Advice Request BottleNeck 1.0

Please provide comments and solutions that are helpful to the author of this topic.

danb

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Hey guys, I have been thinking about upgrading my computer since it is close to 4 years old. It is a 6700K with 32GB RAM and 512 Samsung SSD. But before I decided to pull the trigger, I wanted to see if there were any bottlenecks on the system caused by CPU, RAM or HDD, for the software that I run and for what I use my computer for. I looked around for a utility but could not find one, so I built a little app that is mainly a tray app that monitors the CPU, RAM and HDD utilization in realtime, and displays the utilization in the system tray.

There is probably already an app like this, so if there is please let me know and I can use it instead, especially since it will certainly have more features. Obviously there is Windows Task Manager, Process Explorer, KillSwitch, etc., but I really just want a tray icon that displays these three utilizations in realtime so that I do not have to pull up Task Manager whenever my computer seems to be running slow. If there is nothing already like this and if you guys have a few simple suggestions on how to improve it, please let me know, but obviously we want to keep it super simple.

It turns out that there are no current bottlenecks on my main system, but when I installed it on my 8 year old iMac (secondary computer) running bootcamp this morning, I immediately figured out that my CPU is experiencing a rather significant bottleneck, and the reason it is running slow. The SSD and RAM were fine.

BottleNeck currently only monitors the C Drive, but we can create an option to monitor all of the drives. I did it this way for now because from what I have seen, it is usually the C drive that creates HDD system bottlenecks, and pretty much never other drives.

BTW, BottleNeck currently requires .net 4.5. If there are many Windows 7 users who do not have .net 4.5 installed, then I might be able to create a .net 3.5 installer at some point.

screenshot.PNG


BottleNeck 1.0
SHA-256: 8cc83ac999293f9ed073c068897556b278225115694875b2055b50c50cc8e2b7
 

plat

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Very interesting, Dan! Is there an example you have of a bottleneck, how would your software depict this, and how would you interpret the result and the origin of the bottleneck?

I like how it's easily seen in the System tray, here I can see w/confidence there's no problem. (y) I'd always assumed "bottleneck" applied to cpu-gpu mismatch, where the weaker cpu was holding back a more powerful gpu, resulting in loss of frames. BTW, I also have a 6700K paired with a GTX 1080 Founders card-- a pair that has never caused any issues whatsoever. It's just depressing slightly that Intel is coming out w/all this new stuff, it rubs it in that this hardware is supposedly getting long in the tooth. I sorta complained about this in another thread. :mad: Ain't got no money.


bottleneck.png
 

danb

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Hello @danb

Do you have a product landing page for that software, or a GitHub page?

Can't see any reference to it from the main VDS website, or web search.
I haven't gotten that far yet ;). I will probably just add this and a few other utilities to the VS website at some point, or maybe post them to GitHub. There is another app that I wrote a long time ago that you guys might be interested in as well, it is called DriveAlive. It is a small app that keeps your drives awake when you are using the computer, then lets them sleep when you are not using the computer. Like, have you ever been using your computer for a long time, then you need to grab something from the D drive, and it takes FOREVER for it to wake up? That used to drive me absolutely crazy, so DriveAlive fixes that. Basically, it is a good idea to let spindle drives sleep as much as possible, but not when you are using the computer.

I also have several pen testing type apps that you guys might like as well. I will go through my various projects and see what I have that you guys might like.
 

danb

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Very interesting, Dan! Is there an example you have of a bottleneck, how would your software depict this, and how would you interpret the result and the origin of the bottleneck?

I like how it's easily seen in the System tray, here I can see w/confidence there's no problem. (y) I'd always assumed "bottleneck" applied to cpu-gpu mismatch, where the weaker cpu was holding back a more powerful gpu, resulting in loss of frames. BTW, I also have a 6700K paired with a GTX 1080 Founders card-- a pair that has never caused any issues whatsoever. It's just depressing slightly that Intel is coming out w/all this new stuff, it rubs it in that this hardware is supposedly getting long in the tooth. I sorta complained about this in another thread. :mad: Ain't got no money.


Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. In the version I posted, if there is a bottleneck in either the CPU or HDD, the process that has the highest utilization is identified like this...

HeavyLoad.PNG


I ran the HeavyLoad.exe stress test to demonstrate. We have to be a little careful though on how we handle identifying the processes that have the highest utilization, because this can actually cause a lot of unwanted utilization.

Also, if you click any of the three progress bars, the "Max Utilization" indicator will reset... just click any of the three progress bars and you will see what I mean. I should also change the progress bars to the same multicolored bars in the tray icon.

At some point we might want to add a GPU indicator as well, but that is going to take quite a bit of time, and I am not sure it is worth it because there are already some really great specialized gaming utilities. But if it makes sense to add GPU I certainly will.

Thank you guys!
 

show-Zi

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I came across the software that I want to continue to use after a long time. This is useful for older and less powerful pc's. The icons in the notification area should not just sit around silently, but also actively disclose more information!
Thank you @danb ! I look forward to future developments.

 

danb

From VoodooShield
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I came across the software that I want to continue to use after a long time. This is useful for older and less powerful pc's. The icons in the notification area should not just sit around silently, but also actively disclose more information!
Thank you @danb ! I look forward to future developments.


OMG, SOOOOOO many tray icons ;). Sure, we can tweak it however you like, please let me know if anyone has any suggestions.
 

CyberTech

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Hey danb, i installed BottleNeck a few months ago it went great, 4 days ago WD detected a Trojan file and removed it quicky by itself i thought it was a false positive i was gonna install it so WD detected it removed some file during installing but failed i dont get whats going on i show you a pic of the file
Ux75G5g.jpeg

I installed it today again scanned with WD and Emsisoft Emergency Kit no detect it yet lol whats going on with that? was it false positive?
 

danb

From VoodooShield
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May 31, 2017
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Hey danb, i installed BottleNeck a few months ago it went great, 4 days ago WD detected a Trojan file and removed it quicky by itself i thought it was a false positive i was gonna install it so WD detected it removed some file during installing but failed i dont get whats going on i show you a pic of the file
I installed it today again scanned with WD and Emsisoft Emergency Kit no detect it yet lol whats going on with that? was it false positive?
Thank you for letting me know! Yeah, it is a definite false positive, it is all clean code. That is the funny thing about AV's these days... they are certainly more effective, but only because they are more aggressive. But they have reached the point that they are so aggressive, that you might as well just use a lock, and provide the user with better file insight, instead of quarantining safe (and often important) files.
 

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