I've recently upgraded from a Levovo X200 (Vista Ultimate 64 bit) to a Sony VAIO S15 (Windows 8 64 bit). The new notebook uses a processor which on paper is five times faster than the one in the old one.
The problem however is that MySQL is dead slow on the VAIO notebook under Windows 8. I have a routine which generates 24000 entries in a database, using the mysql_query PHP function. This routine took less than 50 seconds on the X200 under Vista 64, but now takes 1000-1200 seconds on the VAIO.
Initially I installed version 1.8.1 on the VAIO, then went back to version 1.7.7, but it didn't help. I also tried replacing "localhost" in the URL with "127.0.0.1" and it also didn't help.
Essentially it's the function mysql_query which, when called, takes 30-70 milliseconds to complete it's activities.
Looking at the task manager it appears that the hard disk (a 1TB HDD) is loaded at 100% while the processor is loaded with a few %. The HDD seems to be the limiting factor, but I have no idea why MySQL needs to access the HDD so much, given that the VAIO S15 has 12GB of RAM (the entire database would probably fit into max. 10-20MB of RAM). The old notebook with its slow processor and 8GB of RAM was much faster.
I wonder what could be done. Is there perhaps a way to tell MySQL to keep everything in RAM until the routine finishes the creation of the database and only after that write to the HDD?