From owner-freebsd-alpha Sun Dec 5 13:23:59 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Received: from feral.com (feral.com [192.67.166.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 76A0115204 for ; Sun, 5 Dec 1999 13:23:57 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mjacob@feral.com) Received: from beppo.feral.com (beppo [192.67.166.79]) by feral.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA14572; Sun, 5 Dec 1999 13:25:09 -0800 Date: Sun, 5 Dec 1999 13:25:09 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew Jacob Reply-To: mjacob@feral.com To: Geoff Buckingham Cc: freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 64bitPCI In-Reply-To: <19991205195643.A43682@chuggalug.clues.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sun, 5 Dec 1999, Geoff Buckingham wrote: > > I am building test platforms for an application with very great disk and > Network IO requirements. Which of the FreeBSD supported alphas have a > 64bit PCI bus ? pc164 for one. Nearly all of the other alpha's *I've* ever seen. Note that all 64 bit pci cards work fine in 32 bit slots. > > Is anybody using 64bit isp, gigabit cards or vinum succesfully with > FreeBSD alpha? ISP yes, Vinum yes. I haven't tried my new Intel Gigabit card in an alpha yet. > Is an alpha likely to outperform a modern x86 system IO wise? [ no numbers to back this- just a feel ] That's a tough question. For some years I would have said yes. Now I'm not so sure. On the larger systems, absolutely. A TurboLaser or a RawHide will blow the doors off anything built with Intel. But for the small to midlevel systems, the processors && memory controllers are probably pretty close, with Intel PCI interfaces probably doing better and alpha processor caches doing better. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message