Just how fast is it?

breetai · Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2002 1:00 pm Post subject: Just how fast is it?

Hi All,

I am currently running a RedHat 7.3 system with an AMD 400mhz CPU. I believe that this would be an i586 sytem, but everything seems to be i386. If I do a stage1 install with some good optimizatios, how much faster should this system be than my current RedHat 7.3? I am looking for a rough percentage, i.e. 5% 25%, etc.

Also why I am at it, where can I find out about optimizations to get better speed out of:

KDE
Win4Lin
VMWare

Thanks

rojaro · l33t Joined: 06 May 2002 Posts: 732

i think nobody really measured that yet as this is a really hard task to do and also highly subjective. there were also reports of systems running slower with gentoo than with other distros, but i assume that these people either didnt configure gentoo correctly (mostly due to lack of linux knowledge) or had hardware problems.

i've got gentoo running on 3 machines right now and from my personal point of view and also being a long time slackware and debian fanatic - gentoo is much and lots faster in most areas (i actually havent yet noticed any slowdowns at all). it is also much easier to maintain than ALL other distros i've been working with already (slackware, debian, redhat, suse, mandrake and turbolinux). the portage package management really rocks ...

my advice: just try it :)

note: KDE under gentoo runs absolutely smooth and stable on my p2/233mhz notebook with 128mb ram, while it wasnt really usable with slackware and redhat (which were running on it befoer) .. as for vmware and win4lin ... dunno ... dont use them at all ...
_________________
A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. ~ Alfred Renyi (*1921 - †1970)

helmers · Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2002 2:04 pm Post subject:

What makes it faster is that it isn't bloated. By default. it loads nothing you don't need. You shouldn't switch just to get 5 or 10 % more speed, unless you really _need_ it. It is not like it will lift you of the ground and fly you to the moon. :roll:

cto2mac · Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2002 3:50 pm Post subject:

I had SuSE 7.2 on a P4 1.4 with 128M Ram and it crawled, after a weekend of installing and emerging Gentoo, my system screams I saw about a 50-75% increase in speed and on top of that I didn't have anything installed that I don't use or don't want.

pizen · Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2002 5:03 pm Post subject:

You can check out some optimization settings here: http://www.freehackers.org/gentoo/gccflags/

masseya · Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2002 7:28 pm Post subject:

If you are saying that you think the AMD K6 is a 586 processor, you are correct. Also, don't expect miracles. I have a P2-400 system that runs gentoo. It is a lot faster than when I was running SuSE on it, but at the same time there's a trade off of the fact that it takes a long time to compile some packages like KDE or Mozilla. This normally isn't a big issue as it can be done overnight most of the time. Also, your speed increase will depend on how much research you do on the gcc flags that you would like to use. There's a trade-off between optimization and binary size that sometimes makes an over-optimized system slower. Check out the never-ending CFLAGS Central thread for more.
_________________
if i never try anything, i never learn anything..
if i never take a risk, i stay where i am..