At 02:47 PM 11/10/2007, you wrote:

>Hi!
>
> I used FireBird 2.0 (SuperServer) for a while and when there many
>transactions and need maximum throughput, CPU usage stay below 60%
>usage ("fbserver.exe" CPU usage in Task Manager does not exceed 50%
>but load is balanced on 2 the CPUs).

I don't believe you. :-) Superserver can't use multiple CPUs.

> Certain operations such as data importation require a lot of CPU
>power and for some time! Although I have set the CPU Affinity mask to
>3 in the *.conf file,

That is a mistake. If you intend to continue using Superserver, then
return it to CPUAffinity to a setting that resolves to one CPU only
(it doesn't matter which one...Firebird's default is CPU 0).

>still no change (AMD 64 X2 - 2 CPUs; 4.4 Ghz; 1
>Gb RAM; WinXP SP2)?

If you have a CPU-intensive operation with the affinity configured to
multiple CPUs then performance would tend to degrade, not
improve. This is because of the infamous "see-saw" or "ping-pong"
effect on Windows, where the entire process gets shifted back and
forth, back and forth, between a pair of CPUs when its demand reaches
around 90%. It makes you dizzy and it makes performance horrible.

Is this data import operation a regular thing? if you use Classic,
you can take advantage of that second CPU. Classic connections are
separate processes...depending on the number of users and the types
of queries that are done by regular users, you'd possibly want more
than your 1 Gb RAM...but it comes in cornflakes packets these days,
which makes RAM upgrade a non-issue.

./heLen