Would there be any advantage in putting more than 1 gigabyte of RAM in a Suse 10.2 box? I understand that the RAM usage is generally low. - Joel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
JJB wrote:
Would there be any advantage in putting more than 1 gigabyte of RAM in a Suse 10.2 box? I understand that the RAM usage is generally low. Depends on what you're asking it to do. 1 GB is probably just fine for for a power user, i.e. someone who has several virtual desktops running and something happening on each one, and uses some deanding apps - but some of the suse boxes I'm running have 8 GB and would be happier with 16 GB, since they run some demanding applications and are getting hammered all day long.
Joe -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 18 September 2007 18:45, Sloan wrote:
JJB wrote:
Would there be any advantage in putting more than 1 gigabyte of RAM in a Suse 10.2 box? I understand that the RAM usage is generally low.
Depends on what you're asking it to do. 1 GB is probably just fine for for a power user, i.e. someone who has several virtual desktops running and something happening on each one, and uses some deanding apps - but some of the suse boxes I'm running have 8 GB and would be happier with 16 GB, since they run some demanding applications and are getting hammered all day long.
Joe
Yes, it is the use case that will tell how much is necessary. Here is mine. With 32 bit kernel 1 GB is fine with one virtual machine running GNOME version of openSUSE 10.3 using 400 MB of RAM. I can use desktop without problems. The same with 64 bit kernel is a bit short, as applications are bigger, ie. lesser memory is left for virtual machine making it slower. Luckilly virtual machine support for 64 bit OS is not working, so there is no problems with VirtualBox, and QEMU can run only in slow full virtualization mode. -- Regards, Rajko. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 18 September 2007 16:40, JJB wrote:
Would there be any advantage in putting more than 1 gigabyte of RAM in a Suse 10.2 box? I understand that the RAM usage is generally low.
Well, the system itself doesn't need more than that. Everything else depends on what you're running. What do you plan to do with this system?
- Joel
Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
JJB wrote:
Would there be any advantage in putting more than 1 gigabyte of RAM in a Suse 10.2 box? I understand that the RAM usage is generally low.
- Joel
I routinely use 2 GB of real memory plus another 1 GB of swap. RAM usage is entirely dependent upon what YOU do with the machine, so whoever told you that was talking through his anal orifice. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Aaron Kulkis wrote:
JJB wrote:
Would there be any advantage in putting more than 1 gigabyte of RAM in a Suse 10.2 box? I understand that the RAM usage is generally low.
- Joel
I routinely use 2 GB of real memory plus another 1 GB of swap.
RAM usage is entirely dependent upon what YOU do with the machine, so whoever told you that was talking through his anal orifice.
My own personal theory is that if you are able to max out the memory usable by the computer, do it. Reason: Memory is faster than hard drives. The more memory you have available the less you have to rely on swap. I have 1.5G and would like to get it up to 2G [ max on my particular board ]. No, I don't use it all ALL the time. Generally it shows some free during normal usage. BUT, on some days I get things opening and moving around and I may have both desktops swamped with stuff going in different directions. -- (o:]>*HUGGLES*<[:o) Billie Walsh The three best words in the English Language: "I LOVE YOU" Pass them on! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 09:37 -0500, Billie Walsh wrote:
My own personal theory is that if you are able to max out the memory usable by the computer, do it.
Reason:
Memory is faster than hard drives. The more memory you have available the less you have to rely on swap.
I have 1.5G and would like to get it up to 2G [ max on my particular board ]. No, I don't use it all ALL the time. Generally it shows some free during normal usage. BUT, on some days I get things opening and moving around and I may have both desktops swamped with stuff going in different directions.
Maximize mem sounds nice, but... Would you rather use a dual-core with 8GB or a quad-core with 4GB. or: 4GB DDR-3 or 8GB DDR-2 Hans -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 19 September 2007 15:11, Hans Witvliet wrote:
...
Maximize mem sounds nice, but...
Things must be balanced. An ultra-fast, multi-core CPU with wimpy RAM just wastes the CPUs, e.g.
Would you rather use a dual-core with 8GB or a quad-core with 4GB. or: 4GB DDR-3 or 8GB DDR-2
Well, to date, I've done well with 2 GB for the past few years, but I put 4 GB in a Core 2 Duo-based system I built recently. So in this case (assuming all the pertinent mainboard hardware were capable), I'd go with the DDR-3, since RAM remains a bottleneck (all the more so with multi-core CPUs).
Hans
Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Hans Witvliet wrote:
Maximize mem sounds nice, but... Would you rather use a dual-core with 8GB or a quad-core with 4GB. or: 4GB DDR-3 or 8GB DDR-2
Hans
My computer manufacturer says it can take up to 2G memory. It has a dual core. So, I guess I would prefer to run a dual core with 2G. -- (o:]>*HUGGLES*<[:o) Billie Walsh The three best words in the English Language: "I LOVE YOU" Pass them on! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 19 September 2007 17:06, Billie Walsh wrote:
...
My computer manufacturer says it can take up to 2G memory.
Tell us more. What manufacturer? What model mainboard? What CPU? I didn't think there were any dual-core processors with such limited RAM capacity. (But there's no accounting for marginal mainboard designs...)
It has a dual core. So, I guess I would prefer to run a dual core with 2G.
-- Billie Walsh
Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Aaron Kulkis wrote:
JJB wrote:
Would there be any advantage in putting more than 1 gigabyte of RAM in a Suse 10.2 box? I understand that the RAM usage is generally low.
- Joel
I routinely use 2 GB of real memory plus another 1 GB of swap.
RAM usage is entirely dependent upon what YOU do with the machine, so whoever told you that was talking through his anal orifice.
More data points for your amusement - My home mail/web/dns server (10.2/x86_64) has 1 GB RAM and it's a bit tight: top - 10:26:18 up 71 days, 13:07, 2 users, load average: 0.14, 0.13, 0.06 Tasks: 119 total, 1 running, 118 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 1.4%us, 0.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 96.3%id, 1.9%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.1%si, 0.0%st Mem: 962300k total, 866524k used, 95776k free, 39684k buffers Swap: 2104504k total, 650148k used, 1454356k free, 124940k cached My home desktop machine (10.2/i386) has 1 GB RAM, and is just beginning to get into swap - top - 10:21:58 up 6 days, 11:17, 10 users, load average: 0.06, 0.09, 0.09 Tasks: 142 total, 1 running, 140 sleeping, 1 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 2.3%us, 1.8%sy, 2.8%ni, 92.7%id, 0.2%wa, 0.2%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1028000k total, 975796k used, 52204k free, 39020k buffers Swap: 1052248k total, 5724k used, 1046524k free, 260872k cached OTOH my firewall/dns/dhcp server (10.1/i386) an old compaq deskpro is OK w/ 265 MB RAM: top - 10:28:10 up 15 days, 21:33, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 Tasks: 51 total, 1 running, 50 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.1% us, 0.1% sy, 0.0% ni, 99.5% id, 0.2% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.1% si Mem: 256784k total, 245492k used, 11292k free, 90472k buffers Swap: 786736k total, 108k used, 786628k free, 33972k cached Joe -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
JJB wrote:
Would there be any advantage in putting more than 1 gigabyte of RAM in a Suse 10.2 box? I understand that the RAM usage is generally low.
- Joel
Joel, I routinely run multiple konquerors, firefox, thunderbird, kate, multiple console windows and open office on 10.2 and I rarely exceed 870K of memory. I have been more than happy with 1G in that situation. See below: top - 08:04:03 up 34 min, 4 users, load average: 0.10, 0.13, 0.11 Tasks: 107 total, 1 running, 106 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 1.2%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 97.2%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1035320k total, 483276k used, 552044k free, 16436k buffers Swap: 2104472k total, 0k used, 2104472k free, 324472k cached However, I would qualify that by saying if you only have 2 memory slots that you can either fill with (2) 512k of (2) 1g chips, I would buy the 2 1g chips to prevent buying the the 512ks now and the 1gs later if you needed to add ram later. -- David C. Rankin, J.D., P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 (936) 715-9333 (936) 715-9339 fax www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Wednesday 2007-09-19 at 08:11 -0500, David C. Rankin wrote:
I routinely run multiple konquerors, firefox, thunderbird, kate, multiple console windows and open office on 10.2 and I rarely exceed 870K of memory. I have been more than happy with 1G in that situation. See below:
top - 08:04:03 up 34 min, 4 users, load average: 0.10, 0.13, 0.11 Tasks: 107 total, 1 running, 106 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 1.2%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 97.2%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1035320k total, 483276k used, 552044k free, 16436k buffers Swap: 2104472k total, 0k used, 2104472k free, 324472k cached
I do exceed it: Mem: 1036384k total, 1021784k used, 14600k free, 35176k buffers Swap: 6297440k total, 322332k used, 5975108k free, 252932k cached - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFG8TNNtTMYHG2NR9URAil+AJ0WdfxzUhPuX0Y0rQ+MahZp3BxdigCfdN3V EaGr6EJuza15xDqZZ+G94vo= =yeTE -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 2007/09/19 10:33 (GMT-0400) Carlos E. R. apparently typed:
The Wednesday 2007-09-19 at 08:11 -0500, David C. Rankin wrote:
I routinely run multiple konquerors, firefox, thunderbird, kate, multiple console windows and open office on 10.2 and I rarely exceed 870K of memory. I have been more than happy with 1G in that situation. See below:
top - 08:04:03 up 34 min, 4 users, load average: 0.10, 0.13, 0.11 Tasks: 107 total, 1 running, 106 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 1.2%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 97.2%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1035320k total, 483276k used, 552044k free, 16436k buffers Swap: 2104472k total, 0k used, 2104472k free, 324472k cached
I do exceed it:
Mem: 1036384k total, 1021784k used, 14600k free, 35176k buffers Swap: 6297440k total, 322332k used, 5975108k free, 252932k cached
Virtually always here: Mem: 2076328k total, 1878612k used, 197716k free, 250548k buffers Swap: 923696k total, 0k used, 923696k free, 397724k cached kcmshell memory shows 59% of physical is application data. I run trunk builds of SeaMonkey continuously. Right now, it's using 28%, 701m virt, after 3.4 days uptime. Used gets even worse when I forget to restart Skype every other day. It's a leaker too. -- "It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether any free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape." Chief Justice Joseph Story Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Carlos E. R. wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
The Wednesday 2007-09-19 at 08:11 -0500, David C. Rankin wrote:
I routinely run multiple konquerors, firefox, thunderbird, kate, multiple console windows and open office on 10.2 and I rarely exceed 870K of memory. I have been more than happy with 1G in that situation. See below:
top - 08:04:03 up 34 min, 4 users, load average: 0.10, 0.13, 0.11 Tasks: 107 total, 1 running, 106 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 1.2%us, 1.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 97.2%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 1035320k total, 483276k used, 552044k free, 16436k buffers Swap: 2104472k total, 0k used, 2104472k free, 324472k cached
I do exceed it:
Mem: 1036384k total, 1021784k used, 14600k free, 35176k buffers Swap: 6297440k total, 322332k used, 5975108k free, 252932k cached
I wonder if it doesn't use whatever it can. I didn't notice reaching the ceiling often on my 1gb system, but now that I've upgraded to 3gb, it seems to be up around 2.5gb all the time now. Not sure my set up is all that different, either: Mem: 3115440k total, 2983084k used, 132356k free, 268676k buffers Swap: 2104444k total, 0k used, 2104444k free, 1987272k cached In general, the more memory the better, and I'd say that these days, 1gb is a bare minimum. 2gb is more like it. More than 3gb and you start having to worry about memory magic numbers kicking in (ie, whether you can use 4gb or more all depend on a variety of factors, from CPU & motherboard to operating system). Actually, looking at the Memory setting in KDE info (you can see this by running 'kcmshell memory' from the command line), it looks like it does use it and the number shown by top is very misleading. According the the tip shown by the memory display: "Most operating systems (including Linux) will use as much of the available physical memory as possible as disk cache, to speed up the system performance. This means that if you have a small amount of Free Physical Memory and a large amount of Disk Cache Memory, your system is well configured." My numbers are Free Memory 9%, Disk Cache 65%, Disk Buffers 6% and Application Data 17%. So to test, I loaded a bunch more apps - Amarok, Banshee, GIMP, digiKam, YOU, and KDE help. My numbers went to Application Data 33%, Disk Cache 57% and Free Memory 2%. So the number from top isn't very useful, as the 'buffers' number is merely that, the Disk Buffers. It doesn't take into account the "Disk Cache". htop shows four different kinds of memory usage - used/buffers/cache/free and the number at the right is the 'correct' number: Mem[||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||######**********************************************1008/3042MB] Where I really am using 1gb out of 3gb that isn't a cache that will be shrunk or grown based up need. -- Jonathan Arnold (mailto:jdarnold@buddydog.org) Linux Brain Dump - Linux Notes, HOWTOs and Tutorials: http://www.linuxbraindump.org Daemon Dancing in the Dark, an Open OS weblog: http://freebsd.amazingdev.com/blog/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 19 September 2007 11:33, Jonathan Arnold wrote:
I wonder if it doesn't use whatever it can. I didn't notice reaching the ceiling often on my 1gb system, but now that I've upgraded to 3gb, it seems to be up around 2.5gb all the time now. Not sure my set up is all that different, either:
Linux will use all the memory it can. There is no "excess" memory. More memory means more cached. Less resorting to swap. With todays prices no point going with less then 2gig on a new machine. Unless the seller has goofy upgrade pricing then take the base machine and upgrade it yourself. 4 gig makes less sense from a dollar stand point. NIck -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
This server will be used by a team of about 15 developers for CVS and Subversion. I wanted the extra RAM to allow the server to perhaps server multiple purposes beyond version control. My boss was pretty adamant about linux not needing much ram, so the purchase of the server was being blocked as-is, I couldn't really justify to him that I wanted to build in additional flexibility by having more RAM. It is a quad-core xeon Dell machine. I think SubVersion and CVS are rather low power usage apps. But I wish I had a better justification for my gut feeling that this machine should have a comfortable 2 gb. Joel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
JJB wrote:
This server will be used by a team of about 15 developers for CVS and Subversion. [...] It is a quad-core xeon Dell machine.
You want to use a quad-core system with 1GB RAM as SVN server for 15 developers? That's a bit odd from my point of view. I would rather use a standard dual-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a RAID system with two large disks (mirrored). Th. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Price for the system is the same with quad core 1.6 or dual core 3.0 ghz, It has mirrored drives... Do your think that cvs + subversion will get any benefit from 2gb vs 1gb? Joel Thomas Hertweck wrote:
JJB wrote:
This server will be used by a team of about 15 developers for CVS and Subversion. [...] It is a quad-core xeon Dell machine.
You want to use a quad-core system with 1GB RAM as SVN server for 15 developers? That's a bit odd from my point of view. I would rather use a standard dual-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a RAID system with two large disks (mirrored).
Th.
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On Wednesday 19 September 2007 12:53, JJB wrote:
Price for the system is the same with quad core 1.6 or dual core 3.0 ghz,
That's an interesting pair of options. I wonder how to analyze one's applications to make the better choice.
It has mirrored drives... Do your think that cvs + subversion will get any benefit from 2gb vs 1gb?
That's hard to say. (Why are you using CVS _and_ Subversion??) Depending on the frequency and nature of client interactions with the CVS and / or Subversion servers and the size of their repositories, it could be very helpful or undetectable. Given the marginal cost, in a corporate setting I'd just go for the 2 GB configuration right off.
Joel
Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Wednesday 19 September 2007 12:53, JJB wrote:
Price for the system is the same with quad core 1.6 or dual core 3.0 ghz,
That's an interesting pair of options. I wonder how to analyze one's applications to make the better choice.
The more cores contending for memory access, the more your system falls short of theoretical maximum throughput. So, go with the high-speed dual core rather than the low-speed quad-core. Memory contention issues will more than destroy the theoretical 0.4 GHz*CPU advantage of the quad core.
It has mirrored drives... Do your think that cvs + subversion will get any benefit from 2gb vs 1gb?
That's hard to say. (Why are you using CVS _and_ Subversion??)
Depending on the frequency and nature of client interactions with the CVS and / or Subversion servers and the size of their repositories, it could be very helpful or undetectable.
Given the marginal cost, in a corporate setting I'd just go for the 2 GB configuration right off.
Joel
Randall Schulz
-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 19 September 2007 15:53, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Wednesday 19 September 2007 12:53, JJB wrote:
Price for the system is the same with quad core 1.6 or dual core 3.0 ghz,
That's an interesting pair of options. I wonder how to analyze one's applications to make the better choice.
The more cores contending for memory access, the more your system falls short of theoretical maximum throughput.
So, go with the high-speed dual core rather than the low-speed quad-core. Memory contention issues will more than destroy the theoretical 0.4 GHz*CPU advantage of the quad core.
Not necessarily. Some instruction mixes have a much higher ratio of CPU internal instruction cycles to memory accesses than others. For example, tight inner loops (where all the instructions remain in the level 1 cache) that perform lots of floating-point operations on values that were computed by the immediately preceding instruction (again benefitting from the on-chip cache) will exhibit relatively few memory accesses per clock cycle. In contrast, processing mixes that involve a lot of data movement and relatively little calculation (especially mixes that use few instructions that take multiple clock cycles) will benefit most from fast RAM. There's no one-size-fits-all answer. If you really want to optimize a particular application, you must understand and analyze it carefully. For "general-purpose" applications (not really meaningful without _some_ characterization of the processing mix), there presumably are some kinds of rules of thumb, but I'm not sure what they are. (I know that for the application that absorbs most of my attention these days the dominant factor is definitely RAM speed. I've observed that a 2.0 GHz Core Duo (_not_ Core 2) beats a 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 HT simply because the former has faster memory. In fact, the ratio of the speed of my current project is almost exactly the ratio of the RAM speed between the two systems. It's as if the CPU speed didn't even matter!
...
Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Wednesday 19 September 2007 15:53, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
Randall R Schulz wrote:
On Wednesday 19 September 2007 12:53, JJB wrote:
Price for the system is the same with quad core 1.6 or dual core 3.0 ghz,
That's an interesting pair of options. I wonder how to analyze one's applications to make the better choice.
The more cores contending for memory access, the more your system falls short of theoretical maximum throughput.
So, go with the high-speed dual core rather than the low-speed quad-core. Memory contention issues will more than destroy the theoretical 0.4 GHz*CPU advantage of the quad core.
Not necessarily. Some instruction mixes have a much higher ratio of CPU internal instruction cycles to memory accesses than others.
For example, tight inner loops (where all the instructions remain in the level 1 cache) that perform lots of floating-point operations on values that were computed by the immediately preceding instruction (again benefitting from the on-chip cache) will exhibit relatively few memory accesses per clock cycle.
You would be surprised. For a couple years, I worked with the supercomputing group at the General Motors Tech Center in Warren, MI, and even with programs that were specifically DESIGNED to run as parallel instances (usually using divide & conquer strategy across 2^N processors) took more wall-clock CPU-hours using high parallelism than low-parallelism. This was on high end SGI (16 to 64 CPU) and IBM P-5 series computers (up to 96 CPUs) which were specifically designed for parallel processing, running programs specifically designed for such environment (code from Lawrence-Livermore Labs, for example). The President of Platform Computing (http://www.platformcomputing.com) described similar results at other customer sites in his speech at a day-long presentation sponsored by Compaq shortly after Compaq took over HP.
In contrast, processing mixes that involve a lot of data movement and relatively little calculation (especially mixes that use few instructions that take multiple clock cycles) will benefit most from fast RAM.
There's no one-size-fits-all answer. If you really want to optimize a particular application, you must understand and analyze it carefully. For "general-purpose" applications (not really meaningful without _some_ characterization of the processing mix), there presumably are some kinds of rules of thumb, but I'm not sure what they are.
(I know that for the application that absorbs most of my attention these days the dominant factor is definitely RAM speed. I've observed that a 2.0 GHz Core Duo (_not_ Core 2) beats a 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 HT simply because the former has faster memory. In fact, the ratio of the speed of my current project is almost exactly the ratio of the RAM speed between the two systems. It's as if the CPU speed didn't even matter!
For most every application out there, RAM speed is the primary bottleneck, followed by disk access (caused by RAM shortages). The first byte of any RAM access is on the order of 1,000 to 100,000 times faster than disk access. Network filesystem access tends to be even slower. [I have a long story about how the execution time of an analyst's execution times for some Computational Fluid Dynamics problems were gradually cut from 16 hours (wall clock time) down to 5 ~ 10 minutes, all by getting rid of disk access over the network(not only the data, but the executable being remotely located ALSO had a significant impact on wall-clock times.) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
JJB wrote:
Price for the system is the same with quad core 1.6 or dual core 3.0 ghz,
It has mirrored drives... Do your think that cvs + subversion will get any benefit from 2gb vs 1gb?
I think if your new server is only going to be used as SVN server for 15 developers and nothing else (it's not a public server etc.), then it's certainly not necessary to have lots of CPU power. It won't be used, even if you stored lots of binary data or had fancy hook scripts. I would consider a decent network connection, fast disks and a good backup mechanism as more relevant than CPU power. As others mentioned, it's difficult to answer general questions like yours because there's not enough information given. In general, I would consider an increase in RAM size more worthwhile than an increase in CPU power for any system that is not going to be CPU-bound anyway or used in HPC environments. I know of people who bought a P4 3.0 GHz with 512 MB RAM and told me that they couldn't afford to buy more RAM because of their budget limitation. However, it doesn't make sense - if they bought a 2.6 GHz P4 and 2 GB RAM, they would have been better off, for the same price... Th. PS. Why do you want to use SVN and CVS? You can import CVS into SVN repositories. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Thomas Hertweck wrote:
JJB wrote:
Price for the system is the same with quad core 1.6 or dual core 3.0 ghz,
It has mirrored drives... Do your think that cvs + subversion will get any benefit from 2gb vs 1gb?
I think if your new server is only going to be used as SVN server for 15 developers and nothing else (it's not a public server etc.), then it's certainly not necessary to have lots of CPU power. It won't be used, even if you stored lots of binary data or had fancy hook scripts. I would consider a decent network connection, fast disks and a good backup mechanism as more relevant than CPU power.
This analysis is correct. With file servers, the bottlenecks are disk access and network throughput. CPUs are running at such high speed that you would need a couple HUNDRED network connections and also a couple HUNDRED disk drives to saturate the CPU. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
I've seen a lot of "top" output thrown around on this topic and a bunch of people have touched on this issue, but let me ask this question: I'm sitting right now in front of my 1gig machine. I have my normal set of apps open: firefox, thunderbird, konsole, etc. How can I tell if I would benefit from additional RAM? What command and what output do I need to pay attention to? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Jeremy Figgins wrote:
I've seen a lot of "top" output thrown around on this topic and a bunch of people have touched on this issue, but let me ask this question:
I'm sitting right now in front of my 1gig machine. I have my normal set of apps open: firefox, thunderbird, konsole, etc. How can I tell if I would benefit from additional RAM? What command and what output do I need to pay attention to?
If you're using any swap at all, you would benefit from additional RAM. top or free could tell you about swap usage. Joe -- KDE/SuSE 10.2 - Unix since 1984, Linux since 1993, SuSE since 2004 Linux 2.6.23-rc7-default #3 SMP Wed Sep 19 20:20:53 PDT 2007 i686 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Sloan wrote:
Jeremy Figgins wrote:
I've seen a lot of "top" output thrown around on this topic and a bunch of people have touched on this issue, but let me ask this question:
I'm sitting right now in front of my 1gig machine. I have my normal set of apps open: firefox, thunderbird, konsole, etc. How can I tell if I would benefit from additional RAM? What command and what output do I need to pay attention to?
If you're using any swap at all, you would benefit from additional RAM.
top or free could tell you about swap usage.
If you hit swap only occasionally, I wouldn't worry about it. If a lot, then more memory should help. -- Use OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Friday 2007-09-21 at 11:24 -0700, Sloan wrote:
If you're using any swap at all, you would benefit from additional RAM.
If you have suspended to disk some time previously, you will se a fair ammount of used swap, without being any indication that more ram is needed. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFG9BDntTMYHG2NR9URAmK+AJ9WIUZRdiyH5oZmJE+BF8QD+sOF8ACgiKsZ C+zDe6WdhZx75hC7FzzkdzE= =u8MK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Fri, 21 Sep 2007, by joe@tmsusa.com:
Jeremy Figgins wrote:
I've seen a lot of "top" output thrown around on this topic and a bunch of people have touched on this issue, but let me ask this question:
I'm sitting right now in front of my 1gig machine. I have my normal set of apps open: firefox, thunderbird, konsole, etc. How can I tell if I would benefit from additional RAM? What command and what output do I need to pay attention to?
If you're using any swap at all, you would benefit from additional RAM.
top or free could tell you about swap usage.
Not important at all. What you should be looking at is the amount of swap blocks in and out. See vmstat(8) If si and so are mainly 0, then there really is no reason to add more memory. Theo -- Theo v. Werkhoven Registered Linux user# 99872 http://counter.li.org ICBM 52 13 26N , 4 29 47E. + ICQ: 277217131 SUSE 10.2 + Jabber: muadib@jabber.xs4all.nl Kernel 2.6.20 + See headers for PGP/GPG info. Claimer: any email I receive will become my property. Disclaimers do not apply. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Friday 21 September 2007 16:25, Theo v. Werkhoven wrote:
Fri, 21 Sep 2007, by joe@tmsusa.com:
...
If you're using any swap at all, you would benefit from additional RAM.
top or free could tell you about swap usage.
Not important at all.
What you should be looking at is the amount of swap blocks in and out. See vmstat(8). If si and so are mainly 0, then there really is no reason to add more memory.
True. The problem is not how much swap is in use (as long as it doesn't run out), but rather how much swap _traffic_ occurs. If it's a little and / or occasional, there's no problem. If it's a lot and / or ongoing, it's going to make your system slow and CPU utilization low. That's called "thrashing."
Theo
Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Fri, 2007-09-21 at 13:12 -0500, Jeremy Figgins wrote:
I've seen a lot of "top" output thrown around on this topic and a bunch of people have touched on this issue, but let me ask this question:
I'm sitting right now in front of my 1gig machine. I have my normal set of apps open: firefox, thunderbird, konsole, etc. How can I tell if I would benefit from additional RAM? What command and what output do I need to pay attention to?
free is a good command to use. If you notice a lot of swap being used often then that would be a good indication of needing more ram. -- Ken Schneider UNIX since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE since 1998 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Friday 2007-09-21 at 13:12 -0500, Jeremy Figgins wrote:
I've seen a lot of "top" output thrown around on this topic and a bunch of people have touched on this issue, but let me ask this question:
I'm sitting right now in front of my 1gig machine. I have my normal set of apps open: firefox, thunderbird, konsole, etc. How can I tell if I would benefit from additional RAM? What command and what output do I need to pay attention to?
If you see the swap is used (in top), every day, but not just a few kilobytes, and without having suspended the computer, then you should benefit. Another indicator is if you see the ammount dedicated to "buffers" and "cached" is small with little free memory. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFG9A2OtTMYHG2NR9URAi6eAJ9ThFJEvyy2E10uLwbBi4FdlJKoggCeOA8P aNEpHeGF6MUi/+1gkUF4j6Q= =dazf -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Friday 21 September 2007 12:12, Jeremy Figgins wrote:
I've seen a lot of "top" output thrown around on this topic and a bunch of people have touched on this issue, but let me ask this question:
I'm sitting right now in front of my 1gig machine. I have my normal set of apps open: firefox, thunderbird, konsole, etc. How can I tell if I would benefit from additional RAM? What command and what output do I need to pay attention to?
On Friday 21 September 2007 12:29, Carlos E. R. wrote:
Another indicator is if you see the ammount dedicated to "buffers" and "cached" is small with little free memory.
By way of an example, this is the top output from my desktop machine currently with 2G of ram (and not to much open right now). Mem: 2075524k total, 1695896k used, 379628k free, 520148k buffers Swap: 3148732k total, 128k used, 3148604k free, 519956k cached There is: 379628k free memory 520148k for disk buffers 519956k currently cached for a total of about 1.4G of ram "available if required" without touching swap. The output of free contains the line -/+ buffers/cache: 655904 1419620 The last bit says the same thing, that about 0.6G is currently actually used and that 1.4G is "available". (Note that free defaults to displaying in kilobytes). At least that is my understanding... -- Don -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
How does this look to you: Mem: 1027540k total, 977492k used, 50048k free, 199076k buffers Swap: 5245180k total, 131724k used, 5113456k free, 104808k cached Its a Samba server with 1gb ram, also running Apache and Subversion, MediaWiki, 60 - 70 users (mostly using it as a file share), probably the most heavily used system we have. OpenSUSE 10.2, 64 bit. - Joel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
JJB wrote:
How does this look to you:
Mem: 1027540k total, 977492k used, 50048k free, 199076k buffers Swap: 5245180k total, 131724k used, 5113456k free, 104808k cached
Its a Samba server with 1gb ram, also running Apache and Subversion, MediaWiki, 60 - 70 users (mostly using it as a file share), probably the most heavily used system we have. OpenSUSE 10.2, 64 bit.
Yech, that looks terrible. In this day and age of cheap RAM, you shouldn't be using 131MB of Swap space. And on my machine, with 3gb of RAM, I usually have 60% or so in buffers, which keeps it speedy. -- Jonathan Arnold (mailto:jdarnold@buddydog.org) Linux Brain Dump - Linux Notes, HOWTOs and Tutorials: http://www.linuxbraindump.org Daemon Dancing in the Dark, an Open OS weblog: http://freebsd.amazingdev.com/blog/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Friday 2007-09-21 at 12:32 -0700, JJB wrote:
How does this look to you:
Mem: 1027540k total, 977492k used, 50048k free, 199076k buffers Swap: 5245180k total, 131724k used, 5113456k free, 104808k cached
Its a Samba server with 1gb ram, also running Apache and Subversion, MediaWiki, 60 - 70 users (mostly using it as a file share), probably the most heavily used system we have. OpenSUSE 10.2, 64 bit.
For a file server, the ammount of buffers and cached is too little. It will go slow. A 32 bit system on the same conditions might go a bit faster, I think. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFG9P47tTMYHG2NR9URAoYQAKCNfbtACSLDUzPpa5DgW3VB1Y8V8QCeMP3e hInighs50DXMCRk8egdrKWg= =2mnO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Fri, 2007-09-21 at 20:29 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
The Friday 2007-09-21 at 13:12 -0500, Jeremy Figgins wrote:
I've seen a lot of "top" output thrown around on this topic and a bunch of people have touched on this issue, but let me ask this question:
I'm sitting right now in front of my 1gig machine. I have my normal set of apps open: firefox, thunderbird, konsole, etc. How can I tell if I would benefit from additional RAM? What command and what output do I need to pay attention to?
If you see the swap is used (in top), every day, but not just a few kilobytes, and without having suspended the computer, then you should benefit.
Another indicator is if you see the ammount dedicated to "buffers" and "cached" is small with little free memory.
True, with top and free you'll see the amount of mem you're currently using. With smnd and someting like cacti or openNMS you can determine what has been used. Just a quick indication, if you leave a bunch of applications open (gimp, acrobat, evolution thinder/fire/bird) you might gain some speed. Remember the preloading ... For heavy complilation jobs, you'll certainly gain. (linux tries to use all mem as cache) HW -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Jeremy Figgins wrote:
I've seen a lot of "top" output thrown around on this topic and a bunch of people have touched on this issue, but let me ask this question:
I'm sitting right now in front of my 1gig machine. I have my normal set of apps open: firefox, thunderbird, konsole, etc. How can I tell if I would benefit from additional RAM? What command and what output do I need to pay attention to?
Monitor your swap size. If you frequently use a lot of swap, you might benefit from more memory. -- Use OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Jeremy Figgins wrote:
I've seen a lot of "top" output thrown around on this topic and a bunch of people have touched on this issue, but let me ask this question:
I'm sitting right now in front of my 1gig machine. I have my normal set of apps open: firefox, thunderbird, konsole, etc. How can I tell if I would benefit from additional RAM? What command and what output do I need to pay attention to?
Well, I'm going be contrary and say that even if you don't hit swap, you might need more RAM. As mentioned, some programs (like GIMP) use their own temporary disk space if there isn't enough RAM. And even if you aren't using swap, you might be cutting back too much on disk buffers. You want to see how much RAM your apps are using. There's a bunch of ways to do this: 1] htop - a much better top, this displays a line for memory usage: Mem[|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||########*********** 1067/3042MB] The number at the right is what you are really interested in. This is how much memory is being used by apps and how much free memory. 2] The KDE memory module, which you can run from the command line with the command 'kcmshell memory'. This again shows you how much application data you are using. 3] I like Conky as a resource monitor. Be sure to set the "no_buffers" value to be false, so it doesn't include the fungible Disk Cache. This will keep you posted on the memory usage. But still, the number is a moving target. -- Jonathan Arnold (mailto:jdarnold@buddydog.org) Linux Brain Dump - Linux Notes, HOWTOs and Tutorials: http://www.linuxbraindump.org Daemon Dancing in the Dark, an Open OS weblog: http://freebsd.amazingdev.com/blog/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Jeremy Figgins wrote:
[...] I'm sitting right now in front of my 1gig machine. I have my normal set of apps open: firefox, thunderbird, konsole, etc. How can I tell if I would benefit from additional RAM? What command and what output do I need to pay attention to?
You've already seen many replies to your question. Most of them focus on paging and swapping (and actual swap usage, but that's not a good idea). When there are a lot of these activities on your system, then you could obviously benefit from more RAM. However, even without these activities you could probably benefit from more RAM because the additional RAM can be used as cache. Unfortunately, this is hard to measure. In general, if data are already in cache and data don't have to be read from disk (again), then things go a lot faster. Disk access is slow and data throughput is low compared to memory access and throughput. That's why the overall performance of your system from a user's perspective can be better with a 2.6GHz CPU and more RAM instead of a 3.2GHz CPU and less RAM. But be careful, this observation does not hold in all circumstances (depends on how much RAM there is, the use of the system itself: storage server, compute server, desktop system, etc.) and one needs to check each individual situation... Th. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (18)
-
Aaron Kulkis -
Billie Walsh -
Carlos E. R. -
David C. Rankin -
Don Raboud -
Felix Miata -
Hans Witvliet -
James Knott -
Jeremy Figgins -
JJB -
Jonathan Arnold -
Kenneth Schneider -
Nick Zentena -
Rajko M. -
Randall R Schulz -
Sloan -
Theo v. Werkhoven -
Thomas Hertweck