What kernel sources/settings for best performance?

timmy334

What kernel sources patchset is the best to help squeeze the most performance out of my system? I am more than willing to use experimental patches so that is not a concern. I just want FAST! I want it to, as Love-Sources(or was it Nitro-sources) used to say, ROCK LIKE NINJA!

Also, what are some kernel settings that work on most systems that increase performance? I am putting this on my HP Pavilion zd8110us laptop. It has a 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 w/ HyperThreading and 1GB RAM and an ATI Mobility Radeon X600 video chip. Should I be compiling my kernels for this with
march=pentium4 or
march=nocona or
march=native or
what would work best?
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It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
It is by the beans of Java my thoughts acquire speed,
My hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning,
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion

Dr. Strangelove · Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:02 pm Post subject:

timmey ?!

you could check for hpet timer, try out the various schedulers...
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jburns · Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:24 pm Post subject:

For the march see http://gentoo-wiki.com/Safe_Cflags#Pentium_4. It depends on which model of the pentium 4 you have and if you are running x86 or amd64.

timmy334 · Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:41 pm Post subject:

What about kernel configuration itself and which custom-kernel sources give the best performance?
_________________
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
It is by the beans of Java my thoughts acquire speed,
My hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning,
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion

MostAwesomeDude · Guru Joined: 12 Aug 2007 Posts: 373

Good question. For some of us, the road to speed is neverending. However, for the most part, there's not a lot you can do kernel-side to squeeze out performance. The biggest things, in my experience, are to enable SLUB, tickless timers, and to not build any modules which you don't need (on boot, the kernel will attempt to load all modules present in the system. If you have a lot, it takes a while to probe 'em all. Look at how long LiveCD kernels take to probe hardware...)

SLUB:

timmy334 · Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2007 6:13 pm Post subject:

That's the kind of reply I was looking for! Thanks! I will definitely try out zen-sources. I am using gentoo-sources right now, but I'm a daring individual with my kernels, so I'll check out zen. Thanks!
_________________
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
It is by the beans of Java my thoughts acquire speed,
My hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning,
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion