Operational Performance

Rex

“Operational performance” refers to the speed at which a user can switch from one open application to another open application and have the application react to user commands. For example, a user might work in Microsoft® Word and then switch to ACT! to enter a contact. The speed at which ACT! responds to the user’s commands, after making it active, is operational performance.

Factors Affecting Individual Operational Performance
Multiple factors affect operational performance. The main factors are:
  Number of open applications or application instances•
  Physical and Virtual Memory (disk) swapping •
  Processor speed, physical memory, and drive speed

 

How do these factors affect performance?

Number of open applications/instances – The number of applications open at any given time will • affect system responsiveness overall, since each open application or instance consumes system resources in order to operate. The more open applications, the more system resources are consumed. It’s important to note that the amount of resources that an application will use varies from application to application.

Physical and Virtual Memory (disk) swapping – As users open and activate an application, • Microsoft Windows® will swap out fast RAM memory used by other applications and free it up for the now-active application. Windows will swap out the now-inactive application memory needed for hard drive-based Virtual Memory, which is slower, freeing up the RAM for the active application. Although Virtual Memory disk-swapping makes the newly active application run faster, users can experience a performance problem when switching back to the inactive application, if the PC does not have enough available RAM for both open applications.

Processor speed, physical memory and hard drive speed – CPU (processor) speed, physical • memory, and hard drive speed can all impact operational performance, but at different levels. Faster CPUs and hard drives (RPM), combined with faster and larger physical RAM, enable
a user to move between applications more quickly and allow the application to react faster to
a user’s commands.