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Although Windows Device Manager, Microsoft System Information,
and Norton's System Information program can provide you with
information about your computer system, they don't provide the
same complete details that are provided by 3b Software's Sandra
(System Analyzer Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant).
The free version of Sandra includes 50 modules that provide
diagnostic, benchmarking, and performance tune-ups for different
hardware devices and subsystems, including CPUs, modems, BIOS,
drives, graphic cards, and DOS and Windows memory. It will tell
you your system's video memory size, motherboard chipset, PCI
slot usage, and SIMM or DIMM memory module identification. The
latest version includes the additional modules CPU multimedia
benchmarking, and network and memory bandwidth benchmarking.
Download Sandra from http://www.sisoftware.co.uk You will need a
file unzip program like WinZip to extract the 2.36 MB zip file.
Close all programs before executing the setup.exe program. When
setup is complete, click on the Finish button to reboot your
computer. Like most high quality software, Sandra comes with an
uninstall utility. Sandra also comes with a browser based FAQ
file and a browser based help file, but the help file is Web
based.
Sandra's Performance Tune Up Wizard advises you about what
hardware upgrades would be best for your system. However, you
don't have to run Performance Tune up Wizard because each module
also provides you with performance tips. For example, the
multimedia benchmarking module warned me that my on-board
video's use of shared memory greatly reduces performance and
that I should use a video card.
It's fun to open the various modules and probe your computer
system. I found the most interesting module to be "Processes
Information". You can start any program and find out how much
memory it uses and what DLL's it uses. Sandra System analyzer,
diagnostic and benchmarking modules are one tool every PC
technician should definitely have in their toolkit.
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