Troubleshooting severe client performance problems

[tgx]

I'm starting this thread in hopes that we can accumulate a list of things that can contribute to Ajax client performance problems.

In my case,in particular, I am working on a machine which may reasonably be found in the wild. It is a dual processor 1800+ machine with 1GB of memory, 80GB hard drive, onboard intel 10/100/1000GB NIC running at 100MB, onboard ATI RageXL video...probably only 8 or 16MB. Firefox 3.0.3 and IE 6 all patches on a W2k install.

Zimbra web client performance is abysmal, wretched, horrid, claw your eyes out waiting to simply move your mouse slow. It appears to do this ONLY when accessing the Zimbra system.

Thus far I have tried tweaking the NIC settings with no impact at all, however I have had problems with these Intel NICs in the past so in order of things I plan to try are:

1) Replacing the NIC with a discrete board.
2) Replacing the onboard ATI video with a discrete board.

There is nothing on the software side that is different than any other machine in the office, so I am looking at all elements. Will post my findings.

[bdial]

i assume with the amount of testing you've done that you tried multiple accounts. all accounts are slow on it?

[dwmtractor]

Two thoughts:

1. You say you have both IE and Firefox installed. Equally slow on both or worse on one than the other? "Claw your eyes out slow" is a pretty good description of my experience with IE on machines that FF runs beautifully--same machine. Zimbra definitely plays nicer with FF than IE, period.
2. What version of Java? I have seen performance issues when the JVM is an older (read, ancient) one.

[dwmtractor]

Oh, and you referred to "other machines in your office." Are we to assume the others are behaving nicely?

You might check running processes on the machine using Windows Task Manager or Process Explorer to see if there is stuff running other than what you believe to be installed.

[tgx]

Originally Posted by bdial

i assume with the amount of testing you've done that you tried multiple accounts. all accounts are slow on it?

Yes. Actually I will share my findings now.
I decided to start with the Video card as I didn't feel like tinkering with the NIC and I also had a hunch that the video card was the drag.

So I disabled the onboard ATI Rage via jumper, added a discrete PCI nVidia FX5500 128MB card (not PCIe)...probably overkill but these days these cards are a dime a dozen. 100% improvement. Interface is now as snappy as it is on even higher end machines.

So if you have a sluggish interface...maybe time to look at the video card.

[tgx]

Originally Posted by dwmtractor

Two thoughts:

1. You say you have both IE and Firefox installed. Equally slow on both or worse on one than the other? "Claw your eyes out slow" is a pretty good description of my experience with IE on machines that FF runs beautifully--same machine. Zimbra definitely plays nicer with FF than IE, period.
2. What version of Java? I have seen performance issues when the JVM is an older (read, ancient) one.

I agree Firefox has the edge on performance. However it was poor across both.
Latest JVM. All machines in the office are same software revs. Hardware, however, varies which is why I was leaning towards a probably hardware/driver cause.

[dwmtractor]

Very interesting. Especially since I'm using ATI (Radeon HD, not Rage) on this very machine. Can't say as I have a good guess there, but it's nice to have this bit of info in the event of other weirdly-slow machines. Thanks for posting! I'll mark this thread "solved" since you seem to have solved it yourself. . .

[tgx]

Originally Posted by dwmtractor

Very interesting. Especially since I'm using ATI (Radeon HD, not Rage) on this very machine. Can't say as I have a good guess there, but it's nice to have this bit of info in the event of other weirdly-slow machines. Thanks for posting! I'll mark this thread "solved" since you seem to have solved it yourself. . .

I am hoping others will share their weird and bizarre slowness stories here.
Oh and your Radeon HD is like 6 generations newer than this 8MB onboard jobber.

[dwmtractor]

Originally Posted by tgx

I am hoping others will share their weird and bizarre slowness stories here.

OK, I'll 'un-solve' it just so people will feel free to keep adding tales of woe!

[tgx]

Originally Posted by dwmtractor

OK, I'll 'un-solve' it just so people will feel free to keep adding tales of woe!

And hopefully solutions!