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This is for testing purposes -- basically so that I can know how my web site loads with inferior computers. I've already found a way to slow my ISP down, and using Google's Browser Size let me know what the site will look like on small monitors.

However, I'm sorta stumped on how to scale back the CPU, other than going into BIOS and adjusting clock frequencies, which I'd prefer to avoid doing, if possible. If it matters, I'm running XP.

TimFoolery
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4 Answers4

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I'd consider testing with older web browsers that don't byte-compile javascript code, and uses less optimisations.

Arafangion
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Do something cpu intensive like encoding video (Handbrake) and use BES (link) to limit the cpu usage to 80% or 90%. Then you can see what difference it makes.

fseto
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  • Thanks for the BES tip. To clarify, I assume you don't mean to recommend both starting a cpu-intensive **and** using BES. BES by itself does the job. Unless maybe you're thinking of starting a disk-intensive task as well, to simulate slow disks? – John Hatton Jan 04 '13 at 07:09
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Unless you're using massively complex Javascript (and/or a browser with a very slow JS engine - there's a much bigger difference), the client computer's CPU is really not an issue in page load times. At least 99% of the computers being used to browse the web today are so fast that page rendering is done in a few milliseconds at most.

Michael Borgwardt
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  • From my experienced I can saw that bloated page markup (ASP.NET web forms being especially susceptible) can really slow down rendering. Also in older browsers where JS isn't optimized, that can cause a penalty to. I'm not sure why our experiences are different, but I've seen often times pages slow down as a result of bloated markup/heavy java script. (Granted, the argument could be said the pages were poorly written and huge- still sometimes massive data sets are out of your control.) – KTF Jan 15 '13 at 13:41
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Unless you have lots of heavy scripting, or flash components, then you probably won't need to worry about it. If you're worried, then you can check via the chrome developer panel the actual CPU time spent rendering the page. This can be translated directly for slower processors. If you really want to tweak it, then you'll need to get a program that will "spin" the CPU at a set rate, and adjust it's priority level (can be done via Windows API).

You could design a program yourself, and have it poll the maximum clock speed of the CPU, then run "pointless" calculations for a percentage of each timeslot. When you're doing this, don't go for anything too complicated, since this can actually overheat and damage the processor.

Also, Flash uses hardware acceleration. Badly, but it uses it. That means that you may not see any impact on the performance by changing the CPU, but changing the GPU (nowhere near as easy) will impact performance by a ton.

SEK
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  • Flash often doesn't use hardware acceleration on other platforms such as Linux. (Although it now does for certain graphics cards as of Flash 10). This is why we have jokes such as: http://xkcd.com/619/ – Arafangion Jan 26 '11 at 11:49