On Saturday 11 May 2002 12:49 pm, Bjarne Thomsen wrote:
> I am really only interested in using -march=pentium4
> and/or -msse2 for heavy floating point calculations,
> but that is another matter.
Actually, it doesn't surprise me that editing for P4, still
produces an i686 kernel. I believe the K7 compile enabling adds some
benefits, mostly since the athlon out performs the P4, and clock for
clock the P3 out performs the P4. You might consider testing your P4
with kernels compiled for both 586 and 686. 586 might just be better
for a P4.
Also, specially on Intel systems, how you have your ram
configured (Cas latency, banking, etc) will probly affect system
performance more than tryin to optimize the kernel for a P4. For
real performance, you might be able to up the Vcore, and IO voltages
a touch, along with a few mhz added to the FSB speed if your
motherboard supports doin so. I wouldn't buy one that didn't. A lot
of good high performance motherboards provide increased Vcore and IO
by default, some increased FSB mhz by default.
A good app for checking ram performace is memtest86. You don't
need to run all the tests, other than to see if you've pushed ram
timings too far. When you boot memtest86, you'll see right away the
ram performance in mb/sec in the upper left corner. BIOS settings
for the ram will have an immediate affect. Increased IO voltage will
probly be required to get to optimum. FPU is very affected by ram
performance, so this might be where you should concentrate your
optimization efforts. I don't believe optimizing the kernel will
have as much affect as optimizing your hardware/configuration will.
I know this sort'a smacks of overclocking, and many are
predjudiced that oc'ing is dangerous. IMO, quite the contrary.
Reasonable, prudent oc'ing will actually improve stability,
reliability, and specially FPU ;) Just make sure you don't up the
FSB too much (< 138mhz), and that the PCI bus stays under 35mhz.
Call it tweaking ;)
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
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