Chris, Many Thanks for your help AND point out my one typo.
Actually I am thinking to add power to my system, either using Linux's SMP
and dual Intel Pentium 4 processors with a single system bus, OR clustering
two single processor Linux machines. With help of 64-bits 1GB Network card
and CAT5e cable (I think 350 Mbps), network part doesn't seem a bottleneck.
But I not sure which approach has better performance.
Thanks again,
-Hong
"Christopher P Wright " wrote:
> > I have general questions regarding a typical Linux system's speed and
> > wonder this is right place to ask these questions. If this is not, Could
> > someone point out which group I can post.
>
> probably not the best place, but i know of nowhere else.
>
> > With following typical components on a motherboard:
> > 512 MB 10K RPM DRAM,
> > Intel 850 chipset with 64-bits Data bus width and 400MHz Data Rate,
> > 32-bit/64-bit PCI 2.10 bus (33MHz/66MHz)
> > 20 GB Hard Drive
>
> i think the 10k rpm goes with the harddrive, as dram doesn't rotate =)
>
> > Does Intel 850's 400MHz data rate fully used or not on 66MHz bus
> > speed? As speed of these components are measured by rates, I am
> > wondering how one can evaluate the system's speed roughly in terms of
> > using MB/sec so that one can see potential bottleneck or trend of
> > improvement. On Windows, using PCMark2002 benchmark software from
> > MadOnion.com, one can see 20-70 MB/sec on HD, 700 - 1,400 MB/sec on
> > DRAM. Is there a way one can measure system bus actual speed under
> > Linux or benchmark for DRAM, HD?
>
> the 400Mhz is the dram clock. 66Mhz is standard pci (as is 33 sometimes).
> obviously, the 400Mhz would not be used fully from a 66Mhz feed. this is
> typical. (memory is faster than pci cards, etc).
>
> to test HD performance one can use 'hdparm -T -t'. that benchmarks hd
> speeds, and buffered reads (sort of memory bandwidth maybe?). im not sure
> of a tool to measure dram bandwidth directly, but i'm sure they exist
> somewhere. be sure to enable dma on the harddrive before you benchmark
> it, or the speeds will be worse. ( 'hdparm -d1 [device]' )
>
> > In addition, if I like to add a 1GB Network Interface Card for
> > clustering two same machines, should I add a 32-bit NIC card or 64-bit
> > NIC in terms of performance, and why?
>
> 64bit would generally be able to transfer data to/from the system twice
> as fast as a 32bit card, simply because it transfers twice as many bits
> per cycle. i think 64 bit may be clocked higher (the 66mhz) than the 32
> bit (33 mhz???) but i'm foggy on pci specs in that regard, someone else
> probably knows far more in depth.
>
> ttyl
> chris
>
> --
> "In other words, I'm lost, don't know where we are,
> where we're going, or even if we're going anywhere,
> and don't have control anyway. Otherwise everything's fine."
--
<Linux kernel:>< As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing.
--
Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel.
Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/
FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
