How To Simulate Lower CPU Processor Machines For Browser Testing

Question

We have some users which are using lower-CPU powered machines and they\'re encountering slow response times using our web application. Is there any way for me to do testing

Answer 1

Lowering the CPU clock doesn't always give expected results.

Newer CPUs feature architecture improvements which make them more efficient on an equvialent clock basis than older chips. Incidentally, because of this virtual machines are a bad way of testing performance for "older" tech as well.

Your best bet is to simply buy a couple of older machines. Using similar RAM (types and amounts), processor, motherboard chipsets, hard drives, and video cards. All of which feed into the total performance of the machine itself.

I bring the other components up because changing just one of them can have an impact on even browser performance. A prime example is memory. If your clients are constrained to something like 512MB of RAM, the machines could be performing a lot of hard drive access for VM swaps, even for just running the browser. In this situation downgrading the clock speed on your processor while still retaining your 2GB (assuming) of RAM would still not perform anywhere near the same even if everything else was equal.