The followings are some tips gathered from running the UD agent for the past few years, may be helpful to some of you guys.

1. BIOS settings are the first step to better performance
Make sure that you have configured your BIOS properly. Failure to do so can easily slow down CPU and disk performance. For best performance, make sure that all CPU caches are enabled, memory timings are set to as aggressive as your hardware and sofware allows, and that IDE data transfer modes are set correctly.

2. Enable large system cache
Double click the system icon in the Control Panel and click the Advanced tab. Choose Performance and click the Advanced tab in the new dialog box. Then select System Cache under Memory Usage. For those have more than 256MB RAM, this enables the system to use more memory as system cache, which provides better performance for your agent.
WARNING! Enabling large system cache on some machines equipped with ATi video cards may result in system crash. If your computer is installed with an ATi graphics card, consult with ATi before enabling this option.

3. Drivers are critical
You need to ensure that you have the latest versions of all your hardware drivers. The ones on the original Windows CD-ROM are usually out of date. Updated the chipset and processor (if applicable) driver can significantly improve the performance of your computer and its performance on running the agent.

4. Setting the agent to high priority
Press CTRL-ALT-DEL while in Windows and bring up the Task Manager. Right click WCGrid_Rosetta.exe at the process tab, select the desired process priority (I recommend high). This will enable the system to run the grid agent process at a higher priority. However, performance of other programs may be lowered.
WARNING! Do NOT set the priority to REALTIME, or else, you will not be able to use the system until the module is finished.

5. Minimize Background Applications and Services
Press CTRL-ALT-DEL while in Windows and bring up the Task Manager. All background program steals memory and CPU cycles from the grid agent. Messenger (msmsg), Office Startup, Quicktime (qttask), Real Player and Winamp are the common ones. To stop programs from automatically starting, remove them using the msconfig utility or consult the help file of each program to turn it off.

6. Disable your screen saver
Screen saver also robs your processing power when the system is not in use. Use the power managment function to turn it off instead and provides more processing power to the grid agent, while saving energy by turning off the monitor.

7. Defrag Regularly
Make sure you regularly defragment your hard drive with a defragmenter. Keep your drive defragmented as a drive with even 5% fragmentation can be very inefficient.

8. A stable system is a fast system
Minimize downtime by maintaining your system in god condition. The lesser the down time = the more time your computer is running = the more available chance for the agent to run!

9. Old soldiers never die
Have old machines sitting at the corner of your home gathering dust? Crank them up! Old machine may not be able to run the latest software, but if they meet the minium requirement for the grid agent, why not let them do their part and make them a bit more useful to the whole human race?

My 2cents.

Any more tips? Please feel free to post them up, your contribution is greatly appreciated.