Did you design your computer with the right hardware balance

sisob

Something I've noticed across the internet is that a lot of people
transfer their knowledge of building/designing a computer's
hardware directly from Windows to Linux - and this results
in computers that are nowhere near as optimised for linux as
they could be for the same cost.

I'm wondering how many gentoo users build their computers
with linux in mind and how many didn't know that you should
build a computer with linux in mind.

Windows OEM computers generally have the latest flashy
cpu but piss poor hard drives and ram - which is the opposite of
what linux needs. I've seen specs with 128mb ram and 1.2ghz
processors - on that machine linux crawl.

My pc is a 1ghz athlon with 640mb ram and ata100 harddrives.
In general if you precessor speed in megahertz is 2x your ram in
mbs than you've got the balance wrong.
</rant>
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shadow · n00b Joined: 30 Jun 2002 Posts: 16 Location: ph

hmm... let's see if i get what your trying to say...

it is not good to have a processor speed (in mhz) that is twice the amount of ram you have (in mb), is that right? can you explain why this is so? i'm not really a hardware guy but i'll promise to try and not get lost

you're set-up is ok because 640mb x 2 is roughly 1.28g and your processor speed is only 1g. but i'm screwed because i have 192mb of memory and 450mhz of cpu speed

is there any way to work around this?

sisob · Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2002 11:46 am Post subject:

Well the 2x thing isnt in any way scientific - it's more to make the point that
if your going to build a computer the ram/processor balance that is optimal
for linux is different to the balance that is optimal for windows.

Your setup sounds grand - maybe the sum needs tweaking - but if i were you i was
upgrading that box I wouldn't upgrade the processor until the ram was coming
closer to the 2x rule. It depends if you swap out much - a fast processor is
useless if your swapping out all the time.

an example: in my experince if you get two machines:
A) 1ghz with 512mb ram
B) 1.5ghz with 256mb ram

A will out preform b in linux - my computer is like A - OEM computers are like B
and the cost of both is roughly equivelent

Am I making any sense yet?

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fuxored · n00b Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 71

Theres no reason you can't have a 2ghz processor and only 128m of ram. If your not ever using all 128m and swapping out alot, adding more ram will do nothing for you really. For most people 256-512 meg ram is plenty, no matter processor speed.

I recently had some bad luck with crucial ram, and am only running 256m of ram on my dual 1.4ghz athlon system while I wait for replacement. It didn't slow to a crawl from going from 768m to 256m, except for in heavy graphics/rendering work(to be expected). For everyday normal use though it's just as fast as ever really.

I agree you should try to keep a balanced system though, and try to eliminate bottlenecks holding you back. But haveing a faster processor in no way means you need an assload of ram. Thats more dependant on the applications your runnning.

Edit: Your A or B example would only be true in certain circumstances. A would only be faster than B IF whatever being used requires more than 256m of ram, causing B to swap out. If your doing things that only require 128m of ram, then B will outperform A.

shadow · n00b Joined: 30 Jun 2002 Posts: 16 Location: ph

coolness!

i'm glad i shifted to gentoo, i sure am learning a lot

one quick question though, how do i know if i swap out a lot? is there some sort of utility? using the 'top' command though, i notice that i don't usually use up all my ram. i guess that's good news then

Techie2000 · Guru Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 344

I never used to. However I've always built my computers with the philosophy that the hardware should be doing the work, and not software that will utilize the CPU that does what the hardware should be doing (such as them dinky ethernet cards. The netgear FA310TX rules) Nowadays I do keep in mind linux compatibility with new hardware.

My specs.

Intel Pentium III 800MHz Coppermine (Still runs very well)
512MB of Kingston PC133 SDRAM
40GB WD 7200RPM ATA/100 HDD
Visiontek NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti200 64MB DDR
Soundblaster PCI16 (Due to be replaced)
Netgear FA310TX Ethernet Card
Tyan Trinity 400 Motherboard

sisob · Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2002 2:31 pm Post subject:

sisob · Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2002 2:40 pm Post subject:

rommel · Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2002 7:49 pm Post subject:

i would have to disagree with that 2x theory....it would be impossible to keep up with that as processors increase in speed

the need for a gig of ram is not applicable for most users that arent running servers.

as a desktop single cpu system 512mb of ram would be plenty, linux or otherwise.

i think fast supported hardware is applicable in either operating system. myself i run an athlon 2200+ tbred on an epox 8kha+ with 512mbs or ocz pc2400 and 3 seagate cheetah x15 hard drives on a tekram dc-390u3w setup running linux software raid 0, sound card is a santa cruz and video is gf4 ti4600.

with the exeption of the mainboard there isnt any room to upgrade yet and its plenty fast in linux.

sisob · Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2002 8:25 pm Post subject:

the rule doesnt apply to ppl with the best of all hardware

Personally if i had a 2ghz id want a gig of ram - maybe im just crazy
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rommel · Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2002 9:27 pm Post subject:

well the 512mbs i have now is never fully used...i have a gig of swap...following the old rule for linux swap but it's never in use....so i think the money that ddr or rdr would cost (atleast this use to be the case before memory got so cheap) would serve possibly more beneficial if you were to say increase the processor speed.

sisob · Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2002 7:47 am Post subject:

A gig of swap? - I have 150mb

I agree that processor speed is better once you get to 500mb+ of ram - but my mobo can take more ram but not more processor. <shrug>
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gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

/me has 768mb RAM and 1.2ghz cpu. I didn't build this box w/ linux in mind, but even in windoze more ram is important. I left my windoze box on allthe time and needed the ram so it wouldnt slow down too much. Now i only use about 128mb.

Steve-O · n00b Joined: 13 Jul 2002 Posts: 5 Location: Nashville

More RAM == Good, but only to a point. Many folks here have stated that 512MB is plenty and they are probably correct for the given state of software bloat... er features.

The amount of ram needs to match what you're trying to run. I have a 200MHZ PPro here with 256MB of RAM, and it runs RH7.3 (blech) quite nicely.

The most important thing is to balance out the speed (and quality) of your hardware to avoid performance mis-matches. Why on earth would you run a fast cpu with anything less than top notch supporting hardware? Case in point: My Mom's computer is a Duron 800 on an older SiS integrated motherboard. Dog slow. She has 512MB of pc100, too. Feels slower than my celeron 550 (BX chipset) with 256MB. Why? The BX is a quality chipset, the SiS is not. And I have better supporting hardware than she does. My machine is full of good karma, and hers is... well, you get the point.

Quality is the name of the game. This used to be one of the main arguments of people like myself with SCSI hard drives (speed was another, but that's not as big of an argument anymore, unless you have a 128MB caching RAID controller

). It doesn't matter how fast your CPU is if spend all day waiting for data from the HDD.
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dmason · n00b Joined: 13 Jul 2002 Posts: 14

I build my box with mainly one thing in mind, with a limited budget to spend on computer parts, what will give me the greatest increase in performance for as little money as I can spend. and I am thinking for what I do, I would say memory would be within the top two things I would upgrade. As for linux optimization, I just was very lucky that all of the hardware I have is supported by linux at first, well, with the execption of the very large struggle I have had with my geForce 2mx and gl lately, but that was solved by throwing a millenium G400 in the machine, not quite as fast as the MX, but it will do just fine until there is a video compamy that creates a card with good linux drivers, that don't kill gl. I actually optimized my computer for NT first, then upgraded it for windows 2000, and my third round of major upgrades will be linux based, since windows 2000 runs just fine at this point.
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toojays · Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2002 11:41 am Post subject:

You know what pisses me off about OEMs?

When you buy a machine with a fairly modern, fast hard drive, and they hook it up with a 40 conductor IDE cable, which can kill performance. An 80 conductor cable is only a few bucks more. If your system can't use DMA for the hard drives, the cable may be the reason.

I was getting transfer rates of 10MB/sec (according to hdparm) with a 40 conductor cable. I went and got an 80 conductor cable, and the rate went up to 25MB/sec.

Often you will find that a system has an 80 conductor cable for the primary hard drive on IDE0, but then for the CD drive on IDE1 then just use a 40 pin cable. Which is probably fine if it's just a CD drive, but when you want to put a second hard drive in, and put it on IDE1, you should probably get a new cable.

Of course if you've got a heap of RAM and aren't doing anything disk intensive you probably wont notice the difference (except with hdparm), but it's something to consider anyway.

slais-sysweb · Apprentice Joined: 14 Jun 2002 Posts: 221 Location: London

I built this machine for Linux 5 years ago: two 166mhz PPro with 512K cache, 256MB ram (I would have more but 8x32MB SIMMS leave no room) Buslogic UW SCSI.
I chose the Bulogic controller because 5 years ago they had the best Linux driver support, and SCSI in general was more reliable on Linux than IDE. UW scsi was top of the range at the time, the original Quantum 4.5GB drive (which failed last week) cost £450, the IBM 4.5 and 9.1 GB drives now installed cost £25 on ebay last year. I also have Plextor SCSI CDRW. I am not sure if building a computer today I would still specify SCSI unless I was intending to do a lot of data intensive processing.
But I would alway go for maximum memory over processor speed, and the choice of a large L2 cache on the processor and SMP follows the same principle. Modern processors run too fast for the rest of the system, so anthing that can overcome i/o bandwidth constraints is a good thing.
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how · n00b Joined: 29 Jun 2002 Posts: 10 Location: Norway

tdm · Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2002 5:57 pm Post subject:

I've build my machine last summer, I wanted a fast but not to expensive machine and after a few weeks of searching I builded this one together:
MSI K7T 266 Pro RAID (IDE RAID)
AMD 1,33Ghz
256 DDR RAM
2x 40GB IBM 60GXP ATA100 (added a 120GB WD1200BB ATA100 a few month ago)
Creative TNT2 Ultra 32MB
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
3Com 3c905x 10/100 (internet)
Cheap Realtek card (lan)
PleXtor 12/10/32A
AOpen DVD 12/40

It cost me about 1200 euro then, expensiver than I intended too.. but my dad helped me a little

And it works awsome, with Windows XP Pro and Linux. Even RedHat 7.2 works fast

I have a swap of 1,5GB, but most of the time the swap isn't used or not more then 4%

Offcourse a little more RAM would always help, but I don't think a normal user would notice much about it if his machine has 512MB or more.

delta407 · Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2002 6:17 pm Post subject:

syadnom · Guru Joined: 09 May 2002 Posts: 531

my desktop:
athlonxp 1600+ w/ 1gb ram, software raid 2x60GB wd SE 8mb cache drives.
gentoo linux

my 3d workstation:
dual xp mp 2000+ w/ 4Ggb ram, hardware SCSI RAID 4x seagate 15000 RPM @ 60Gb.
dualboot gentoo linux/win2kpro(3ds MAX..)

i have both machines hit swap on a regular basis, though the dually does so very much less, and only on very big compiles(kde, X) or of coarse 3DS MAX in windows, but windows is a whore so we know why it sucks up RAM.

who cam e up with this RAMx2 ~= CPU MHz?? how about, as much RAM as you can get is better, and the CPU, well, if its reasonable new its cool, but a 1Ghz athlon can use up ram just as well as a 2.53Ghz P4.....cpu speed has nothing to do with how much ram you need(on a desktop machine)

Pigeon · Guru Joined: 21 Jun 2002 Posts: 307

wildcard · n00b Joined: 08 Jun 2002 Posts: 55 Location: New York

your making sense but what should I do for my new dual 1.1 ghz cpus
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ribcage · n00b Joined: 27 Apr 2002 Posts: 7

I just built a brand new machine this summer:

Athlon XP 1800 O/C 2000
512 Kingston Ram DDR 2100
60 GB ATA 100 Maxtor
20 GB ATA 100 Maxtor
20 GB ATA 66 Quantam Fireball
Muse XL Sound Card
Generic USB Mouse
NIC
Geforce2

In my experience I have always found myself using my swap over a long period of time. (2days +) I would recommened 512 MB to anyone. For me personally I would only see having 1GB of Ram suitable for me on a in the long term. Unfortunately though I can wait on the other 512. But in the mean time my setup is extrememly fast (especially now that Gentoo is on here) and also quite stable.

Now for XP I am always finding strange problems .. ie.. The network dies on me or my mouse stops working after 20 min (EVERYTIME) and who knows.. Some hardware does work better in Linux than in windows IMHO...