Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 01:30:25 -0400 (EDT) From: CyberPeasant <djv@bedford.net> To: dan@sns.org (Dan) Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Hardware Concerns. Message-ID: <199804280530.BAA05103@pollux.loco.net> In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19980427140130.00870bf0@joshua.sns.org> from Dan at "Apr 27, 98 02:01:30 pm"
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> Hi! I am working on some specs for a machine I am going to build, and I
> have been unable to resolve the following 3 concerns. I would really
> appreciate some input from others who may have stumbled across similar issues.
>
> 1) The system will never be used for X or any other graphical application,
> I would like to keep costs down by using a very basic VGA card. Is there a
> major difference in system performance if I used a ISA card instead of a
> PCI card? Is there a minimum specification that should be observed?
No. Use anything you want. text-only is so easy as to be an indetecible
load on a system. I'm assuming that almost nothing will be going to
the console. If you're trying to save money, this is not a big savings,
really. Of course, an old basic VGA card from the dumpster is $0.
> 2) When selecting RAM, does parity vs. non-parity memory affect the system
> in any way (stability, performance, etc.)?
Most definitely. Selecting a motherboard that supports not just
parity, but ECC (error correcting) memory should be a high priority.
A machine without at least parity detection should not be considered
reliable. They're for toys. The more memory, the more you need ECC.
I have a sneaky feeling that an awful lot of crashing W95/WNT boxes
can be explained by the cheap hardware in them, in particular the
use of huge amounts of memory without any parity checking at all.
There is no real performance difference, except that a machine with
undetected memory errors will do unpredictably evil things.
Don't let a vendor BS you on this.
> 3) What differnces exist between MMX and non-MMX CPU's of the same speed
> (with regards to FreeBSD)? Which is prefered?
Many say that MMX is a kind of snake oil. Since you are not planning on
doing multi-media, and since the gcc compiler, to my incomplete knowledge,
does not generate MMX instructions, (perhaps one could code them in
assembler), I would say that this doesn't matter.
> Dan
> dan@sns.org
Dave
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