David Manley perf comments

Comments for Performance Documentation

Framework Prereqs

• Additional details regarding Framework Prerequisites would reduce confusion. There isn't any harm in "dumbing it down" a level.
  • Order of installations
  • Python options
  • Cygwin options (packages)
  • Where to put the .dll

Framework Config

• Are given path values the defaults? Is there any forseeable reason that they would be different?

• Confusion - you seem to be contradicting yourself

(Optional) For the page load test to work, modify the hostperm.1 file

    * Set to allow urls with scheme:file to open in new windows
    * Set the preference to open new windows in a tab should be off. 

    # Permission File
    # This is a generated file! Do not edit.

Config File

• What do I modify? The paths?
  • Highlight sections that need to be modified or "may" need to be modified. Within code, could be hard to understand.

Running the test will close any existing Firefox windows.  

• This should be BOLD CAPS MAJOR, almost lost all my wiki edits.

Skewing the Test

• How much of this test is reliant on applications currently running on the system? Can one skew the test results to give inaccurate readings by overloading the system?

• By running a quick test I realized that by overloading the processor, the results of the test become much less useful. Before running the test framework I started a multitude of applications to occupy the processor:
  • 2 x YouTube Flash Video Sites
  • 1 x Disk Defragmenter
  • 1 x Flash Game
  • 1 x Flash Media Site
  • 1 x Windows Media Streamed Video

• By looking at the images below, the Normal test's % of processor peaks at approximately 26.5%. In contrast the overloaded test shows a low point of 26.5%. This result actually has nothing to do with Firefox, but everything to do with stress put on the processor from external applications. In addition the other results were affected aswell.

• Normal Test

• With Overloaded Processor