How much RAM do Visual Studio developers actually have?
We have a continual battle with Marketing about how much RAM we should have on our Performance Test machines, so I would love some feedback from Visual Studio developers.
Our current perf machines are Windows 2000 / 500MHz / 128M of RAM. It is my opinion that no (sane) developer is still using 128M of RAM. Memory is dirt cheap (except for laptops), and is the cheapest way of improving developer productivity.
To give some perspective, my main developer machine is a Dual 2GHz Hyper-threaded P4 box with 1G of RAM and an 80G drive. This is sufficient for most of my needs, though Builds still take a while. I dont have to build much of Visual Studio, which is just as well as I dont have the disk space.
If you are a developer using 128M on your W2K machine (or 192M or less on your XP machine) I'de like to hear from you.
MSFT disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Comments
Anonymous
January 22, 2004
I, too, question the sanity of anyone using 128M. We buy laptops for everyone, including developers, and 512MB is the standard. I always have at least a gig at home.Anonymous
January 22, 2004
The standard workstation spec for developers at Match.com is a 1.7GHz w/ 1GB of RAM running Windows Server 2003.Anonymous
January 22, 2004
The reason you're not hearing from anyone with 128 or 196 meg is because they're still waiting for the browser to page into memory :)
- Eric.Anonymous
January 22, 2004
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January 22, 2004
I'm tempted to say I only have 128mb of RAM if that means that it stays the baseline. That way my actual machine that has 512mb will stay snappy, and not have all its RAM eaten by a glorified text editor. ;)Anonymous
January 22, 2004
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January 22, 2004
I have tried it personally installing on my machine on 128 MB RAM before I realised that I am insane:( and I need to spend some money and buy more RAM. But in my office have two developer machines that only has 192MB of RAM on them with VS.NET and MSDN on it.Anonymous
January 22, 2004
In my use 512 (DDR) has been must with VS.NET.Anonymous
January 22, 2004
The physical memory is one point, but the amount of Windows services that get started is another. Add things like sql server and reporting services, and you are pretty much cloaked.Anonymous
January 22, 2004
my former (!) company wanted to send me out to give a C# training on a 128MB fitted laptop with Win2000 and VS.NET. Needless to say that I didn't want to make a fool of myself, and decided to bring my own laptop. I quit last month.Anonymous
January 22, 2004
on my own com, i use 450 Mhz + 256mb ram .it's very slow.
but when i use VS.NET on 1 Ghz + 128 mb machine. i think my com is faster than this fat monster.Anonymous
January 22, 2004
Your original post talked about Performance Test machines. 128 is obviously too little for a dev machine (should be min 512, pref 1GB), but a performance test machine should surely have a similar configuration to the expected target machines?Anonymous
January 22, 2004
Laptop w/ 512 MB and desktop w/ 1GB (and 128Mb videocard :-)Anonymous
January 22, 2004
Windows is too much hangry of RAM... in my laptop for VS.NET i've 512mb DDR and it's good... but MS must work a lot for the memory management of Windows (Linux Docet).Anonymous
January 22, 2004
for software for developers assume 256mb RAM minimum (I personally have 1GB on my desktop and 512mb on my laptop (which cost about £60 for the upgrade - not so expensive really)), but for end-user software, 128MB is definitely rightAnonymous
January 22, 2004
I have a company laptop with 256Mb RAM and that drives me insane. Especially cause I'm doing Compact Framework stuff and there is the overhead of the remote debugger that connects to the device I'm programming for!Anonymous
January 22, 2004
I use 128 MB of RAM on a 430 MHz CPU and a 6 GB HDD running XP Professional. I guess you are wondering which century or part of the world such an atrocity could be perpetrated on VS.NET. Surprisingly, things are not that bad when runnning the DEV environment...it is not fast enough when running together with other stuff (Media player, outlook etc).
Anyway, planning to get something better soon.Anonymous
January 22, 2004
Hi,
At home: Athlon 2400XP, 1GB Memory, 80GB Hard drive
At work: Athlon 2600XP, 512MB Memory, 40GB Hard drive.
IMHO at least 384MB, ideally 512MB, especially if your using WindowsXP or Windows Server 2003.
Anonymous
January 22, 2004
Dev Pc: P4 2.53Ghz, 1GB Ram, 720GB Hd, Win 2k3
Test Pc: Athlon4 1.2Ghz, 512MB Ram, 60Gb Hd, dual boot win2k and a linux/bsd variant (changes once in a while just for testing)
Your screen should be decent as well, prophetview 920 over here, i never want to go back to my old crt :pAnonymous
January 22, 2004
Dev PC: Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz, 512GB RAM, 60GB HD... Windows XP Prof
Test PC with Virtual PC or VMwareAnonymous
January 22, 2004
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January 22, 2004
Memory and CPU speed don't really seem to much of an issue.
We have relatively fast machines and lots of memory.
Do you do your testing with tons of stuff installed (CS2K2,SQL Server) ?
The biggest issue is actualy about screen size, I can't find an affordable 36" screen...
;)Anonymous
January 22, 2004
Home, 2.6ghz, 1gb ram, loads of hd (lh/xp)
Work, 1.8ghz, 1.5gb ram, 80 gb hd (2000 srv)Anonymous
January 22, 2004
I use several machines....
right now: Dell Inspiron 7000
PII Celeron 300Mhz
196 Megs ram
8 meg ATI video
thats the max for this laptop!
OS: Windows Server 2003 Advanced, runs fine.
I just installed this as I had to test some stuff, last week this was Windows 2000 Pro and VS.Net worked fine after it was loaded. just a bit of lag on startup.
I also have a PII 400 at work with 128 and it runs ok.... not as fast as my home machine but good enough to code - compile - test
but I do plan on upgrading machines to all new gear soon..... but this is good for testing as many folks out there have old pc's
don't forget what your customer has to use is your target machine.Anonymous
January 22, 2004
Sometimes I install VS directly on a dinky machine just to debug it. Yes, remote debugging is nice, but it 'seems' more convenient this way. Not a critical need, but something to consider.Anonymous
January 22, 2004
Dev PC - P4 2.8Ghz , 512Mb , 160Gb HDD but the most important thing is the 3 monitors :)Anonymous
January 22, 2004
The problems is that with OS like Linux, with 256Mb of RAM, you can do everything you want in a good way and with a wonderful graphic engine :)Anonymous
January 23, 2004
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January 23, 2004
Our developer PCs use:
1 GB DDR RAM
Dual 2.6 GHz Processors
40 GB 15K RPM SCSI Hard drives
64 MB Video Cards
19 Inch LCDsAnonymous
January 23, 2004
I have been more-or-less successfully slogging along, er, I mean developing, on a PIII/733MHz, with 384MB RAM, assisted greatly with a 80GB HD. This machine does not have its own monitor, so I use Remote Desktop running on a PIII/733MHz, 128MB/4GB laptop, which I use primarily for PIM, web browsing, and streaming music.Anonymous
January 23, 2004
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January 23, 2004
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January 24, 2004
I have P4 2.4Ghz dev boxes - 1GB of RAM at home, 768 at school.
My home machines runs MSSQL, IIS, and VS (plus VMWare instances). My school machine runs VS & VPC Instances.Anonymous
January 25, 2004
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January 25, 2004
If your boss gives you 128mb for development, then be assured that he's trying to punish you.. :-)
512mb gets you comfort and 1gb gets you almost nirvana..Anonymous
January 26, 2004
Just to put it in perspective, I just bought a 2.4GHz Dell for $324. I can buy 512M RAM sticks for $50.Anonymous
January 26, 2004
500MHz and 128M of RAM? SOunds like my graphics card. However, it's not running W2K ;-)
Anyway, my machine at work is a dual P4 3GHz with 1 GB RAM. Three HDDs, 2x120GB and 1x80GB. The 80GB hosts a partition for the swap file and a second partition for the temporary files. The 1st 120GB HDD is the OS and applications, the second is for all the sources and compilations. I'm pretty satisfied ;-)Anonymous
January 27, 2004
I've got a laptop with 3/4 GB.
VS.NET 2003 is noticablly slower than 2002.Anonymous
January 30, 2004
P3 512Mb RAMAnonymous
January 30, 2004
1.13GHz, 384MB. Windows XP SP1, That's enough!Anonymous
January 31, 2004
528 is the absolute minimum... see my post at http://weblogs.asp.net/dbrowning/archive/2004/01/12/58067.aspx
for details on other's dev pc'sAnonymous
February 02, 2004
PIII 800 / PIII 1000 (both machines same specs)
512 MB RAM
Windows XP Pro SP 1 latest patches
VS .NET 2003Anonymous
February 02, 2004
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February 15, 2004
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February 17, 2004
I run VC6 on XPSP1 and 2KSP4 on a PIII-600 Thinkpad w/128MB.
I tried VS.NET once on it, and rapidly uninstalled it. That said, I don't even have Office installed on this machine because it's so dog slow (to be honest, I think it might be about time for a reinstall).
My "real" workstation is an Athlon 2200XP+ w/512MB dual booting XPSP1, XPSP2b1, and LH4051 in which VS.NET 2003 is quite comfortable.Anonymous
February 23, 2004
1GB. We run Windows 2003, virtual PCs and several pieces of server software on our dev machines.Anonymous
April 19, 2004
I use a 3.0ghz P4 HT, 512MB Corsair extreme PC 2700, And diskeeper pro to prevent freeze-ups from fragmentation.Anonymous
May 07, 2004
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May 08, 2004
3.0 GHz P4 HT 1 GB. If there's a performance problem, it is most of the time somehow related to how Windows and NTFS is managing the HDD (lack of managing). To get decent performance you have to have enough memory so that the HDD use will be kept to minimum. Even while HDD's can get pretty good 50 MB/s speed, Windows lacks the algorithms to re-position the files according to their usage and loading patterns. When a particular file is grown often (log file perhaps?) why it is not moved into/reserved space in a such position that it can grow without continous fragmentation? If this isn't addressed in Longhorn I am disappointed.Anonymous
May 18, 2004
I have the Dell Infinion Laptop(2.2GHz, 256DDR RAM) , which is running great, even though I have Opera with 5 pages, 5 instances of Internet Explorer, Outlook, Music player and usually about 2 instances of VS.NET 2003 open at the same time.Anonymous
June 04, 2004
Until recently, I was running VS6 on 450MHz with 64MB. Back then, the programs I was working on weren't all that big, so I didn't mind waiting 5 minutes for a build. I'm currently running 192MB, 1400MHz, but I'm not doing a lot of programming at this time. Got an upgrade on the books in a couple months, and I'll probably be getting back into VS a lot more around that time.Anonymous
July 08, 2004
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June 26, 2008
This may sound pretty insane but I use Visual Studio on my 600Mhz 192mb RAM laptop. I runs just fine except it does become rather slow if I try to run Internet Explorer and other apps at the same time. Anyway, just thought I add my two cents.Anonymous
June 27, 2008
anonymous: Er yes, I think that is pretty insane! VC6 might be ok on that, but I'd be surprised how well versions from this millennium run on it.