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Date:      Sat, 29 Jun 2002 10:42:45 -0700
From:      Kent Stewart <kstewart@owt.com>
To:        A Ling <fbsd2@yahoo.com>
Cc:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Memory speed/size vs buildworld time?
Message-ID:  <3D1DF195.40108@owt.com>
References:  <20020629165819.83708.qmail@web20204.mail.yahoo.com>

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A Ling wrote:

 > Greetings all, I'm about to upgrade a box (on a budget), and I was 
wondering
 >  whether the extra cost (or smaller amount) of PC2700 DDR memory
 > would be offset by big (say
 >
 >> 20%) differences in time for a buildworld, for
 >>
 > example?  For little more than the price of 256 Mb of  PC2700, I
 > can get 512 Mb of PC2100 from Crucial.  I  realize SCSI vs IDE
 > may make more of a difference,  but unfortunately that's not an
 > option.  The  processor would be a socket 478 P4 1.7 GHz, and I'm 
considering the ASUS P4S533 motherboard (SiS645DX
 > chip set).  The disks to be migrated are:
 >
 > ad0: 9541MB <WDC WD100EB-00BHF0> [19386/16/63] at
 > ata0-master UDMA100
 > ad1: 76319MB <WDC WD800BB-32BSA0> [155061/16/63] at
 > ata0-slave UDMA100


I have 2 SiS635 based AMD 1600+ XP systems. I have DDR memory in one
and 256 SDIM in the other. The one with DDR has 3 HDs connected to the
2-ATA channels. The other system has a Promise Ultra 100 with 3
ATA-100 Maxtor HDs. Each HD is on its own ATA channel. The drives are
all split up something like

coral# df
Filesystem  1K-blocks    Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ad0s3a    248047   57465   170739    25%    /
/dev/ad0s3f    992239     624   912236     0%    /tmp
/dev/ad0s3g   9477547 5273149  3446195    60%    /usr
/dev/ad0s3e    992239  145979   766881    16%    /var
/dev/ad4s2e   1486814  342557  1025312    25%    /usr/obj
/dev/ad4s3e  12712841 2737107  8958707    23%    /usr2
/dev/ad6s2e   1486814  337060  1030809    25%    /usr/src

Opal is the same but only used ad0, ad1, and ad2. Both will do 
buildworlds in just over 20 minutes. Opal has 512 MB of DDR and is 
usually 2 minutes faster than coral.



 >
 > Comments on motherboards also welcome; I've got PCI
 > NIC & video cards I can use, but like the fact that
 > the C-Media chip set on the ASUS seems to be
 > supported for sound.  If this would be better on
 > -questions or -hardware, I could repost there. Thanks.
 > Alex
 >
 >
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 >


-- 
Kent Stewart
Richland, WA

http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html

 > > considering the ASUS P4S533 motherboard (SiS645DX  chip set).
 > The disks to be migrated are:
 >
 > ad0: 9541MB <WDC WD100EB-00BHF0> [19386/16/63] at ata0-master
 > UDMA100 ad1: 76319MB <WDC WD800BB-32BSA0> [155061/16/63] at ata0-slave
 >  UDMA100


I have 2 SiS635 based AMD 1600+ XP systems. I have 512MB DDR memory in 
one and 256 SDIM in the other. The one with DDR has 3 HDs connected to 
the 2-ATA channels. The HDs are combinations of ATA-100 to ATA-66. The 
other system has a Promise Ultra 100 with 3 ATA-100 Maxtor HDs. Each 
HD is on its own ATA channel. The drives are all split up something like

coral# df
Filesystem  1K-blocks    Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ad0s3a    248047   57465   170739    25%    /
/dev/ad0s3f    992239     624   912236     0%    /tmp
/dev/ad0s3g   9477547 5273149  3446195    60%    /usr
/dev/ad0s3e    992239  145979   766881    16%    /var
/dev/ad4s2e   1486814  342557  1025312    25%    /usr/obj
/dev/ad4s3e  12712841 2737107  8958707    23%    /usr2
/dev/ad6s2e   1486814  337060  1030809    25%    /usr/src

Opal is the same but only used ad0, ad1, and ad2. Both will do 
buildworlds in just over 20 minutes. Opal is the one with 512 MB of 
DDR and is usually 2 minutes faster than coral. Splitting /usr/obj and 
/usr/src always helped and this combination was consistantly faster. 
Memory doesn't seem to matter beyond 128 MB.

I have also found that adding -j4 to your buildworld is _ALWAYS_ 
slower on single cpu system. I have tabulated some of my timing of 
buildworlds as what I call "The Urban Legend of -j4" but it is no 
longer up todate. I still do "time make buildworld" and add them to my 
table via a cat >> times.log and cut and paste the time on the 
console. I just haven't added the information to my web page. I will 
have to do that because it also shows what softupdates and caching does.

I have a 3rd SiS635 based machine with an AMD-900 Athlon Thunderbird 
in it. It is fast but not nearly as fast as the 1600+'s. It also has a 
similar configuration to coral. The behavior with respect to file 
system was similar to coral.

I have a Maxtor Ultra-133 controller, which will be added to opal, and 
I will see at that time what the DDR memory really does in an 
identical configuration to coral.

Kent

 >
 > Comments on motherboards also welcome; I've got PCI NIC & video
 > cards I can use, but like the fact that  the C-Media chip set on
 > the ASUS seems to be supported for sound.  If this would be
 > better on  -questions or -hardware, I could repost there. Thanks. Alex
 >



-- 
Kent Stewart
Richland, WA

http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html


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