Re: Problem with Asus P4C800-DX and P4 -Northwood-

Paulo Marques
2005-07-25T14:00:50Z

Andreas Baer wrote:
> [...]
> Vmstat for Notebook P4 3.0 GHz 512 MB RAM:
>
> procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system--
> ----cpu----
> r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy
> id wa
> 1 0 0 179620 14812 228832 0 0 33 21 557 184 3 1
> 95 1
> 2 0 0 178828 14812 228832 0 0 0 0 1295 819 6 2
> 92 0
> 1 0 0 175948 14812 228832 0 0 0 0 1090 111 37 17

This vmstat output doesn't show any input / output happening. Are you
sure this was taken *while* your test is running? If it is, then all
files are already in pagecache. The fact that you have free memory at
all times, and that the run on the notebook takes less than 20 seconds
confirms this.

The second takes a lot more time to execute. The 1Gb memory does make me
suspicious, though.

There is a known problem with BIOS that don't set up the mtrr's
correctly for the whole memory and leave a small amount of memory on the
top with the wrong settings. Accessing this memory becomes painfully slow.

Can you send the output of /proc/mtrr and try to boot with something
like "mem=768M" to see if that improves performance on the Desktop P4?

--
Paulo Marques - www.grupopie.com

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems
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