[olug] Advice on a new rig

[Adam Lassek]

The 32-bit memory limit is 4GB, but only 3GB of that can be used. I ran into
this after upgrading my machine, linux can only see 3 while Windows supports
all 4 but with PAE.

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 9:19 AM, Obi-Wan <obiwan at jedi.com> wrote:

> > For some perspective, my newest machine is an Athlon64 3200+.
> > I do not yet see a need for upgrading, myself.
>
> My new machine (February) is an Athlon 64x2 5000+.  I don't game, but I
> do a fair bit of batched, multi-threaded photo editing, which means I
> frequently peg both cores for many minutes at a time.  MRTG reports
> that from 10pm-12:30am last night, my *AVERAGE* CPU utilization for the
> entire 2.5 hours was 85%.  It hovers around 20% when I'm not sitting at
> the console.  I need to look into overclocking.  If hardware failure
> hadn't forced my time table, I'd have waited for AMD's phenom problems
> to settle down so I could have gotten a quad core CPU.
>
> >> I can likely get 8 gigs of DDR2 for less money than 4 gigs of DDR3. More
> >> memory is USUALLY the better way to go, but I don't really ever run out
> of
> >> memory with 4 gigs on my current rig.
> >
> > I used to swap pretty hard even with 3 GB RAM. I don't anymore, probably
> at
> > least in part due to KDE 4 being lighter than 3. So on the KDE/Linux
> side,
> > memory use would appear to actually be decreasing over time.
> >
> > 3 GB is also the top limit for 32-bit x86 without some weird stuff.
>
> I run 4GB of DDR2 with a 32-bit kernel, and I've never had any problems.
> Going beyond 4GB (not 3GB) requires 64-bit or hugemem kernel support.
> With 4GB, I page only occasionally -- usually during the aforementioned
> photo editing sessions.  The rest of the time, my RAM is all used for
> filesystem cache, since I do run a number of web & mail servers off
> this box.
>
> For me, memory speed isn't a big deal, but gamers may feel differently.
> For average applications, I don't think there's much point in getting
> uber-fast RAM unless you're also getting an uber-fast CPU.
>
> >> For motherboard chipsets, I have used NForce chipsets for years with no
> >> complaints, but I'm open to moving to a different chipset in the future.
>  I
> >> need good Linux drivers (including the on-board sound to pump out HD
> audio).
> >
> > I've always used VIA chipsets and never had to worry about it.
>
> When I was specing out my new box, several people on this list advised
> that I avoid VIA chipsets.  I went with nForce and have no complaints.
> All the on-board stuff worked perfectly.
>
> --
> Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth                             obiwan at jedi.com
>   The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
>     Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
>       promise that You will pull me through.  -- Rich Mullins
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