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My development machine is fairly zippy with a decent graphics card. The production machines to which our software is deployed have a much lower specification and no graphics card (uses Intel shared memory). On the production machines, there is noticeable flicker when performing certain actions. But on the development machine, the flicker is hard (or nearly impossible) to detect.

Are there (temporary only!) tricks I could apply to slow down the development machine and try to reproduce and then profile the performance issues? Installing the entire development environment on one of the production machines is unfortunately not an option. Note that any tricks / suggestions must be strictly reversible! :o)

AlainD
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    What about running it on a virtual machine? – James P Jul 20 '15 at 09:16
  • That's a reasonable suggestion, thanks. I occasionally use VirtualBox at home, so I'll see about using that at work. – AlainD Jul 20 '15 at 09:20
  • @James, I strongly feel you should move your comment to an answer. IMO it's the best solution – Dave Jul 20 '15 at 09:51
  • Whoever downvoted this care to explain? @James: Agree, this could be an answer which I will accept (and please upvote the question so its at least neutral). – AlainD Jul 20 '15 at 12:30

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One option would be to do the testing and development in a virtual machine (e.g. via VirtualBox)

In the System->Processor section of the VirtualBox VM settings screen you can limit the number of logical processors to use and/or set an execution cap which should help slow the program down.

VirtualBox CPU settings

You may need to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions to be able to comfortably work in the VM, this can be done via the Devices->Insert Guest Additions CD image... menu option in the main VM Window.

James P
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  • This works. An alternative I have subsequently stumbled upon is the command VBoxManage setextradata "" "VBoxInternal/TM/WarpDrivePercentage" though I have found the Execution Cap to work more reliably. Only downside is that it affects the entire VM, not just the application of interest. – AlainD Jul 28 '15 at 14:42