Dennis Myhand wrote: > Just for some added info, I have Mandrake 8.0 loaded on an FIC 503+, 256 megs ram, >AMD k6-2 333MHz, and I also have Mandrake 8.0 loaded on an old, Pentium MMX 166MHz, >96 megs of ram, and the cheapest MoBo that NEC could find. The Pentium machine is at >least TWICE as fast as the AMD box, no matter what OS it is running. That goes for >Win98, W2K, NT4.0, Solaris 8, and Mandrake Linux. My little network > test field has been a real eye opener to me. I will go with Intel chips from now on.
In the meantime, something is wrong with your 503+ setup. I put a 503+ with a K6/2 450 in a friend's box, and it is plenty fast. First, find a benchmark suite you can use on both machines so that test procedures don't throw off the apparent results. Run a test suite and record results. Then find out why the 503+ is slow, if in fact it is. It might be nothing more than insufficient cache for the installed RAM. Drop the RAM to 64 or 128 Mb and see if the results improve. Your perception of speed based upon your expectation of speed could be a problem as well. Your NEC motherboard is probably using an Intel chipset. The 503+ is VIA. Without the right driver installed, a VIA chipset will provide very disappointing I/O performance. This could easily be the difference you see. Something else to consider is the settings used for overclocking are the same used for normal clocking. If you take any given K6 chip rated high, like 500 or 550, and try all the different combinations of multiplier and bus rate, you might be surprised at the tremendous variation among different combinations. Some combinations that should be slower are faster than others that should be faster. As an example of this, I have an AOpen AX5T-3.1. This board has ostensible multipliers up to 5.5 and bus rate up to 83. When I bought it I installed a P55C 200 and used the standard 3.0 X 66. Later on I bumped it up to P55C 233 using 3.5 X 66 and experienced an expected benchmark improvement. In this configuration I used it several years. Then a few weeks ago I installed a K6/2 500 and tried every multiplier & bus rate configuration possible. The *only* combination that provided the expected relative performance improvement over the P55C 233 was at 500, which was achieved by a 2.0 X 83 setting. As it turns out, a K6/2 chip set to a 2.0 multiplier actually runs at a 6.0 multiplier, which is as I understand it a function of the chip rather than the motherboard. Using the in between settings to achieve such speeds as 333, 366, 400, 412, etc., speeds were as bad as worse than the P55C 233 to marginally better, to better but disappointingly so. There was a vast improvement of 500 over 450. Either the chip or the bus just isn't very efficient with a 75 bus rate on this motherboard. -- "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** Rotary ONLY since 1973 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.members.atlantic.net/ <- Not just a FAQ
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