Re: Recommendations on mother boards?
On Thu, 8 Aug 1996, Douglas Bates wrote:
> I will soon be purchasing a custom system to run Debian GNU/Linux. Since
> I must get bids from different vendors, I might as well give detailed
> specifications if that will enhance the performance with Linux.
>
> Does anyone have comments on specific Pentium Pro motherboards?
>
> For example, Bruce Perens mentioned on this list some time ago that
> the combination of the IDE controller in the Triton chipset with an
> EIDE drive is as fast as fast, wide SCSI. I found that the system I
> was using had the Triton chipset and enabled the Triton-specific
> optimizations in the kernel. The results were very pleasing.
>
That would depend on how hard the disk subsystem is being hammered.
SCSI's advantage is that it can handle multiple outstanding requests at
the same time, while EIDE has to wait for one to complete before it can
start a second one. Under a single tasking OS, this is ok, but if you
have a a hundred or so user processes fighting over the disk, this
becomes a losing proposition. Check out the results when you have a
fast/wide scsi 2 drive on a good controller, with a a few meg of cache
on the drive. (This allows the drive to start being clever and resort
the queue'd I/O's for fastest return. E.g. If the head is on cylinder
7, and it gets a read request for cylinder 2000, and cylinder 500, it
will do the 500 on the way to the one for 2000.)
For a personal workstation, I don't think you would notice the
difference, until you are doing enough that you have to swap. Pushing
one process out to disk while reading a new one off the disk puts
strain on the disk...
> Are there similar things to look for when purchasing a motherboard today?
>
> Please e-mail me and I will summarize to the list.
>
> --
> Douglas Bates bates@stat.wisc.edu
> Statistics Department 608/262-2598
> University of Wisconsin - Madison http://www.stat.wisc.edu/~bates/
>
>
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