Member Avatar for waseem1345

Hello I have an old laptop which run most new games at around 40~60 fps at lowest settings.. I already have a key for Visual Studio 2012 Professional and thinking about Visual Studio 2015 Community.. Will Community 2015 run as fast as the other one? I'm only interested in WPF/Winforms and SQL so I won't need the new features. Should I get the new one for updates etc, or just get the 2012? Thanks in advance :)

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Dani AI

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Short answer: for simple WPF/WinForms work you probably will not notice a huge difference in day-to-day editing between Visual Studio 2012 Pro and Visual Studio 2015 Community — both have similar published minimum requirements — but VS2015 introduces the Roslyn compiler services and extra background processes that can use noticeably more RAM/CPU on constrained machines or with large solutions and heavy extensions. See the official system requirements and Roslyn performance notes for details. (learn.microsoft.com)

Why that matters: Visual Studio’s perceived “slowness” on old hardware is usually about RAM, disk I/O, and running extensions (Resharper, analyzers, etc.) rather than the minor engine differences between 2012 and 2015. Microsoft’s performance guidance highlights the usual levers: disable features you don’t need, unload projects, and trim extensions. If your laptop has 4 GB or less, or a slow 5400RPM HDD, you’ll get the biggest win from adding RAM or using an SSD. (learn.microsoft.com)

Practical checklist to make VS2015 run well on older PCs (safe to apply if you choose Community):

  • Use the custom installer and pick only the “.NET/Desktop” (WPF/WinForms) workload.
  • Install SQL Server Data Tools separately if needed (SSDT integrates with Community).
  • Turn off CodeLens and Full Solution Analysis (Tools → Options → Text Editor ...).
  • Disable or remove unused extensions; unload projects you’re not working on.
  • If you see many VBCSCompiler.exe instances or CPU spikes, try building with shared compilation off (tradeoff: slightly slower builds). Example MSBuild/project toggle: 
<PropertyGroup>
  <UseSharedCompilation>false</UseSharedCompilation>
</PropertyGroup>

or build with /p:UseSharedCompilation=false. (studyres.com)

Recommendation for : since you already own VS2012 Pro, keep it if it’s comfortable and you don’t need newer language features. If you want updates or prefer free Community, install VS2015 Community and apply the tweaks above — Community is free for individual developers and supports SSDT. As noted, many users don’t see big differences for small projects; the hardware and installed extensions decide the real experience. (visualstudio.microsoft.com)

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Member Avatar for rproffitt

Ask this. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt204009.aspx and other links seems to allude that the community version (aka free?) is SOL on SQL. Ask that! Lucky me, the office gets Pro for our work. They all seem to run the same speed.

Member Avatar for waseem1345

Are you sure they are all at the same speed? even on an old pc? (comparision between 2012 and 2015, not community or pro)
I know it's free, I just wanna download one of them only to keep my pc clean..

Edited by waseem1345
Member Avatar for rproffitt

Are you sure? I did not benchmark this. One person had one and the other on very similar PCs so nothing obvious stood out. But your SQL question looks to be one you need to do more research on.

Member Avatar for waseem1345

ok then I'll just get 2015 if they run at the same speed.. Thanks a lot :)

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