On Wed, 24 Jan 2001 14:45, Tom Brinkman wrote:
> On Tuesday 23 January 2001 07:52 pm, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
> > I have a Pentium II 350MHz with 256MB of RAM. Would there be any
> > speed benefit in compiling my most often used packages (e.g. the
> > Kernel and X) myself? It looks like a good thing to do with faster
> > processors (and I would definitely do this if I had and Athlon or a
> > Pentium III), but I'm not sure if it'll do much (if any) with a
> > Pentium II, since Mandrake is compiled for Pentiums, which is not
> > much of a step down from where I am. I am trying everything I can to
> > speed up my slightly-slow system. I have already optimised my hdparm
> > settings and I plan to switch from ext2 to ReiserFS sometime soon. My
> > system isn't slow enough to really consider changing my software
> > (e.g. I use Konqueror and GNOME), but it still is a bit kludgy and
> > worth trying to improve.
>
> The only possible answer to your questions, is you just have to try
> compiling against _your hardware_ and see if you can see or measure any
> gain. I doubt you'd see anything.
>
> IMO tho, it's much more important to optimize your hardware. On shop
> built or ready made systems there isn't much or any option to do so.
> That's the main reason home building and overclocking have become so
> popular. For example, I had a p2-350 a few years ago, I ran it at
> 474Mhz with 128mb pc100 ram at 135mhz cas2, and L2 cache timings at 3
> ticks rather than the default 8. It benched better than ready made
> p3-500's. About 1½ years ago I swapped out the p2-350 for a p3-450, and
> run it at 608mhz (4.5x135), L2 =3, with the old pc100 and an added 128
> of pc133 at 135mhz cas2-3-3.
>
> Getting back to your system tho, I can almost guarantee you that
> the performance/design of the motherboard your 350's in, how fast you
> can set the ram timings, combined with a correspondingly optimized
> cache latency change, high rpm HDD(s), etc., would make a lot bigger
> difference than recompiling source trying to make the system faster.
Very true, but unfortunately my motherboard's jumpers don't allow me to go
past a 100MHz FSB, and therefore I can't overclock it (I didn't even consider
overclocking when I bought the computer a few years back). Can I still change
the RAM timings and the cache latency to get better performance (without
overclocking the FSB)? If so, what would be a good setting? My hard drive is
a bit slow (I bought it for the size, not the speed), but I can't afford to
spend any more money on this machine or on a new manchine right now (I've
already spent quite a bit to buy more RAM and a CD burner).
--
Sridhar Dhanapalan.
"There are two major products that come from Berkeley:
LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
-- Jeremy S. Anderson
