What pc hardware/software to speed up Microsoft Access?

[RonPaii]

A poor design will benefit from improved hardware performance just as much as a good design

A poor design may benefit, but likely not enough to make a difference. A form that is taking 30 seconds to open that now opens 20 seconds after adding $2000 in hardware on one computer is a failure. Spending $2000 in refactoring letting the form open in 3 seconds is a win for all your users.

 

[amorosik]

The question isn't about which algorithm is better than another; it's clear that optimized code is faster than code that's just written the first time
But that's not the question
The question is "...which hardware/software guarantees better performance for an Access procedure..."
Where with "../software.." i means the operating system

 

[RonPaii]

The question isn't about which algorithm is better than another; it's clear that optimized code is faster than code that's just written the first time
But that's not the question
The question is "...which hardware/software guarantees better performance for an Access procedure..."

That is a meaningless question without knowing the procedure. My 1st example of a CPU centric process that could benefit from a CPU upgrade. Most Access procedures are data centric that may benefit from an IO upgrade, but what IO? Is the BE on a server or is it local? Does you process require scanning the tables or do you have a good data structure and indexing?

 

[CJ_London]

Perhaps you should also clarify what you mean by access procedure - a specific sub or function? Doing what? Is access split? If so where and what is the back end?

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

1 second from better cpu
1 second from better disk
1 second from better s.o.
are 3 second !!!

Well, as noted, you can get more then 1 second for some disk intensive tasks.
So, the better disk can help even more - that 15 seconds vs 14? Probably not going to be noticed.

But only focused on Microsoft Access, which hardware+software combination?

No real changes to my previous advice here. Anything more would be beyond my pay grade and knowledge.....

R
Albert

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Some years ago we had PDP-11/70 that we used for, among other things, software development using cross-assemblers - like, writing a Motorola 6800-series code using a PDP-11 utility. As part of the process, because we had a Big-Endian/Little-Endian problem, we had to go into the binary download file and do byte-swap operations on the RIM-loader file that we used to burn ROM chips. The byte-swapper was written in BASIC which on the PDP-11 was compiled to machine code.

Then, because we needed to upgrade the overworked 11/70, we bought a VAX/VMS machine on a VAX 11/780 - supposedly a faster machine with wider data bus width. The byte-swap program in compiled BASIC code for the 11/70 that ran for 19 minutes on the old, clunky, slow PDP-11/70 was migrated to VAX code, also compiled BASIC for native VAX instructions. It took over 22 minutes. Needless to say, the boss was not a happy camper because that "hunk of junk" wasn't living up to expectations.

The guy in charge of the cross-compiler projects called me in to take a peek. I did a purely software fix by rewriting the byte-swapper in BASIC with one VAX Assembly-language subroutine that actually did the swapping step, leaving the other parts of the program still in BASIC compiled code to read the unswapped data or write the swapped data as an appropriate file type. The old pure-BASIC program that took (by system high-precision timer) 22 minutes 15 seconds now took 17 seconds on the new code.

We had a database compiler that worked on building proprietary databases with a hierarchical structure, tailored for the end product which was an industrial management system. On the VAX, the people who wrote the compiler bemoaned the fact that one compilation often took 70 hours or more, and one of our neighbors had some high-inductance motors that, when they started, caused a brown-out - thus killing the compile. So I analyzed the code, found a bottleneck, and fixed it. By removing one line of code (a particular subroutine call), I got the compiler to run in just a few seconds over one hour. The project leader was almost in tears she was so happy. If we had bought the biggest, fasted VAX available at the time, we would have had about a 50% speed increase on the instructions but the I/O was still going to depend on HDD latency and the nature of this beast was a paging problem. We couldn't afford to throw memory at it because the virtual size of the program never stopped growing. By removing one unneeded subroutine call, I obtained a 78-fold speed improvement. Not 78%... 78.6 TIMES faster, or about 98.8% speed increase, purely based on software.

The moral of this story? Don't put all of your improvement eggs in one basket. You WILL find a bottleneck somewhere after every hardware upgrade. It is inevitable.

 

[Edgar_]

The question is "...which hardware/software guarantees better performance for an Access procedure..."
Where with "../software.." i means the operating system

The best OS you can get is, again, I'm repeating myself because you don't seem to be reading all your replies, Windows 11, despite its flaws. MS Access is a Windows-only program and the only up-to-date and maintained Windows OS is Windows 11 right now. You want to use an actively maintained OS because if you don't, there are multiple risks involved in your operation. Some of these risks are: data theft, unwanted remote access, out-of-date components, etc.

There is a small chance that other versions of Windows run MS Access faster, given that Windows 11 is, right now, very bloated. But you risk too much. Now, nobody stops you from being careless and using severely outdated versions of software, like a severely outdated Windows 7 installation, for example. Or using a severely outdated version of MS Access, like Access 2003 or 2010, and I'm sure some forum members use 90s versions of Access for whatever reason, but that does not mean you should too. You should use whatever is being maintained. That includes the OS and the MS Access installation.

It has been recently established that MS Access 2016 can run on top of Linux, by using some non-vm tools, but I doubt it is stable, I might be wrong, but if it's stable, there is a high chance that it runs more smoothly there than on any version of Windows. But that's just speculation.

As for the hardware, again, I'm repeating myself, just find the best that you can with your budget and work on top of that.

Edit: MS Access can only be so fast at some point, it's meaningless trying to engineer where if you're not ready to spend some good bucks testing that, not even MS themselves know or want to test it. If you want vanguard state-of-the-art speed, go low and build your own database system or use something that works very close to the circuits of the board, bypassing multiple layers of user authorization, working in ring 0, choosing what each electron is doing. I mean, nobody stops you from going full TempleOS.

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

The moral of this story? Don't put all of your improvement eggs in one basket. You WILL find a bottleneck somewhere after every hardware upgrade. It is inevitable.

I can't agree more. Really, with the modern hardware we have?
It near all comes down to design, and the gains to be had for today's standard and decent hardware?
Not going to help. A mid range, or even bottom feeder computer today gives you what a state of the art $10,000 computer was 10 years ago.

There's just not really much of any tangible gains to be had here by throwing, or spending more money on hardware.

As I stated, and shared here?
In a typical developer day, the most benefits I had were in regards to disk drive speed improvements.
However, that means my next computer is unlikely to even help in this area, since some of those recent "big" gains in disk drive speed?
They have occurred, and of course have filtered their way down to even budget friendly computers now.

As most comments here show?
We realized the incredible performance gains, and we thus really don't gain much of anything by attempting to buy extra hardware to squeeze out a wee tiny bit more performance - such grains are not going to be noticed, or even of value to a typical developer.

Now, there have been times when the current computer I had was not enough. I think it was about 4 years ago, and when I upgraded from Visual Studio 2019 to 2022 on my laptop? it was just too much, and too slow to load !!! - time for a upgrade!!!



R
Albert

 

[amorosik]

Some years ago ....

The moral of this story? Don't put all of your improvement eggs in one basket. You WILL find a bottleneck somewhere after every hardware upgrade. It is inevitable.

The moral of the story: everyone tries to find the answers they want, regardless of the questions
It's obvious that software optimization is sometimes far superior to a few percentage points of hw improvement
I've also had the experience of tweaking a few lines of code and achieving much better performance than before
Thanks to The_Doc_Man for the answer, but it has nothing to do with the question I asked
Which focuses on understanding what type of hardware/software (in the sense of operating system)

 

[amorosik]

I can't agree more. Really, with the modern hardware we have?
It near all comes down to design, and the gains to be had for today's standard and decent hardware?
Not going to help. A mid range, or even bottom feeder computer today gives you what a state of the art $10,000 computer was 10 years ago.
There's just not really much of any tangible gains to be had here by throwing, or spending more money on hardware.
As I stated, and shared here?
In a typical developer day, the most benefits I had were in regards to disk drive speed improvements.
However, that means my next computer is unlikely to even help in this area, since some of those recent "big" gains in disk drive speed?
They have occurred, and of course have filtered their way down to even budget friendly computers now.
As most comments here show?
We realized the incredible performance gains, and we thus really don't gain much of anything by attempting to buy extra hardware to squeeze out a wee tiny bit more performance - such grains are not going to be noticed, or even of value to a typical developer.
Now, there have been times when the current computer I had was not enough. I think it was about 4 years ago, and when I upgraded from Visual Studio 2019 to 2022 on my laptop? it was just too much, and too slow to load !!! - time for a upgrade!!!
R
Albert

These are acceptable considerations, but they have nothing to do with the initial question

 

[BlueSpruce]

For example, an earlier post with sample code to calculate perfect numbers for 2 to 10000 ran in a 5 seconds on a 4 year old i7 with 32 GB memory and P2 drive optimized for 3d modeling. It's replacement has a i9 and 4 times the memory and a faster P2 drive ran the same code in 1 second. That is almost a pure CPU load, Access will be loading IO not CPU.

Ah, so you did run my perfect numbers code on different machines. I am curious to know results from various old and new machines.

 

[CJ_London]

What PC hardware/software is needed to run Microsoft Access quickly?
Suppose Access is the only application running on a computer
What hardware, operating system, and configuration is recommended to maximize the performance of the running application?

googling the question 'What PC hardware/software is needed to run Microsoft Access quickly?' produced this response:
To run Microsoft Access quickly, your PC should have at least a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor, 4 GB of RAM for 64-bit systems (or 2 GB for 32-bit), and 4 GB of available hard disk space. It also requires Windows 10 or later and a DirectX 10 compatible graphics card.

apps4rent.com​

System Requirements for Microsoft Access​

Operating System​

• Windows 10 or Windows 11

Processor​

• 1.6 GHz or faster, dual-core processor

Memory (RAM)​

32-bit	2 GB
64-bit	4 GB

[th]

Version​

[/th][th]

Required RAM​

[/th]​

Hard Disk Space​

• 4 GB of available disk space

Graphics​

• DirectX 10 compatible graphics card
• Minimum display resolution of 1024 x 768

Additional Requirements​

• Internet access for updates and features
• A Microsoft account is required for licensing and access to services

Software Compatibility​

• Microsoft Access is part of the Microsoft 365 suite and can be installed as a standalone application.
• Ensure you have the latest version of Microsoft Access for optimal performance.

By meeting these requirements, you can ensure that Microsoft Access runs smoothly and efficiently on your PC.

 

[CJ_London]

a further google on the question 'Suppose Access is the only application running on a computer, what hardware, operating system, and configuration is recommended to maximize the performance of the running application?' produces this result:

To maximize the performance of Microsoft Access, it is recommended to use a computer with at least a modern multi-core CPU, 8GB of RAM or more, and an SSD for faster data access. The operating system should be a recent version of Windows, such as Windows 10 or 11, with proper configuration to ensure optimal resource allocation for the application.

cfauk.org​

itexamanswers.net​

Recommended Hardware for Running Access​

Minimum and Recommended Specifications​

CPU	Dual-core processor	Quad-core processor or higher
RAM	4 GB	8 GB or more
Storage	500 GB HDD	256 GB SSD or larger
Graphics	Integrated graphics	Dedicated graphics card (if needed)

[th]

Component​

[/th][th]

Minimum Specification​

[/th][th]

Recommended Specification​

[/th]​

Operating System Compatibility​

Supported Operating Systems​

Windows	Windows 10 or later
Windows Server	Windows Server 2016 or later

[th]

Operating System​

[/th][th]

Version​

[/th]​

Configuration Tips​

Performance Optimization​

• Processor Utilization: Aim for a baseline target of 40% processor utilization during peak usage to ensure smooth performance.
• Memory Management: Ensure that RAM is sufficient to handle the database size and concurrent users. More RAM allows for better caching and faster access.
• Storage Type: Use an SSD instead of an HDD for faster data retrieval and improved application responsiveness.
• Virtualization: If using a virtual machine, allocate dedicated resources to ensure Access runs efficiently without interference from other applications.
• Regular Updates: Keep the operating system and Access application updated to benefit from performance improvements and security patches.

By following these recommendations, you can maximize the performance of Access on your computer.

an alternative balancing question of 'what hardware resources are used by ms access' to check all aspects are covered produced this result:

Search Assist
Microsoft Access requires a compatible Windows operating system, a processor of at least 1 GHz, a minimum of 4 GB RAM (8 GB recommended), and at least 2 GB of available disk space for installation and operation. Adequate hardware is essential for optimal performance, especially when managing large databases.

moldstud.com

apps4rent.com​

Hardware Requirements for Microsoft Access​

Minimum System Specifications​

Operating System	Windows 10 or later
Processor	1 GHz or faster
RAM	At least 4 GB (8 GB recommended)
Storage Space	Minimum of 2 GB available disk space

[th]
Component

[/th][th]
Requirement

[/th]

Recommended Specifications for Optimal Performance​

Operating System	Windows 11
Processor	Dual-Core or better (i7 preferred)
RAM	16 GB or more
Storage Space	SSD with at least 4 GB available

[th]
Component

[/th][th]
Recommendation

[/th]

Additional Considerations​

• Graphics Card: DirectX 10 compatible graphics card is recommended for better performance.
• Network: A stable internet connection is beneficial for cloud-based features and updates.
• Database Size: Access databases are limited to 2 GB. For larger datasets, consider linking to multiple databases or using SQL Server.

Ensuring your hardware meets or exceeds these specifications can significantly enhance the performance and efficiency of Microsoft Access.

 

[BlueSpruce]

@CJ_London, there's something wrong with the display formatting of your posts. I changed my FF browser's website apperance to dark, light, automatic, and it still displays as seen in the image below.

 

[BlueSpruce]

A poor design will benefit from improved hardware performance just as much as a good design

Not always, it depends on how the poorly designed software works. If a program like Access is only able to address 2GB of memory, then it cannot leverage a computer's 16 or 32GB of memory. Access can also only use one CPU core because it's not multi-threaded.

 

[CJ_London]

there's something wrong with the display formatting of your posts.

Suspect it is a problem with the forum presentation - It looked fine when I copy/pasted from the browser. I'm not prepared to spend more time on this. Suggest do what I did - copy paste the OP's questions to your browser.

 

[BlueSpruce]

It looked fine when I copy/pasted from the browser.

That's the problem! It won't display correctly when you copy/paste from most other site's. It's always happened to me with many sites.

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

These are acceptable considerations, but they have nothing to do with the initial question

Actually they do.
And why is that?
Because 99% of professional Access developers will give you the same answer I did - that's why it releavnt...

The same goes if you walk into a room full of doctors, and 99% of those doctors will and should give also the same answer for a given medical question.

So, unless you create some new way to force the vast majority of Access developers to think different on this issue?

It's going to be the answer you get from 99% of the typical Access developer. It may well not be the answer you want, or the answer you are looking for. And you may even consider the answer having nothing to do with your question!

But, it IS MOST certainly the expected answer you are going to get from the vast majority of Access developers. The vast majority of the combined Access community we are all part of is not going to give you a better answer. While you may not consider it having to do with your question? Sorry, that's how humans work - and unless you can find a new way to change how humans work?

You simply not going to get a different answer here....

I can't change how the community here is going to think or even how they are going to answer this question. On the other hand, having been a part of the Access community for over 20 years? The answers here are 100% predictable. And they are predicable due to human nature, and how the general Access community thinks. Me nor anyone else here can't change human nature here - it just not possible...

If you create a new way to change how humans are going to answer or think on this matter? Do share this newfound knowledge here - it's not going to happen!!

R
Albert

 

[RonPaii]

Ah, so you did run my perfect numbers code on different machines. I am curious to know results from various old and new machines.

On a 12 year old HP Z200, i5 3.33GHz, 16GB memory, SSD Drive, ran 2 - 30000 seconds. This was the spec for Solidworks back in 2016 except for the SSD drive.

 

[BlueSpruce]

There's just not really much of any tangible gains to be had here by throwing, or spending more money on hardware.... As I stated, and shared here? In a typical developer day, the most benefits I had were in regards to disk drive speed improvements. However, that means my next computer is unlikely to even help in this area, since some of those recent "big" gains in disk drive speed?
They have occurred, and of course have filtered their way down to even budget friendly computers now.... As most comments here show? We realized the incredible performance gains, and we thus really don't gain much of anything by attempting to buy extra hardware to squeeze out a wee tiny bit more performance - such grains are not going to be noticed, or even of value to a typical developer.

However, I have seen significant performance gains when running Access 2010 msi apps on newer hardware with Windows 7 because that version of Access is not a Click-To-Run resource hog, and it has a smaller memory and storage footprint than the newer C2R versions that have to authenticate online with MS. Your Microsoft Account login is a real hog. Win7 doesn't have that problem, and I'm still running Win10 without an MS Account. I don't think you can run Win11 without logging in with an MS account.

Windows 7 is also not a hog like Windows 10 and 11 that have embedded telemetry, CoPilot, and a thousand other processes, (which I call virtual users) simultaneously running. SMALLER IS BETTER!!! Try launching newer Office versions without being connected to the internet and see what happens.

When launching an A2010 msi based app for the first time after booting up my Win7 box, I briefly see the MS Access splash popup flicker on the screen. On subsequent launches I never see the splash flicker at all. That's because MSACCESS.EXE and the app are already cached in memory. And with the new NVMe 14.9 GB/sec SSD storage, most everything runs at lightining speeds. On Win10, the same A2010 msi app is notably slower.

However, no matter how much CPU power, memory, and storage your box has, Access is limited to use 2 GB of memory and 1 CPU Core because Access is not multi-threaded.