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On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, Pat Bradshaw wrote: > I know that the best answer is to stick a crowbar in my wallet and add > RAM, but are there other parameters that might significantly affect > performance that I could tweak to make performance at least bearable? There's not much you can do to tweak performance when memory is tight; performance problems due to insufficient memory far outweigh other factors. Long ago, when the 486 was still fairly new, I was installing a Linux lab at BCS, and I did a comparison between two machines: a 386/16 with 16mb of memory, and a 486/33 with 8mb of memory. The 386, at half the speed, was still able to run rings around the 486. A later test between IDE and SCSI showed similar results, but the differences due to memory nevertheless far outweighed the scsi/ide difference. On the other hand, once a machine starts swapping, scsi becomes a *huge* win. Performance degrades gracefully when using scsi disks; the machine slows down gradually. With IDE, once it starts swapping, it's more like hitting a brick wall. -- John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix Email: jabr at blu.org / URL: http://www.blu.org ICQ#28611923 / AIM abreauj ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "Working with NT is like trying to tune a watch wearing oven mitts. You can't get your fingers inside like you can with UNIX. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- - Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" on the first line of the message body to discuss-request at blu.org (Subject line is ignored).
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