphics card
My graphics card is 1 GB and as I said Logos 4 is quite responsive.
Would you please download and run NovaBench and post the results here and also on this thread: http://community.logos.com/forums/t/24555.aspx?PageIndex=13
Novabench is free and is available here: http://novabench.com/
Thanks.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
Sorry Chris, forgot the harddrive. I have a 7200rpm 300GB harddrive. Was thinking about an Intel 510 SSD, but can't stomach the price right now!
IMAC - 2.7GHz Intel Core I5 - 12GB 1333 MHz DDR3 - Mac OS X - Logos 4 Gold
Daniel,
I, recently bought the computer with the specs at the bottom of this post. It is doing very well, and I would not say it is slow at all. I wonder if something else is going on.
You probably know this but 12 GB of RAM will not benefit you much in Logos. Even with a few other programs running and doing a full indexing of Logos, I have never seen 5 GB of RAM in use. So you are in great shape there and you will basically only see an increase in speed due to buss speed on the RAM not the increase in the amount of RAM itself.
Second, on my machine there was a utility that allowed me to adjust the way the graphics card was used. The default was to use the on-board graphics processor for almost all programs. However I could choose to use the discrete graphics on a program by program basis. Of course, I enabled that for Logos. (The function is made to help save battery life on a laptop. Wouldn't be there on a desktop.)
Third, hard drive speed makes a difference. You didn't tell us, but is your hard drive 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM?
Fourth, other programs running in the background (like indexing) will slow you down. If you read Chris' posts here you see how something like that affected him.
There is a thread on the wiki about changing how you use Logos to speed things up as well. Don't know if there's anything there that might help: http://wiki.logos.com/Speeding_up_Logos_4_responses See also: http://wiki.logos.com/Logos_Running_Slowly
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
Hello Mark,
Yes, I can manually ask the program to use discrete graphics at start up and this helps. I have not found a way in my system to make this permanent. But really, with all of this horsepower it is still only marginally faster than my T-61 with XP. Perhaps I was expecting to much when I upgraded....
IMAC - 2.7GHz Intel Core I5 - 12GB 1333 MHz DDR3 - Mac OS X - Logos 4 Gold
Dan, take a look at the other forum where you posted your Novabench score.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
Also, the utility I have for the discrete graphics was supplied by the card maker (in my case Nvidia). You might check for something like this in a folder in Program Files with the card manufacturer's name on it.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
Yes, I can manually ask the program to use discrete graphics at start up and this helps.
Look at my laptop scores on page 7 of the benchmark thread and the discrete graphics card score(159). That goes down to 36 with integrated graphics chip but I have no issues (eg. switching tabs, F11 reading mode). My old laptop with a graphics score of 12 was slower but acceptable (and acceptable overall). As you should outperform me on Search speed, what is the area of performance that concerns you? How big is your library?
Dave
===
Windows 11 & Android 13
I was wondering if anyone else out there has noticed this as an issue - why is my quad-core machine that much slower than a dual-core laptop with less (and slower) memory? Is Logos designed to work with multi-core processors, or does Logos get confused with multiple processors (especially with hyper-threading enabled)?
It would be interesting to see logs of both machines doing the same task. You'd need to run the tasks the first time you run Logos after boot, to make sure caching doesn't become a factor.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
Hello Chris, and welcome to Logos' forums. Why L4 runs faster on one computer than it does on another has been a hot topic throughout these forums. Let us say that you are not the first, or the second, or the third, or the fourth, or the fifth, or the ... person who has stated that L4 is running better on a slower computer. For me personally, L4 runs slow on all of my computers.
Thanks Tom!
I've been using Logos for quite a while, and even though it does seem to run slow on all of my computers, it is still much much faster than me trying to look through a bunch of physical books to do that kind of research! I still think it's a fantastic program!
I am sure I'm not the first - and I won't be the last - hopefully we can all work together to help the developers figure stuff out to improve an already great product!
Chris
Hi Tom & Chris,
I have one of those slow Core 2 Duos that L4 runs faster on--albeit slow.... but still faster than I do. [;)]
Grace & Peace,
Bill
MSI GF63 8RD, I-7 8850H, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 2TB HDD, NVIDIA GTX 1050Max
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