Will a gigabit JetDirect card make a difference?

Question

We have a HP Color LaserJet 4650 running a JetDirect model J3113A JD33, ROM G.07.19, Revision G.08.49, connected at 100Mbps. The memory has been maxed out at 544MB

However, this particular printer seems to have more than it's fair share of slowdowns. No more errors than any other printer in the office, just sometimes it'll take 30 seconds to output a page. This is especially an issue when, once a year or so, we need to print several dozen copies of 40 to 60 page documents for conferences.

The entire office network runs at gigabit, and runs well.

In considering all the various ways we can coax more power out of this machine, I'd like to know, is upgrading this printer to a JetDirect that can run gigabit likely to increase the performance of the machine? Are there internal bottlenecks that will make this a non-solution?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 21 '11 at 19:30

1

Are the jobs spooled on a server or on the local PC? That can have an impact. We had a B&W HP 5035X that we changed to gbit and noticed no difference. Tweaking the print processor and how the job was processed made a difference although not huge.

answered Jun 21 '11 at 19:30

Dave M

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Jobs are typically spooled on the server, I believe. I thought this might be different than our black printers as it is color and has a duplexer, which means print job sizes are exponentially larger than they would be on some of the other printers around the office. – music2myear Jun 21 '11 at 19:45
Ok, driver is set to Spool and Start printing immediately. – music2myear Jun 21 '11 at 20:14
What Print Processor do you use? HP or WINPRINT? – Dave M Jun 21 '11 at 20:32
I've used both. I usually leave it HP until someone has a problem and then switch to WINPRINT. It seems Adobe products work better with the WINPRINT. However, I have not noticed a performance difference. Then again, I haven't really looked for one and I'm not the one doing most of the printing in the office. – music2myear Jun 21 '11 at 20:36

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 04 '11 at 19:22

I ended up asking our contracted printer support person this question when he was next in the office. He informed me that it is unlikely that upgrading the network speed of the jetdirect will significantly improve the speed of the printer. Upgrading the JetDirect to a newer version will make a slight improvement whether or not the new card works at 100Mbps or 1000Mbps simply for it being newer and more capable hardware. However, the printer itself is an older printer that is being asked to handle more and more complex documents, and there are just limits to how well it will do.

Will a gigabit JetDirect card make a difference?

2 Answers2