Is Visual studio 2010 slower than 2005? I just had my laptop upgraded to windows 7 64bit with visual studio 2010, and vs 2010 is much slower than vs2005 was when I had xp. Any upgrades or configurations you can think of that might help me out?
Turn off the "Enable rich client visual experience" and turn on "Use graphics hardware acceleration if available"
Extra features always come at a cost. If you don't upgrade your computer at a similar rate you upgrade your software, you'll find it gets slower and slower.
About VS2010 specifically, the UI uses WPF, so you need at least a decently passable graphics card to handle it. Intellisense also got a lot better, so it will use slightly more CPU.
For what it's worth, 2010 runs very smoothly on my computer.
Depending on your setup, Visual Studio 2010 can be faster than VS 2010 or slower. I'm not sure from your question in what way Visual Studio is running slower, though.
Is it just Visual Studio, or is anything else slower?
You mentioned you're running Windows 7 x64. If you have more than 4 GB of RAM, this is a good idea. If you have less than 4 GB, you're probably going to be slower than if you're running 32-bit. It's also worth looking at your Windows 7 performance rating--if it's low, applications like Visual Studio will be slow too.
The hardware requirements are listed over at http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/ultimate/system-requirements, but those are bare-bones requirements. If you're doing SharePoint development, then you'll need a much beefier system (SharePoint will compete for a lot of your system resources). I'd want at least 1 GB more RAM than recommended there even without SharePoint. The processor speed is fine for multiple cores, but if you have an old laptop 1.6 GHz and a single core won't be that fast.
Most people find an SSD drive helps incredibly.
Launching Visual Studio does seem to take longer, but to me it runs faster once it's up. F1 help is non-blocking now. Compiles can be done in parallel. Navigation and adding references is faster.
Grab the productivity power pack from vscodegallery.com--that adds a lot of shortcuts.
Visual Studio has more features than previous versions. Most people install everything. It may be better to just install the features you need.
The previous poster mentioned having a good video card or chipset. That's probably a good idea, but disk I/O and CPU are probably more important.
Related
Assuming we have to stay on Windows XP x86, what would be the best spec for working in Visual Studio 2010 with ReSharper, PowerTool and a couple of other smaller add-ons?
Components we can upgrade are:
CPU
RAM
HDD
Graphics
At the moment, I have a Pentium Dual-Core E5300 2.6GHz with 4GB RAM and ReSharper makes Visual Studio crash in a solution of around 2000 files.
Really should be moving to Win 7, or at least Win Vista. There is MASSIVE improvements in VS just by running on top of those.
As you stated XP x86, some suggestions:
Ram: 4Gb as fast as you can get. This is important but also only depends on number of VS instances and solution size. At 4Gb I would suggest staying in the low solution bracket (< 25 projects).
CPU: Fast as you can get. Multi core helps a bit, but a lot of the VS UI is single threaded on the GUI.
HDD: VS is a harddrive monster, so fast hard drive. SSD especially here. Spend the money here FIRST. R# perf bottle neck is the file scanning so this will help with this too.
Graphics: Far more important than you would think, mostly due to the fact VS uses WPF and hardware acceleration. Very important to get a good graphics card with STABLE drivers. VS 2010 SP1 disables hardware acceleration on XP by default (can be turned on in the settings) because so many VS 2010 crashes on XP are from unstable graphic drivers and WPF hits those issues a lot. If you get a good stable one, turn that setting on!
Another issue is also just regular restarts, VS does a lot in memory and isn't too good at cleaning up. So the stack fills quickly and it will crash often (PerfWaston is looking for this info) so a restart every so often helps.
As I said at the start your best bet is also one of the cheapest (compared to new hardware) upgrade to Win7, especially x64. More RAM, better SSD support, more stable OS, there is a lot in there that will help your VS experience be faster and more stable.
I would highly recommend moving to 64-bit. Even if you just have 4GB addressable ram with Visual studio, it will have access to more memory if you get more than 4GB of RAM.
Also, get faster hard drives. SSD or RAID 5. I'd pick this over a faster CPU.
I have a Windows XP machine with a dual core 3.6G CPU and 4megs. I am not very happy with the performance. I was wondering if compilation in VS 2010 is multithreaded and does VS 2010 benefit from switching from dual to quad core machine?
What language are you working in? The native C++ compiler will spawn off multiple processes when you build. In VS 2008 it was one project per core; now it will use multiple cores even if you have only one (presumably huge) project. I don't think managed code does.
A helpful blog entry on what hardware will be useful with VS 2010 is http://blogs.msdn.com/ddperf/archive/2008/12/23/visual-studio-2010-hardware-requirements.aspx for more.
You'd probably get a bigger speed up from changing your hard disk (i.e., to SSD) and installing VS and putting your projects on that disk. It'll speed up the Intellisense cache and what-not. If you're on XP rather than Vista or Windows 7 too, the shell on VS2010 was rewritten to use WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) and WPF is not optimised for XP; it will run slower.
Compilation of large projects tends to be very disk-intensive. Getting a faster disk will speed up the build process.
Skip SSD and buy more RAM and put all your projects on RamDisk like SoftPerfect RAMDisk
Is there any 64 bit Visual Studio at all? Why not?
For numerous reasons, No.
Why is explained in this MSDN post.
First, from a performance perspective the pointers get larger, so data
structures get larger, and the processor cache stays the same size.
That basically results in a raw speed hit (your mileage may vary). So
you start in a hole and you have to dig yourself out of that hole by
using the extra memory above 4G to your advantage. In Visual Studio
this can happen in some large solutions but I think a preferable thing
to do is to just use less memory in the first place. Many of VS’s
algorithms are amenable to this. Here’s an old article that discusses
the performance issues at some length:
https://learn.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/joshwil/should-i-choose-to-take-advantage-of-64-bit
Secondly, from a cost perspective, probably the shortest path to
porting Visual Studio to 64 bit is to port most of it to managed code
incrementally and then port the rest. The cost of a full port of that
much native code is going to be quite high and of course all known
extensions would break and we’d basically have to create a 64 bit
ecosystem pretty much like you do for drivers. Ouch.
No! There is no 64-bit version of Visual Studio.
How to know it is not 64-bit:
Once you download Visual Studio and click the install button, you will see that the initialization folder it selects automatically is C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0
As per my understanding, all 64-bit programs/applications goes to C:\Program Files and all 32-bit applications goes to C:\Program Files (x86) from Windows 7 onwards.
Update: April 19th 2021
Microsoft announced their preview Visual Studio 2022 64 bit
Visual Studio 2022 is 64-bit
Visual Studio 2022 on Windows is now a 64-bit application. This means you can open, edit, run, and debug even the biggest and most complex solutions without running out of memory.
see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/ide/whats-new-visual-studio-2022
no, but it runs fine on win64, and can create win64 .EXEs
No, but the 32-bit version runs just fine on 64-bit Windows.
Is there any 64 bit Visual Studio at all?
Yes literally there is one called "Visual Studio" and is 64bit, but well,, on Mac not on Windows
Why not?
Decision making is electro-chemical reaction made in our brain and that have an activation point (Nerdest answer I can come up with, but follow). Same situation happened in history: Windows 64!...
So in order to answer this fully I want you to remember old days. Imagine reasons for "why not we see 64bit Windows" are there at the time. I think at the time for Windows64 they had exact same reasons others have enlisted here about "reasons why not 64bit VS on windows" were on "reasons why not 64bit Windows" too. Then why they did start development for Windows 64bit? Simple! If they didn't succeed in making 64bit Windows I bet M$ would have been a history nowadays. If same reasons forcing M$ making 64bit Windows starts to appear on need for 64Bit VS then I bet we will see 64bit VS, even though very same reasons everyone else here enlisted will stay same! In time the limitations of 32bit may hit VS as well, so most likely something like below start to happen:
Visual Studio will drop 32bit support and become 64bit,
Visual Studio Code will take it's place instead,
Visual Studio will have similar functionality like WOW64 for old extensions which is I believe unlikely to happen.
I put my bets on Visual Studio Code taking the place in time; I guess bifurcation point for it will be some CPU manufacturer X starts to compete x86_64 architecture taking its place on mainstream market for laptop and/or workstation,
Update: From the visualstudio 2022 preview site quoting https://web.archive.org/web/20211030202827/https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/preview/:
Our 64-bit upgrade Take advantage of all your computer’s resources to scale Visual Studio to the largest of projects and complex workloads without running out of memory. You can continue to run and debug your 32-bit apps.
It seems they did what I was expecting they are dropping old 32bit support, quoting https://web.archive.org/web/20210910130939/https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/extensibility/migration/update-visual-studio-extension?view=vs-2022:
Visual Studio 2022 RC is a 64-bit application, and introduces some breaking changes in the VS SDK
I want to thank every upvote for keeping this answer. As a thank you I want to add one more prediction: I still believe the trend will lean towards VSCode in time while VSCode forks or turns-into something like Eclipse Theia. Most probably they will give full support on cloud platforms with that. Especially for enterprises that will add great value and for the marketing sake I cannot find any better excuse about "move your onprem into the Azure" stuff. Anyhow seems we are correct about: Why Visualstudio was not 64 bit while it should be 64bit long ago,
Update: I think this will be the last update. Yes it was the direction I expected: https://vscode.dev/ deployed to public,
Thinking about installing Visual Studio on my Asus eee 1000HE. Since it is not a very powerful machine, I am wondering if I should install 2008 or the new 2010. Looks like there has been a lot of changes done to the UI, etc. Does that mean that it now runs smoother as well? Or is it actually heavier to run?
Considering that VS2010 is currently only available as a CTP release, I'd install VS2008.
Once VS2010 is fully released, without debug information and with optimizations enabled, ask this question and consider using it. For the moment, if you have 2008, use it. I doubt 2010 will be faster on your 'slow' hardware.
2010 is much slower on older machines in my opinion. I am running it currently on a Dell 700m with 512MB of RAM and while it does run, it feels sluggish and significantly slower than Visual Studio 2008. (Remember that it is a beta though, I am sure that performance tweaks are forthcoming)
It is a little bit more difficult to judge the performance differences since you are running it in a virtual machine at this time (no stand alone beta out yet).
Edit: If I am incorrect on the inability to run it outside of a virtual machine I apologize and stand corrected.
Does that mean that it now runs smoother as well? Or is it actually heavier to run?
This is an old post, I know, but I just had to chime in and laugh: lol
I had a pretty decent overclocked Wolfdale-based machine I built for gaming. Fast enough for virtually everything I need to do on a computer, except for editing text files in Visual Studio 2010. Just scrolling up and down in a C# file maxed out one of my cores. No joke.
So I upgraded to the new Sandy Bridge 32nm CPUs (3.3GHz, unlocked model) in an enthusiast motherboard, with 8GB of Corsair RAM, and scrolling moving the cursor around in a text buffer in VS2010 is using 30% of the CPU (that's right, it's using multiple cores). This is with no plugins and outlining turned off.
Vim in the same file, doing pretty much anything I can think of, shows 0% CPU usage, always.
VS2010's editor performance is absolutely shameful. There's no other word for it.
I am updating my rig and I need to make a decision between staying with XP x64 or going to Vista x64. I do very little development, really just building products from my developers. The other 90% of my work is done with Google Apps, Skype, Office, etc...
I want to upgrade to Vista not only because I will have 3x monitors running on DirectX10, but mostly because iTunes isnt' supported on XP x64!
So, my question...
With all the horror stories about Vista, will Vista Ultimate x64 with 8GB RAM be good for my development machine?
If I can't develop on Vista, I can always fire open a VPC to do the development in. No?
EDIT
I am using all Microsoft development tools...
VS.NET 2005
VS.NET 2008
VB6
SQL Server 2005/2008
ASP.NET
(.NET 2.0 & .NET 3.0)
I'm sure the software will run, I suppose I am not so sure that the OS will be speedy enough, or stable enough.
I am fine with Vista 64 bits for .net and php.
A lot of conversation about it are already on SO. Here is some important point your might take in consideration for .Net:
Unit Testing with NUnit
UAC with developpement
VS and Vista
A lot more...
You can develop for X86 on your new X64 machine without problem.
For PHP XAMPP work fine, Eclipse work fine too.
I run Vista x64 with 4GB of memory and haven't run into any major problems. Before this I was using Vista x86 and I definitely like x64 better as it seems more stable.
In case you're curious, with only (hehe, only!? amazing to say) 4GB of memory I can easily run:
3 instances of Visual Studio 2008 with Resharper
a couple Sql Management Studio instances
Outlook with 3 mail stores totaling # 2GB
Firefox with # 20 tabs
a bunch of Windows Explorer windows
Windows Media Player
iTunes (which is slow as a dog)
# 5 Excel and Word documents
plus some assorted services (eg, Sql Service 2005 and 2008) and status-area apps
Even with all this I still have roughly 750 MB free and no performance issues when using the applications.
I run Vista Business x64 SP 1 (8 GB RAM) for one month now. No problems so far. I'm using following software:
Visual Studio 2005 SP 1
Visual Studio 2008 SP 1
TortoiseSVN / VisualSVN
Visual SourceSafe (older projects)
SQL Server Client Tools
Firefox 3.01 + Firebug
IE 7 + Fiddler
Chrome
Red Gate SQL Compare / Data Compare
Virtual PC 2007 SP 1
Notepad ++
SyncBack
RoyalTS (RemoteDesktop Manager)
Skype
Office 2007
I used it for a long time before switching to Windows Server 2008 (x64) - was very good though,
Personally, I found Server 2008 to be a much better dev OS though. Check out this article on converting Windows Server 2008 to smell a little more like Vista.
I personally use Vista Ultimate x64 with 8GB RAM for my development machine. I don't quite have 3 monitors, but my machine is pretty well set up for development.
Vista x64 is great for .NET and Java. Started with 4GB RAM and that wasn't enough (hit 100% sometimes and the machine would slow to a crawl). 6GB is just barely enough. Hitting 95% memory usage sometimes and it slows down a little, but the machine doesn't go into a paging frenzy anymore.
I run Vista x64 Ultimate as my primary dev machine and it's just fine. Support for x64 has come a long way and for the most part you won't notice a difference except for program files location and much, much more RAM.
Vista will be plenty fast and stable. I'm using Vista x64 Ultimate for development #work right now, and have been for some time. I have nothing but good to say about it.
I'd say it depends on what you're developing. The first priority should be to make sure that all of your development and testing tools work properly under Vista x64. If they don't, there's no reason to suffer the pain of doing all your actual work in a virtual machine.
So I'd say the best thing to do is to take the plunge, see how it works, and keep the XP discs around. And should everything work as expected, it would still be prudent to have a copy of XP running in a VPC just for compatibility testing.
You will have to go XP-based Virtual Machine for any development in IE6. It is near-impossible to run that browser in Vista, let alone Ultimate.
Since a lot of government and legacy code base is against IE6, this happens a lot.
I've used Vista x64 as a development machine and have had only a few minor issues mostly related to using third party APIs in Visual Studio 2008. Just remember that if your getting a really unexplainable error within your Visual Studio project while utilizing a third party API - try compiling your app using the x86 CPU flag in your project settings. This has solved a few headaches for me here and there.