Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Karol Kwiatkowski wrote: Wojciech Puchar wrote: Yes, 4BSD is still the default, although you definitely want to use ULE for performance reasons (NB: only on 7, dont use ULE on 6). I don't know whether the release engineers plan to change that default, but I will check. could you point to some URL/explain what's the actual difference. You may want to check Jeff Roberson's blog site. Kris posted some graphs on his site, too. Since it's about CURRENT, some results might be outdated already. Unfortunately my graphs are offline (the machine that was hosting them is being shipped trans-atlantically). There is still a pdf in www.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling though. It is slightly out of date: thesedays peak mysql performance is about 10-15% higher, with no scaling bottlenecks in the kernel on 8 CPUs (i.e. mysql itself is the only thing unable to scale to high loads due to bottlenecks and contention in the mysql userland code). postgresql performance is about 20-25% higher too (and 50-60% better performance than mysql). Some of these improvements come from work that will not be committed until after the 7.0 branch though. Kris ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Philip M. Gollucci wrote: Kris Kennaway wrote: Josh Carroll wrote: That's good to know. You should be using libthr for threaded performance though :) That benchmark is probably almost all userland though, so performance may not suffer much from libpthread. Oh I wasn't sure if libthr was the preferred thread library for 6.2 also (I'd heard that was the case for -CURRENT). I should look into whether ffmpeg can be built with libthr instead and compare performance. Somewhat off topic, so I'll leave it at that, but thanks again for the great info. I'm really looking forward to 7.0-RELEASE, obviously :) Yeah, it is preferred on 6.x too (libkse has truly atrocious performance). It's trivial to change it over, just add an entry to /etc/libmap.conf: Really? I didn't you you were supposed to switch until 7.0 -- were the libthr chnages MFC'd and I missed it ? libthr has been around (and performing better than libkse) since the 5.x days and has been recommended for use since 6.0. I've read http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/mysql.html and http://wiki.freebsd.org/MySQL I've been following the discussions on this pretty closely on lists. PU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5310 @ 1.60GHz (1597.53-MHz K8-class CPU) Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0x6f7 Stepping = 7 Features=0xbfebfbff Features2=0x4e33d,CX16,,,> AMD Features=0x20100800 AMD Features2=0x1 Cores per package: 4 real memory = 9395240960 (8960 MB) avail memory = 8291323904 (7907 MB) FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 8 CPUs uname -a FreeBSD hobbes.dca2.prod.rws 6.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #0: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP amd64 I'll recompile the kernel eventually to slim it down. using 4BSD scheduler since its 6.2 ls -1d /var/db/pkg/mysql* mysql-client-5.0.45 mysql-scripts-5.0.45 mysql-server-5.0.45 ldd /usr/local/libexec/mysqld mysqld: libz.so.3 => /lib/libz.so.3 (0x800a5c000) libwrap.so.4 => /usr/lib/libwrap.so.4 (0x800b7) libcrypt.so.3 => /lib/libcrypt.so.3 (0x800c79000) libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0x800d92000) libm.so.4 => /lib/libm.so.4 (0x800f89000) libpthread.so.2 => /lib/libpthread.so.2 (0x8010a5000) libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x8011d) sysctl kern.timecounter.choice kern.timecounter.choice: TSC(-100) ACPI-fast(1000) i8254(0) dummy(-100) sysctl kern.timecounter.hardware kern.timecounter.hardware: TSC Disks are: 1) RAID1(2 disks) OS array with mysql logs, replication logs, and innodb logs. 2) RAID1+0(6disks) innodb mysql data. 3) /tmp is a md0 malloc backed device Should be swap backed, but it won't make much difference on your workload. (I'm thinking of using tmpfs in 7.0 when I switch) tmpfs is not yet production-ready even though it performs better. using libmap.conf to use libc_r, libpthread, and libthr were all about equal actually for insert heavy operations. my.cnf innodb_thread_concurrency = 8 You want '0' or performance will suck. There's a basic architectural flaw in how mysql handles non-zero concurrency values here (innodb accesses are serialized by a global mutex that protects a counter to check if it should try to allow more innodb concurrency. Duh.) Anyway, assuming your disks can keep up you should see a big performance boost when you switch to 7.0. This is a fairly big "if" though: I don't know if it's even feasible for a write-heavy database to saturate 8 CPUs instead of being bottlenecked by disk speeds and leaving the CPUs mostly idle. Kris ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Wojciech Puchar wrote: >> Yes, 4BSD is still the default, although you definitely want to use >> ULE for performance reasons (NB: only on 7, dont use ULE on 6). I >> don't know whether the release engineers plan to change that default, >> but I will check. > > could you point to some URL/explain what's the actual difference. You may want to check Jeff Roberson's blog site. Kris posted some graphs on his site, too. Since it's about CURRENT, some results might be outdated already. Regards, Karol. -- Karol Kwiatkowski OpenPGP 0x06E09309 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Kris Kennaway wrote: > Josh Carroll wrote: >>> That's good to know. You should be using libthr for threaded >>> performance though :) That benchmark is probably almost all userland >>> though, so performance may not suffer much from libpthread. >> Oh I wasn't sure if libthr was the preferred thread library for 6.2 >> also (I'd heard that was the case for -CURRENT). >> >> I should look into whether ffmpeg can be built with libthr instead and >> compare performance. Somewhat off topic, so I'll leave it at that, but >> thanks again for the great info. I'm really looking forward to >> 7.0-RELEASE, obviously :) > > Yeah, it is preferred on 6.x too (libkse has truly atrocious > performance). It's trivial to change it over, just add an entry to > /etc/libmap.conf: Really? I didn't you you were supposed to switch until 7.0 -- were the libthr chnages MFC'd and I missed it ? I've read http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/mysql.html and http://wiki.freebsd.org/MySQL I've been following the discussions on this pretty closely on lists. PU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5310 @ 1.60GHz (1597.53-MHz K8-class CPU) Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0x6f7 Stepping = 7 Features=0xbfebfbff Features2=0x4e33d,CX16,,,> AMD Features=0x20100800 AMD Features2=0x1 Cores per package: 4 real memory = 9395240960 (8960 MB) avail memory = 8291323904 (7907 MB) FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 8 CPUs uname -a FreeBSD hobbes.dca2.prod.rws 6.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #0: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP amd64 I'll recompile the kernel eventually to slim it down. using 4BSD scheduler since its 6.2 ls -1d /var/db/pkg/mysql* mysql-client-5.0.45 mysql-scripts-5.0.45 mysql-server-5.0.45 ldd /usr/local/libexec/mysqld mysqld: libz.so.3 => /lib/libz.so.3 (0x800a5c000) libwrap.so.4 => /usr/lib/libwrap.so.4 (0x800b7) libcrypt.so.3 => /lib/libcrypt.so.3 (0x800c79000) libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0x800d92000) libm.so.4 => /lib/libm.so.4 (0x800f89000) libpthread.so.2 => /lib/libpthread.so.2 (0x8010a5000) libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x8011d) sysctl kern.timecounter.choice kern.timecounter.choice: TSC(-100) ACPI-fast(1000) i8254(0) dummy(-100) sysctl kern.timecounter.hardware kern.timecounter.hardware: TSC Disks are: 1) RAID1(2 disks) OS array with mysql logs, replication logs, and innodb logs. 2) RAID1+0(6disks) innodb mysql data. 3) /tmp is a md0 malloc backed device (I'm thinking of using tmpfs in 7.0 when I switch) using libmap.conf to use libc_r, libpthread, and libthr were all about equal actually for insert heavy operations. my.cnf innodb_thread_concurrency = 8 At 16 aka core*2 'show innodb status' showed too much mutex locking and dropping it had drastic improvements -- despite mysql recommending the 2x value. innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 0 Also helped about 7% but thats due to disk speeds. I can run an oltp sysbench on it if you would like. Philip M. Gollucci ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) c:323.219.4708 o:703.749.9295x206 Senior System Admin - Riderway, Inc. http://riderway.com / http://ridecharge.com 1024D/EC88A0BF 0DE5 C55C 6BF3 B235 2DAB B89E 1324 9B4F EC88 A0BF Work like you don't need the money, love like you'll never get hurt, and dance like nobody's watching. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Yes, 4BSD is still the default, although you definitely want to use ULE for performance reasons (NB: only on 7, dont use ULE on 6). I don't know whether the release engineers plan to change that default, but I will check. could you point to some URL/explain what's the actual difference. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Windows XP, which will be primarily used for gaming, and FreeBSD 7.0 for everything else. I wanted to ask if the new ULE scheduler will benefit from having four cores on the CPU, meaning that if I have many concurrent tasks, is it able to efficiently spread the load over all available cores? won't standard schedules do the same? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Josh Carroll wrote: That's good to know. You should be using libthr for threaded performance though :) That benchmark is probably almost all userland though, so performance may not suffer much from libpthread. Oh I wasn't sure if libthr was the preferred thread library for 6.2 also (I'd heard that was the case for -CURRENT). I should look into whether ffmpeg can be built with libthr instead and compare performance. Somewhat off topic, so I'll leave it at that, but thanks again for the great info. I'm really looking forward to 7.0-RELEASE, obviously :) Yeah, it is preferred on 6.x too (libkse has truly atrocious performance). It's trivial to change it over, just add an entry to /etc/libmap.conf: libpthread.so.2 libthr.so.2 Kris ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
> That's good to know. You should be using libthr for threaded > performance though :) That benchmark is probably almost all userland > though, so performance may not suffer much from libpthread. Oh I wasn't sure if libthr was the preferred thread library for 6.2 also (I'd heard that was the case for -CURRENT). I should look into whether ffmpeg can be built with libthr instead and compare performance. Somewhat off topic, so I'll leave it at that, but thanks again for the great info. I'm really looking forward to 7.0-RELEASE, obviously :) Josh ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Josh Carroll wrote: Yes, 4BSD is still the default, although you definitely want to use ULE for performance reasons (NB: only on 7, dont use ULE on 6). I don't know whether the release engineers plan to change that default, but I will check. Great, thanks for the info. Good to know, I'll be sure to use ULE when 7.0 is released. :) JFYI, buildworld is a really bad benchmark for testing SMP performance in general (on 4 cpus it is not too bad), because the makefiles are not written to efficiently parallelize builds on many CPUs, so large parts end up running with only a single make job at a time. Understood, just a data point. :) Probably a better one: ffmpeg encoding H.264 content with -threads 8 is nearly 4x as fast as a single threaded ffmpeg process, so it's scaling well at least for ffmpeg (linked against pthread). That's good to know. You should be using libthr for threaded performance though :) That benchmark is probably almost all userland though, so performance may not suffer much from libpthread. Kris ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
> Yes, 4BSD is still the default, although you definitely want to use ULE > for performance reasons (NB: only on 7, dont use ULE on 6). I don't > know whether the release engineers plan to change that default, but I > will check. Great, thanks for the info. Good to know, I'll be sure to use ULE when 7.0 is released. :) > JFYI, buildworld is a really bad benchmark for testing SMP performance > in general (on 4 cpus it is not too bad), because the makefiles are not > written to efficiently parallelize builds on many CPUs, so large parts > end up running with only a single make job at a time. Understood, just a data point. :) Probably a better one: ffmpeg encoding H.264 content with -threads 8 is nearly 4x as fast as a single threaded ffmpeg process, so it's scaling well at least for ffmpeg (linked against pthread). Josh ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Josh Carroll wrote: In general, if you are running a multi-process or multi-threaded workload, FreeBSD 7 will be able to make good use of 8 CPU cores. Over the past 2 years we have done extensive benchmarking and optimizations that have resulted in *huge* performance improvements on many common workloads on 8-core systems. FreeBSD 7 is now regularly outperforming Linux on the workloads we have compared. In the near future we will be widening our scope to 16 core systems as well as investigating more benchmarks as we find them. Isn't the default scheduler still 4BSD on -CURRENT? Is ULE considered stable on SMP systems now, and does it really outperform 4BSD? If so, will it be set as the default scheduler once 7.0 is released? Yes, 4BSD is still the default, although you definitely want to use ULE for performance reasons (NB: only on 7, dont use ULE on 6). I don't know whether the release engineers plan to change that default, but I will check. The P965 chipset boards will support the Q6600 and many of them will support Penryn when it comes out (the 45nm based true quad core Intel CPU). I have an Asus P5B and a Q6600 running at 3.4 GHz on 6.2-RELEASE and it screams (8:20 to build world with make -j8, for example). So even 6.2 will take good advantage of the 4 cores, and I imagine it'll only get better when 7.0 is released. I'd just avoid the bleeding edge motherboards/chipsets. JFYI, buildworld is a really bad benchmark for testing SMP performance in general (on 4 cpus it is not too bad), because the makefiles are not written to efficiently parallelize builds on many CPUs, so large parts end up running with only a single make job at a time. Kris ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
> In general, if you are running a multi-process or multi-threaded > workload, FreeBSD 7 will be able to make good use of 8 CPU cores. > > Over the past 2 years we have done extensive benchmarking and > optimizations that have resulted in *huge* performance improvements on > many common workloads on 8-core systems. FreeBSD 7 is now regularly > outperforming Linux on the workloads we have compared. In the near > future we will be widening our scope to 16 core systems as well as > investigating more benchmarks as we find them. Isn't the default scheduler still 4BSD on -CURRENT? Is ULE considered stable on SMP systems now, and does it really outperform 4BSD? If so, will it be set as the default scheduler once 7.0 is released? To the original question, go with the Q6600, especially if you can get a G0 stepping. It'll easily do 3.2 GHz (lowered 8x multiplier with 400 MHz FSB) if you get DDR2-800 capable RAM. Even the B3 stepping will do 3.2 I think, but will run hotter. I would avoid P35 chipsets for now, as there is limited support for the south bridge (ICH9). I think there are some patches (which may be merged into -CURRENT, not sure). I'm not sure whether the Marvell chipset(s) used on the P35 boards are supported or not, and USB may or may not work. The P965 chipset boards will support the Q6600 and many of them will support Penryn when it comes out (the 45nm based true quad core Intel CPU). I have an Asus P5B and a Q6600 running at 3.4 GHz on 6.2-RELEASE and it screams (8:20 to build world with make -j8, for example). So even 6.2 will take good advantage of the 4 cores, and I imagine it'll only get better when 7.0 is released. I'd just avoid the bleeding edge motherboards/chipsets. Josh ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Kris Kennaway wrote: Maxim Khitrov wrote: On 9/14/07, Aryeh Friedman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 9/14/07, Maxim Khitrov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hello, I'm about to purchase a new system for myself. It will dual-boot Windows XP, which will be primarily used for gaming, and FreeBSD 7.0 for everything else. I wanted to ask if the new ULE scheduler will benefit from having four cores on the CPU, meaning that if I have many concurrent tasks, is it able to efficiently spread the load over all available cores? My choices for CPU are either the dual-core E6850 or quad-core Q6600. The latter has lower FSB (1066 vs 1333) and frequency (2.4 vs 3.0), but I'm trying to decide if the addition of two extra cores will bring about noticeable improvements. There are also some issues for gaming, but let's ignore those for a moment. Which CPU would benefit FreeBSD 7.0 the most, which one would you pick? - Max There seems to be some general issues with 7 and e6850/q6600 (I don't know if these are due to the processor the chip set or what): * Doesn't reconize both SATA and PATA drives at the same time * X ( 7.3) has a hard time using brand specific drivers for PCI-E cards (for example I am using vesa to drive a nVidia and I get the full advertised resolution but I also have screen "blinks" see FreeBSD-x11 mailing list for details on all this) * Some ports are broken in 7 (in my case all native Java compilers and the hp branded printing subsystem) Could that have something to do with your motherboard? I plan on getting Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6, will likely order all the parts this Monday or Tuesday. My choice is still between those two CPUs even if FreeBSD has some issues with them right now. Hopefully it will be fixed before 7-RELEASE is made. I could still use some advice on which CPU would be better assuming everything works as it should. I'm leaning more towards Q6600, since I could overclock it a bit and essentially get 2 extra cores for free. The main question is still whether ULE will take full advantage of the available processing power and offset the negative impact of lower FSB? On Windows tests it's pretty clear that things like video editing and 3D rendering greatly benefit from four cores, but of course it's difficult to locate similar tests run on other operating systems. In general, if you are running a multi-process or multi-threaded workload, FreeBSD 7 will be able to make good use of 8 CPU cores. Over the past 2 years we have done extensive benchmarking and optimizations that have resulted in *huge* performance improvements on many common workloads on 8-core systems. FreeBSD 7 is now regularly outperforming Linux on the workloads we have compared. In the near future we will be widening our scope to 16 core systems as well as investigating more benchmarks as we find them. On the other hand, if you come up with a workload that does not perform well on 7, we want to hear about it so we can fix that bug :) Kris Sidenote: I'd avoid purchasing non-Intel (i.e. nVidia chipset) motherboards if you're going to run FreeBSD. The ASUS P5B-Deluxe and P5K-E boards work well with FreeBSD, from experience. As for X11... haven't really gone there yet on my desktop / server with Core 2 CPUs, but I'll be doing that soon. In this arena, stay away from ATI cards as they are pretty much VGA capable only under FreeBSD. Also, avoid x64 for the time being because the proprietary nvidia driver isn't x64 capable (due to issues raised with nVidia about how the FreeBSD kernel allocates memory and devices). Good luck, -Garrett ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Maxim Khitrov wrote: On 9/14/07, Aryeh Friedman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On 9/14/07, Maxim Khitrov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hello, I'm about to purchase a new system for myself. It will dual-boot Windows XP, which will be primarily used for gaming, and FreeBSD 7.0 for everything else. I wanted to ask if the new ULE scheduler will benefit from having four cores on the CPU, meaning that if I have many concurrent tasks, is it able to efficiently spread the load over all available cores? My choices for CPU are either the dual-core E6850 or quad-core Q6600. The latter has lower FSB (1066 vs 1333) and frequency (2.4 vs 3.0), but I'm trying to decide if the addition of two extra cores will bring about noticeable improvements. There are also some issues for gaming, but let's ignore those for a moment. Which CPU would benefit FreeBSD 7.0 the most, which one would you pick? - Max There seems to be some general issues with 7 and e6850/q6600 (I don't know if these are due to the processor the chip set or what): * Doesn't reconize both SATA and PATA drives at the same time * X ( 7.3) has a hard time using brand specific drivers for PCI-E cards (for example I am using vesa to drive a nVidia and I get the full advertised resolution but I also have screen "blinks" see FreeBSD-x11 mailing list for details on all this) * Some ports are broken in 7 (in my case all native Java compilers and the hp branded printing subsystem) Could that have something to do with your motherboard? I plan on getting Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6, will likely order all the parts this Monday or Tuesday. My choice is still between those two CPUs even if FreeBSD has some issues with them right now. Hopefully it will be fixed before 7-RELEASE is made. I could still use some advice on which CPU would be better assuming everything works as it should. I'm leaning more towards Q6600, since I could overclock it a bit and essentially get 2 extra cores for free. The main question is still whether ULE will take full advantage of the available processing power and offset the negative impact of lower FSB? On Windows tests it's pretty clear that things like video editing and 3D rendering greatly benefit from four cores, but of course it's difficult to locate similar tests run on other operating systems. In general, if you are running a multi-process or multi-threaded workload, FreeBSD 7 will be able to make good use of 8 CPU cores. Over the past 2 years we have done extensive benchmarking and optimizations that have resulted in *huge* performance improvements on many common workloads on 8-core systems. FreeBSD 7 is now regularly outperforming Linux on the workloads we have compared. In the near future we will be widening our scope to 16 core systems as well as investigating more benchmarks as we find them. On the other hand, if you come up with a workload that does not perform well on 7, we want to hear about it so we can fix that bug :) Kris ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
On 9/14/07, Aryeh Friedman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 9/14/07, Maxim Khitrov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Hello, > > > > I'm about to purchase a new system for myself. It will dual-boot > > Windows XP, which will be primarily used for gaming, and FreeBSD 7.0 > > for everything else. I wanted to ask if the new ULE scheduler will > > benefit from having four cores on the CPU, meaning that if I have many > > concurrent tasks, is it able to efficiently spread the load over all > > available cores? > > > > My choices for CPU are either the dual-core E6850 or quad-core Q6600. > > The latter has lower FSB (1066 vs 1333) and frequency (2.4 vs 3.0), > > but I'm trying to decide if the addition of two extra cores will bring > > about noticeable improvements. There are also some issues for gaming, > > but let's ignore those for a moment. Which CPU would benefit FreeBSD > > 7.0 the most, which one would you pick? > > > > - Max > > There seems to be some general issues with 7 and e6850/q6600 (I don't know > if these are due to the processor the chip set or what): > > * Doesn't reconize both SATA and PATA drives at the same time > * X ( 7.3) has a hard time using brand specific drivers for PCI-E > cards (for example I am using vesa to drive a nVidia and I get the full > advertised resolution but I also have screen "blinks" see FreeBSD-x11 > mailing list for details on all this) > * Some ports are broken in 7 (in my case all native Java compilers and > the hp branded printing subsystem) Could that have something to do with your motherboard? I plan on getting Gigabyte GA-P35-DQ6, will likely order all the parts this Monday or Tuesday. My choice is still between those two CPUs even if FreeBSD has some issues with them right now. Hopefully it will be fixed before 7-RELEASE is made. I could still use some advice on which CPU would be better assuming everything works as it should. I'm leaning more towards Q6600, since I could overclock it a bit and essentially get 2 extra cores for free. The main question is still whether ULE will take full advantage of the available processing power and offset the negative impact of lower FSB? On Windows tests it's pretty clear that things like video editing and 3D rendering greatly benefit from four cores, but of course it's difficult to locate similar tests run on other operating systems. - Max ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Building a new workstation - dual or quad-core CPU for FreeBSD 7?
Hello, I'm about to purchase a new system for myself. It will dual-boot Windows XP, which will be primarily used for gaming, and FreeBSD 7.0 for everything else. I wanted to ask if the new ULE scheduler will benefit from having four cores on the CPU, meaning that if I have many concurrent tasks, is it able to efficiently spread the load over all available cores? My choices for CPU are either the dual-core E6850 or quad-core Q6600. The latter has lower FSB (1066 vs 1333) and frequency (2.4 vs 3.0), but I'm trying to decide if the addition of two extra cores will bring about noticeable improvements. There are also some issues for gaming, but let's ignore those for a moment. Which CPU would benefit FreeBSD 7.0 the most, which one would you pick? - Max ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"