11-08-2015, 01:20 PM
My main PC is a Quad core (Q6600 CPU I think) that is probably 7 or 8 years old. It all runs well but could be faster when I'm doing VHDL synthesis and Xilinx place/route. At some point I'll get back to my "new" PC. which was a friend's cast off dating from late 2009. CPU is Intel i7-860 2.8GHz. It has a W7 home premium licence. I did some experiments with it, both 64 and 32 bit versions. I also fitted a couple of 500GB SSDs in RAID1 (mirror).
I would like to go to W7 64 bit but the version of the Xilinx tools I'm using doesn't like it. I can go to a newer version of the Xilinx tools which should be OK but I will still need the older one from time to time. I did some experiments with Virtualbox https://www.virtualbox.org/ which is a brilliant bit of software though with something of a learning curve. I fitted an XP VM and ran the Xilinx tools. Still faster than my current main PC but rather slower than the new PC in native 32 bit W7. Hence I really want to run the Xilinx software on the host OS without a VM.
The way I'm heading is W7 64 bit as host OS, newer XIlinx tools and as many other programs as possible running native in W7 64 bit. Then a VM with XP for stuff that doesn't like W7 64 bit and possibly a VM with W98 for DOS stuff that was never 100% happy under XP.
The trouble with all this is that it seems to take ages doing OS instals etc and I'm not that sort of geek. Better things to do with my life.
I also wonder how much of the performance boost was due to the SSDs.
I would like to go to W7 64 bit but the version of the Xilinx tools I'm using doesn't like it. I can go to a newer version of the Xilinx tools which should be OK but I will still need the older one from time to time. I did some experiments with Virtualbox https://www.virtualbox.org/ which is a brilliant bit of software though with something of a learning curve. I fitted an XP VM and ran the Xilinx tools. Still faster than my current main PC but rather slower than the new PC in native 32 bit W7. Hence I really want to run the Xilinx software on the host OS without a VM.
The way I'm heading is W7 64 bit as host OS, newer XIlinx tools and as many other programs as possible running native in W7 64 bit. Then a VM with XP for stuff that doesn't like W7 64 bit and possibly a VM with W98 for DOS stuff that was never 100% happy under XP.
The trouble with all this is that it seems to take ages doing OS instals etc and I'm not that sort of geek. Better things to do with my life.
I also wonder how much of the performance boost was due to the SSDs.
www.borinsky.co.uk Jeffrey Borinsky www.becg.tv
