From owner-freebsd-hardware Mon Apr 7 11:06:45 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA27872 for hardware-outgoing; Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:06:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bagpuss.visint.co.uk (bagpuss.visint.co.uk [194.207.134.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA27849 for ; Mon, 7 Apr 1997 11:06:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bagpuss.visint.co.uk (bagpuss.visint.co.uk [194.207.134.1]) by bagpuss.visint.co.uk (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id TAA10880; Mon, 7 Apr 1997 19:09:08 +0100 (BST) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 19:09:08 +0100 (BST) From: Stephen Roome To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" cc: hardware@freebsd.org, Tom Gidden Subject: Re: Pentuim or Pentuim Pro ? In-Reply-To: <2727.860431247@time.cdrom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hardware@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > 1) Is the Pentium Pro 200 much faster than the > > Pentium 200 and if so, what sort of %age gains > > can I expect. > > It's a fair bit faster and YMMV, of course, but 30-40% is not an > unreasonable expectation. The core technology really has improved; > it's not just another 486 inside with deeper pipelines and a faster > clock. I've just talked to a friend here though who reminded be about the AMD K6, that will (apparently) be socket 7 (pentium board compatible). So... Is it worth going for a pentium board especially if the K6 is going to be all it's hyped up to be or not ? (assuming it comes out soon) > > > 2) Is the Pentium 200 with 512k cache much better > > than the 256k cache version and again what sort > > of %age gains can be expected with the 512k version. > > Not enough to make it work the current cost delta. That's good as we couldn't really afford it anyway. > > > Overclocking: > > 3) Is overclocking the motherboard viable/safe ? > > Has anyone actually had experience with m/b clocked > > at 83MHz ? > > I clock my P6/200 at 233Mhz and it seems to work just fine. Many > others I know are doing the same without any ill effects. Other kinds > of overclocking I simply don't know about. I was also very interested in overclocking the motherboard bus speed. If I clock the motherboard at 75MHz or 83MHz (or perhaps even 100MHz ?) then I would expect some improvements in the I/O etc. which these computers might really benefit from. Is the ratio between CPU and Bus speed optimal at some level ? *2 better than *2.5 for example ? > > > 6) Dual Processor, what are the options like ? > > I was thinking of going for a dual processor m/b > > and only using one processor with the option to > > upgrade. (clients might like this idea) > > The Tyan motherboard dual-P6 MB is quite nice. I'm probably > going to get one for freefall just because you can stick a lot > more memory in the dual-processor model. > > Jordan > I'm probably only going to stick 64MB (SDRAM) in each of these machines as they really don't *need* much more (it'd be nice but expensive), and most boards I've seen (or any I'd consider) have >64MB of cacheable memory anyway. Assuming I go with a pentium board (while waiting for the K6) then I'd clock the MB at 75/83MHz, and the processor slightly higher than rated. Most probably with one of the ASUS or ABIT boards. Particularly the Asus P/I-P55T2P4 Rev 3.0 (or higher) FEither that or the jumperless ABIT board (IT5V ?), which makes sense as I have an old ABIT PH5 board at home which still flies in comparison with even some of the newer VX boards here at work (especially after the BIOS upgrade which seems to use the EDO better). The question now is: Can I clock the memory bus at more than 66MHz on any of the PPro boards ? As far as I can tell it'll be mostly for the clients that we get a Pentium Pro. (they really think we need a Power Onyx to server 5 pages at one hit per week) But for our own internal file serving I'd be happiest with anything I can do to speed up the memory. (66Mhz to 75Mhz could be 12% faster, but just imagine 83MHz memory.) Steve Roome.