SAS Companion for the Microsoft Windows Environment

Hardware Considerations

To run Version 8 of the SAS System under Windows, your PC must contain a processor equivalent to the Intel 80486DX or higher.

There are several other hardware factors that might affect performance. Not all of them will apply to your particular configuration or to the way in which you use the SAS System. Before proceeding with these recommendations, investigate their merits with your system administrator.

internal memory

In general, the more memory that is available to Windows, the less swapping to disk Windows needs to do. Note that if you already have sufficient memory to load the tasks you perform, then increasing the amount of memory might not increase performance.

The minimum amount of memory to run the SAS System is 16 MB, but SAS performs best when a workstation has at least 24 MB. SAS servers should have 256 MB or more.

disk caching

Hard disk drive controllers that use their own RAM to cache data generally have better throughput than conventional controllers. As a result, both Windows and the SAS System spend less time on I/O.

hard drive space and speed

In general, large hard drives also have fast access times and fast data transfer rates. Since the SAS System is heavily I/O oriented, all of these factors (size, access time, and transfer rate) are important to system performance.

SCSI and Enhanced IDE drives generally have faster access times than MFM or IDE drives. Local bus hard drive controllers (for use with local bus motherboards) move data more efficiently than conventional controllers.

video card

PCI bus video cards (used with PCI bus motherboards) can increase the speed at which graphics are rendered, thus allowing the SAS system to continue processing data.

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