Which computer ?

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deej · Post by **deej** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 1:41 pm

So, with Christmas coming, I'm thinking of buying / making myself a new Bag-Of-Bolts

To this end, I wonder what recommendations Gentoo users would have - given that whatever it is, I'm looking for the abiity for it to compile a complete KDE-based Gentoo build in less than a day ! Is it possible ? ( The last time I tried this, my box was compiling for 24 hours a day for five days before I gave up hope

For all the comedians out there, save the bandwidth and don't bother recommending a Cray

( Unless, of course, that's the only machine capable of the task

)

So, whad'ya all think ? Can it be done ?

Deej

frostschutz · Post by **frostschutz** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 2:32 pm

Buy a quad core (one of the cheaper ones around 250$ or something) and a fast hard disk and enough RAM and you should be fine...

But in all honesty, I'd not buy such a system if you really only need the power for emerging. That's something you can do in the background. If you want instant updates go for a binary distribution instead.

OmSai · Post by **OmSai** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 5:01 pm

deej wrote:...I'm looking for the abiity for it to compile a complete KDE-based Gentoo build in less than a day ! Is it possible ?...

A fast processor will speed your compiling, but the main bottleneck is the speed of your HDD.
Check out forum discussion in this thread

frostschutz wrote:If you want instant updates go for a binary distribution instead.

Definitely, but the caveat is binaries packages don't exist for all packages, and there are relatively few binary servers.

So...
Make sure it has >= 4GB of RAM

and a 64-bit processor to be able to use all of it.
That way you can mount at least 2 gig of RAM for the KDE emerge (...at least I think 2 gig should be enough for it)
Also be sure to get SATA HDDs

deej · Post by **deej** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 5:08 pm

Thanks for the reply, frostschutz.
I was considering using the new-found power (

) for compiling different systems for differing needs - only the kernel of an idea so far, but one I may follow up if I can get compile times down to something 'reasonable', I know that all these needs could be catered for by using pre-built Linux systems, but... it isn't the same as getting your own hands dirty !

Buy a quad core (one of the cheaper ones around 250$ or something)

... I live in Britain... no such thing as cheap...

I'll keep your suggestions in mind, thanks for your time...

Deej

deej · Post by **deej** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 7:25 pm

Sorry, om, we must have posted at the same time !
Regarding hard-drives, maybe I should wait for these to hit the market :

A new flash storage card from Fusion io could make huge storage area networks go the way of the dinosaur and DoDo bird. The company’s upcoming ‘ioDrive’ combines hundreds of gigabytes of flash storage onto a small computer card and company officials claim that the tiny card could replace banks of hard drives.

source:

Code: Select all

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34065/135/

...maybe not (£$£$£$

)

Thanks for your help, I'll check the thread you mentioned now,

Deej

Cyker · Post by **Cyker** » Tue Oct 30, 2007 8:38 pm

IMHO you're better off with a fast dual-core than a quad-core.

Most of the package compiles I've tried seem to benefit amazingly little from multi-core CPUs. (Admittedly this was just testing -j 1 and -j >1)

My Opty can easily recompile all my KDE modules in less than a day (NB: Not ALL of KDE; I'm just using the split packages and not the Mono's), and its a fairly normal system.

One thing that seems to help is having lots of RAM - You don't even need to do the tmpfs trick then because all the stuff you'd stick in tmpfs gets cached in your gargantuan memory space anyway, and that speeds up things immensely!

Out of the 3GB in this system (Any higher is only worth it on 64-bit systems IMHO; 4GB on 32-bit makes the system use crappy EMS-style memory paging), 2.5GB is currently being used solely for disk cache

I was pretty lucky because I had a couple of friends who moved onto Core2 and AM2 platform systems, which only use DDR2, and I got a buttload of overclocker-grade DDR as a hand-me-down.

(It was espescially funny at the time, since the first DDR2-533 modules were actually slower than DDR-400

)

neuron · Post by **neuron** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:09 am

You are without a shred of doubt better off on gentoo with quad core than a dual core. A quad for the same price as a dual core isn't that much slower on single core performance, and quite a lot of packages maxes out 4 cores on my system without problems.

Also, I've used parallel portage for ages ( http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=147516 ), and this feature will soon be in trunk. This decreases install times on a quad core system a LOT. All of those configures/broken build setups that only compile with -j1 will be running in parallel. Parallel portage works INCREDIBLY well

deej · Post by **deej** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 1:43 pm

Thanks Cyker+ Neuron,,, the deeper one delves, the more complications arise

Dual Core vs, Quad Core vs, Dual Processor ?
32 bit vs, 64 bit ?
DDR2 vs. DDR3 ?
SATA 7,200 vs. SATA 10,000 ?
To RAID or not to RAID ( RAID 0 or 10, faster read/writes ) ?

...it goes on

Has anyone who is running a RAID setup noticed much difference in compilation times ?
Theoretically, it's almost twice as fast at read/write... what about in real life ?

What if the Gentoo'ers ( Gentiles ?

) could design the ideal system for using
with Gentoo... ? And they could put a sticker on the box proudly declaring:

"Designed for Gentoo Linux "

What would the specs be ?

This one could run and run

Deej

neuron · Post by **neuron** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:26 pm

deej wrote:Thanks Cyker+ Neuron,,, the deeper one delves, the more complications arise

Dual Core vs, Quad Core vs, Dual Processor ?

Quad, without a doubt. Even if you pick one clocked lower.

deej wrote:32 bit vs, 64 bit ?

64bit has considerably better compile performance (although you'll find 7 million threads of people benchmarking with glibc, which on 64bit multilib is compiled twice).

deej wrote:DDR2 vs. DDR3 ?

Wont make much difference.

deej wrote:SATA 7,200 vs. SATA 10,000 ?

Fast = good, but raid > single drive speed.

deej wrote:To RAID or not to RAID ( RAID 0 or 10, faster read/writes ) ?

Get enough memory to do the compiles in ram (tmpfs) and you wont see much difference here.

deej wrote:...it goes on

Has anyone who is running a RAID setup noticed much difference in compilation times ?
Theoretically, it's almost twice as fast at read/write... what about in real life ?

What if the Gentoo'ers ( Gentiles ? ) could design the ideal system for using
with Gentoo... ? And they could put a sticker on the box proudly declaring:

"Designed for Gentoo Linux "

What would the specs be ?

This one could run and run

Deej

I have 2 quad core setups here atm, 1 dual core and 2 single core. I've worked on a lot of different systems on a lot of different servers, so I got some experience with this particular "problem"

speeddemon · Post by **speeddemon** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:38 pm

deej wrote:...
To RAID or not to RAID ( RAID 0 or 10, faster read/writes ) ?

...it goes on

Has anyone who is running a RAID setup noticed much difference in compilation times ?
Theoretically, it's almost twice as fast at read/write... what about in real life ?...

Im running RAID 0 with 2 western digital 80 GB drives, with a dual core AMD. When emerging I rarely notice the hard drives maxing out. They will sometimes, generally around 100 mb/s. I did notice when I dropped the stripe size to 4kb instead of 16 it sped portage up. Its not as big of a difference as you would like to think. I mainly notice the RAID speed when playing with DVD images (shrinking, decrypting, moving) stuff like that.

Its nice to have, though next time Im going to build a RAID 5 array. Personally I think the 10,01 arrays waste too much space (4 drives give you the capacity of 2). My advice, get 4 drives and just play around with RAID until you find what you like.

OmSai · Post by **OmSai** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 3:41 pm

deej wrote:Dual Core vs, Quad Core vs, Dual Processor ?
32 bit vs, 64 bit ?
DDR2 vs. DDR3 ?
SATA 7,200 vs. SATA 10,000 ?
To RAID or not to RAID ( RAID 0 or 10, faster read/writes ) ?

...it goes on

Post your budget and we'll post the specs

deej wrote:http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34065/135/

Fusion-io drive = Forbidden donut! :homer drool:

deej · Post by **deej** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 9:22 pm

Post your budget and we'll post the specs

I've just been playing with an Alienware setup:

Code: Select all

http://www.alienware.com/product_pages/desktop_all_default.aspx

...and have so far spent ( in theory ! ) £6500

( That's @ 9 310 euro-splodgemas for those in La-La-Land

)
(...and $13 412 for our American cousins )

I shall use this as a 'benchmark' and remove the extravagant bits - that'll be about
£6000 worth of removals

Deej

OmSai · Post by **OmSai** » Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:38 pm

deej wrote:I've just been playing with an Alienware setup

Alienware is Microsoft territory.
No go if you're building a Gentoo box.

Plus they're a rip off.
You're paying for mainly for the brand and Dell support.

I would give them credit for producing a decent gaming laptop.
Also they make 4 graphics cards work together in one box, but that's with their in-house MS drivers.

Tyir · Post by **Tyir** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 2:34 am

Hey deej,

I like techreport.com a lot for product reviews, and they have build guides for a variety of budgets.

for 1000 (USD) http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13218/4
for 1500 (USD) http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/13218/6

Personally, I would go for a modified 1500-build, but drop the sound card and go for the very new 8800gt instead of 8800gtx (cheaper and about the same quality). Just need to make sure the mobo you pick supports linux for the onboard audio and network, but I think most do.

deej · Post by **deej** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 10:48 am

om wrote:
deej wrote:I've just been playing with an Alienware setup

Alienware is Microsoft territory.
No go if you're building a Gentoo box.

Plus they're a rip off.
You're paying for mainly for the brand and Dell support.

I would give them credit for producing a decent gaming laptop.
Also they make 4 graphics cards work together in one box, but that's with their in-house MS drivers.

Thanks for that om, they did seem a little expensive !!!

I like techreport.com a lot for product reviews, and they have build guides for a variety of budgets.

Cheers, Tyir, I'll have a look at the links you posted.

The subject of todays study is compatability

I don't want to end up with, for instance, a motherboard which cannot compliment perfectly ( or as near as dammit ) the processor ( whichever that may be ) and memory. I want to be the only bottleneck in this system

As hardware has come on leaps-and-bounds in the past five years ( since I last bought a system ) and the language seems to have become more obtuse, I shall have fun with this one

Thanks for everyones help in this, keep the tips coming, if you have any...

Deej

deej · Post by **deej** » Thu Nov 01, 2007 12:46 pm

om wrote:
deej wrote:I've just been playing with an Alienware setup

Alienware is Microsoft territory.
No go if you're building a Gentoo box.

Plus they're a rip off.
You're paying for mainly for the brand and Dell support.

I would give them credit for producing a decent gaming laptop.
Also they make 4 graphics cards work together in one box, but that's with their in-house MS drivers.

Your comment about 'Dell support' threw me for a while - until I just discovered that Dell now own Alienware !
I discovered a thread similar to mine on something called 'avforum.com'. Seven pages long over a period of six months ! By the time a conclusion was reached, all new hardware had been released

Such is life...

Deej

Which computer ?

Which computer ?

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