PC Spec for running Visual Studio 2010 + ReSharper smoothly

Assuming we have to stay on Windows XP x86, what would be the best spec for working in Visual Studio 2010 with ReS开发者_如何学Pythonharper, 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.