2 replies to this topic

[Glass_Knife]

I've come across a testing situation where a slow computer should be simulated.
I know that I could do this with a VM, but I'm lazy, and I don't want to have to
install and configure an entire development environment on a VM if there is a tool that
would let me slow down the CPU and chew up RAM to simulate a slower computer.

I've Googled for apps, but some of them look a little skeevy, and since I'm at work,
I'd prefer to use a recommended one.

Any suggestions for this kind of thing?

Thanks,

[Bacterius]

What about running LinX using all your computer cores and memory, that should do it. Note it'll heat up your processor - obviously - so if you have a bad cooling system, make sure it doesn't overheat.

[Adam_42]

Your best option is to test with real hardware, I'd recommend looking round for hardware with the right performance that you can borrow for testing. You don't need to install a full development environment on it - build on your normal PC and copy the exe + data over to the test PC (or share them on the network so no copying is required). You might want to install a profiler on the slow PC, although profiling results should be comparable with the fast PC for most programs (i.e. it'll run slower, but the same bits of code will usually be slowest on both).

Trying to simulate a slow PC on a fast one is not going to give results that are accurate, and will make profiling awkward. The only thing I'd consider doing to simulate a slow PC is locking your program's affinity to a limited number of CPU cores with task manager.