Tips for a happy .NET development / gaming setup

Question

I've just installed Windows 7 64 Bit. This is the first time I haven't kept separate partitions for my gaming OS and my development OS. I'm going to try one OS install for everything.

Are there any tweaks I should make during or post Visual Studio 2008 professional install to make sure a development component such as SQL server isn't robbing me of gaming performance? Or have things gotten to the point where there isn't really impact on the system unless you are actively developing / serving applications?

My relevant hardware is as follows: Intel Core Duo 2 @ 3GHz NVidia 8800 GTS 4 Gigs DDR2 Ram 10,000 rpm hard drive

Answer 1

You could set up your dev environment in a Virtual PC. But if you are not going to do that, make sure you set the SQL Server Service to "Manual". That way, it's only using up memory when your developing. (SQL is a memory hog).

Answer 2

Visual Studio doesn't really add any overhead (apart from disk space) when you're not using it.

As for SQL Server the relevant services are "running" all the time, but since they are not doing anything I doubt that you'll notice. If it bothers you (or just want to free a little memory) you can switch services you don't need from automatic startup to manual.

Answer 3

Your machine sounds way powerful enough to run games.

Watch memory consumption.

Answer 4

Your biggest concern here would be memory, JPs comment is right on, that way SQL only using memory when you're actually game programming.