Re: using RAM above 64 Mb as a swap area
aphro <frodewd@firetrail.com> writes:
> At 07:06 PM 9/21/98 +0200, you wrote:
> >
> >Hello,
> >
> >I've just added more RAM on my old Pentium 100. Now I have 128 Mb of
> >RAM and as expected I'm experiencing a slowdown when a program is run
> >above the 64 Mb limit. I think that running programs in the first 64
> >Mb and using the upper 64 Mb as a swap area would be more efficient
> >because I would not experience as many performance penalties due to
> >cache problems and swapping in RAM should be a lot faster than
> >swapping on hard drive. Am I correct?
>
> swapping to ram is bad..!! waste of memory, with 128MB of ram you should
> only be swapping VERY rarely anyways(I have 128M, and only swap after I
> have about 70-80 processes running including X, netscape, KDE etc). If
> your using one of the 2.0.xx kernels you will have to tell LILO that you
> have more by using the append="mem=128M" (?) line in lilo.conf. As for
> slowdowns, there shouldnt be many noticable, i run on the TX chipset that
> also can only cache 64MB and have not noticed any slowdowns with apps
> loaded in the upper 64M.
>
Well with only 64 Mb of RAM I have a document that needs 6 minutes to
get compiled through LaTeX and when the 128 Mb are activated and the
LaTeX job is probably running in the upper 64 Mb it takes more than 7
mn 30 s to get it compiled. I can tell there is a major slowdown and
cache problem here:-(
Anyway, as suggested in the mailing list I'll try to find the kernel
patch for 2.1.xxx that allows me to do swapping those upper 64 Mb of
RAM.
Chris
--
Looking for a cutting edge | Christophe Broult
software validation technology? | <mailto:broult@info.unicaen.fr>
Check http://www.info.unicaen.fr/lpv | ``Smile, chuckle, giggle''
Reply to: