Best Motherboard for a Large Memory System? 457
kimanaw writes "Due to a particular infrastructure need, and increasing OS support for 64 bitness, I'm looking into building a large memory server box (at least 16 gigs, possibly up to 64 gigs, probably config'ed into a big ramdisk). I only need a single CPU, and just minimal disk; most prebuilt systems w/ large memory seem to focus on more CPus and big RAID, all of which (over)inflate the pricetag. I've searched several websites (including Tom's Hardware), and I've googled, but can't seem to locate any commercially available AMD MBs supporting more than 4 sticks of RAM, or 4 gigs. Have any Slashdotters built a big-RAM server? Any pointers, hints, and tips much appreciated."
Dunno if 8'll work for you (Score:5, Informative)
As far as motherboards go (Score:5, Informative)
I think you can get 4GB stiks now, but they are very expensive still.
Re:As far as motherboards go (Score:5, Informative)
This is the only way to get an affordable high ram board.
Sounds like for the poster's needs, he'd want to buy a dual and fill it with 2 gig memory sticks. After he's tinkered with 16 gigs of memory for a bit, he can decide if he needs more. The 2 gig dimms can be pulled over to his quad (or 8 way board) if he needs it.
Re:As far as motherboards go (Score:3, Informative)
Not true. At my office, we routinely configure HP DL585 servers (4way Opteron) with 64GB of memory.
You need 2GB DIMMs to get 64GB, plus the right motherboard (most only have 4 DIMMs per CPU). But you definately can put 16GB on a single Opteron.
Re:As far as motherboards go (Score:3, Informative)
A dual CPU w/32 gigs of ram... http://www.costcentral.com/proddetail/HP_ProLiant _ DL585/380125001/F85632/froogle/ [costcentral.com]
How do I justify that one to the wife? "But think of all the money we'd save not having to buy a hard drive!"
Seriously, a few years ago at a bio-tech, building a ~huge~ database, we'd have done anything for something like this!
Re:As far as motherboards go (Score:5, Informative)
You need to append to the end of the above: "motherboard but only buy one CPU".
Let's face it, one CPU with memory in the range required is a teeny tiny niche market. Nearly everyone else wanting that much RAM is going to want more processors as well. There are plenty of decent 2-CPU motherboards that can handle 32GB; it's not like you need to buy a Superdome or somesuch, so the original poster's complaint about multiple CPUs adding a lot to the price isn't very legitimate, IMO. For example, here's a URL for some dual CPU boards that take up to 32GB and start at a lousy $243 on pricewatch:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/
Ain't gonna work with one CPU (Score:3, Informative)
This means that on a dual mobo, half the RAM slots are wired directly to the second CPU socket, and with no second CPU installed, that half of the RAM is simply inaccessable to the first CPU. You need that extra CPU - or a single-CPU mobo with a lot of RAM slots.
Re:As far as motherboards go (Score:3, Insightful)
If you replace every GB with MB, it'd be soooo 1992 again. Well, except for the opteron references.... but you know what I mean, dammit.
I have. (Score:2, Funny)
HTH.
Demand? (Score:2, Offtopic)
As for "expensive addons/etc". You can buy cheaper motherboards and just add on IDE if that suits your fancy. Promise [iirc] controllers give decent performance and aren't that expensive [~$60 CAD]
Tom
Re:tom, you're a faggot (Score:5, Funny)
*pets troll on head*.
Tom
Re:tom, you're a faggot (Score:3)
Tom
If you want eight sticks (Score:5, Informative)
Oh shit, wrong account (Score:5, Funny)
*sigh* I think I'm getting tired of this....
*bang!*
Re:If you want eight sticks (Score:2, Informative)
maybe this will help? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:maybe this will help? (Score:4, Informative)
overkill, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:overkill, but... (Score:3, Informative)
I doubt it's really overkill. To reach the 32 GB, you must use 4 Opteron CPUs because you can't get a board/CPU combination which supports more than 8 GB per CPU.
Any reason why you are building it yourself? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Any reason why you are building it yourself? (Score:5, Insightful)
This goes for home-built systems as well. Often it's just cheaper to buy a system built in taiwan than to build your own out of the exact same parts. I'm all for geeking it out and building something to your own specs, but for gaming machines or just basic desktop apps a pre-built system saves a lot of headaches.
Re:Any reason why you are building it yourself? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Any reason why you are building it yourself? (Score:3, Informative)
If the poster is serious about building this box, I would recommend he ask over at Ars Technica or some other board where people have detailed knowledge of these highend motherboards.
My datapoint is that a couple years ago I looked into building a dual Xeon, and ended up findin
Re:Any reason why you are building it yourself? (Score:3, Interesting)
Start ups, where dollars matter.. What I've seen people linking to are $3,000 machines at their cheapest.. Then the IBM and other solutions are probably in the tens of thousands of dollars.. Yes, what is your time worth? If you work for a fortune 500 company, then it and the consequences are worth a few measly 10 grand. But if as I suspect the auther DOESN't need CPU
2GB DIMMs and Tyan (Score:4, Interesting)
Products (Score:4, Informative)
CLICK HERE [lycos.com]
Power Mac G5, perhaps (Score:2)
Also, what are you going to do with all of that RAM? You'll likely end up with far more data than you have the resources to process.
Re:Power Mac G5, perhaps (Score:2)
A G5 will hold at least 16G. (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple doesn't list higher then 8G, because that is what they tested. 4G sticks will most likely also work. There is really no reason why they wouldn't.
"All that RAM." "far More data than you have resources to process." *LOL* It's safe to say that you don't work with video, nor as an artist. Are you working on a 386SX.
I have over a Terabyte of HD and my system handles it just fine. My 7 to 8 minute video jobs export single video files that average about 12Gigs. If I had 16GB of RAM and AEPro supported it, even with that Much RAM I would still need to "purge it all" every so often. I also generally run most of my pro apps at the same time since I need to jump between them. When they support 64-bit memory, my 5 G of RAM will not be enough. I'm upgrading to Tiger since it allows 64-bit memory support for apps now and CS2 will take advantage of that, at least on the Mac. I'll be allocating 4 gigs of RAM into it, since some of the poster illustrations I work on have exceeded over 3.5G in RAM (And since PS could only see 2G, it had to rely on scratch disk(s) to make up the difference.). That would only leave 1G for everything else, so needless to say I'll also be upgrading my RAM when I buy Tiger to more then 8G.
What I work with is peanuts compared to what a friend of mine does. He works with satellite imagery and a small plot of land can easily exceed over a Terabyte for one image.
Anyways, 16G of RAM is nothing with current comps and I bet that in about 4 years you'll probably have at least 6Gs in your system. Go back just a few years and 1G of RAM was considered more then most peeps would ever need or use.
Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
You know there are 4GB DIMMs around nowadays. So, 4 slots = 16GB. And 2G DIMMs are all over the place and relatively cheap, so you could get 8G with 4 slots at a minimum!
I've seen a 4P Opteron system with 16 DIMMs running with 64GB of memory. So it can be done! But that much memory is EXPENSIVE (4G DIMMs are just now getting under $1/MB)!
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
The anonymous coward would be correct; you're still limited by the number of address lines hooked up (in the memory controller itself and on the traces on the motherboard); and limited as well by the memory controller's ability to refresh the memory possibly. (The
Look at Xi (Score:5, Informative)
Have fun!
tyan (Score:4, Informative)
FWIW, that's the only thing I know of.
Another option: ASUS K8N-DL 24GB Dual Opteron (Score:5, Informative)
Re:tyan (Score:4, Informative)
No, it won't. The memory controller is in the processor. If you don't populate a processor socket, you can't use the DIMM banks attached to that socket.
Re:tyan (Score:2)
In this optimum (generally) case, a CPU must be fitted in the socket to which the DRAM banks are connected - the Opteron has built-in DRAM controllers, no CPU = no controller = dead slots.
Also, probably only one or two of the CPUs are connected to the chipset so these slot(s) have to be used first to provide an IO bridge for the others - signals do not mysteriously jump across sockets when the CPUs u
Sun (Score:5, Informative)
Sun Fire V40z [sun.com]: up to 32 gb of memory
Re:Sun (Score:2)
Re:Sun (Score:2)
Re:Sun (Score:2, Informative)
Large memory systems (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Large memory systems (Score:2)
192 GB is no longer very large nowadays, and Sun indeed offers systems with larger per-node memory sizes. The price tag is hefty, of course, but so is anything which goes beyond 32 GB (maybe even 64 GB).
for $1500 you can get 32GB (Score:5, Informative)
-Chipset: AMD-8131
-Processor Support: Quad Socket 940 for AMD Opteron 800 Series Processors
-Memory Support: Up to 32GB Registered PC3200 DDR
-Expansion Slot: Two 64-bit 66/33 MHz PCI-X, two 64-bit 133/100/66/33 MHz PCI-X, One 32-bit PCI Slots
-Other Features: GigaLAN, Integrated Video, SCSI
if you have the money to fork over, pick one of these up at your local Fry's Electronics or try fry's online at http://www.outpost.com/ [outpost.com]
Re:for $1500 you can get 32GB (Score:5, Informative)
Re:for $1500 you can get 32GB (Score:2, Insightful)
Solid State Disk Drives (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably the right direction (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm curious how a device like this would get 3GB/s bandwidth - what kind of bus is it using? It's certainly way past PCI. Perhaps PCI-X, or plugging into AGP or something?
Another possibility, if cost is more of a problem, and bus speed is less of a problem, is to network a couple of motherboards together, with as much RAM as possible on each of them, and either GigE or Firewire.
Itanium? Alpha? UltraSparc? (Score:2)
This one [hp.com]
or This one [sun.com]
ok, some of them are end of life, but hey you'll never know...
ps:I hope you have some spare money lying around...
Tyan (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the rest of Tyan's Opteron server boards [tyan.com] do support 16 GB. Again they are dual processor.
Tyan's boards will run with a single processor installed, but only 4 DIMM slots (1 bank) will be active. All processors can see all the RAM installed, but because the memory controller is integrated into the CPU, the CPU must first be installed. Then it can pass access to the RAM to the other CPUs. Local RAM always being the fastest. (Linux with Opteron NUMA support tries to keep memory associated with the task running on a specific CPU local to that processor.)
Any way to break it up? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it possible for you to write software which can handle this application across several machines? 4 machines with 4 gigs of ram connected to each other via gigabit ethernet would probably cost less than 1 machine with 16 gigs.
If cheap is what you care about, you've gotta use scalable software. If you want to just buy something out of the box which can handle 16 gigs of ram, you can expect to pay more.
External enclosure (Score:2, Redundant)
PowerMac G5 (Score:2, Redundant)
Actually, if you are looking for something relatively cheap, the 2.0 and 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5 models actually support 16 GB of RAM, if you can find matched 2G PC 3200 DIMMs to fill the slots. This was the info given in the developers docs for the memory controller. And compared to other boxes that can support this much memory, they aren't that expensive. Linux support is also coming along for them, though not all quite there yet.
If you think your memory needs are going to rise above 16 GB, you'll need t
The law of supply and demand. (Score:2)
Personally, I'd say just suck up the extra few hundreds of dollars (from what
Tyan anyone! (Score:2, Interesting)
Tyan currently lists 6 2 processor opteron boards that hold 16 GB and 1 4p board that holds 32 GB - actaully got one of those the other day. Very nice!
Iwill has one 8p system that holds 64GB.
See:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/opteron
Low end Opterons are cheap (Score:2)
Re:Low end Opterons are cheap (Score:2)
Opteron 800 series CPUs are much more expensive http://www.pricewatch.com/h/mn.aspx?i=3&f=1 [pricewatch.com]
512GB ...on PPC (Score:2)
IBM eServer 326 (Score:2, Interesting)
Strangely, 16 GB memory is only available in a dual-CPU configuration. DIMMs 5-8 can only be used if another CPU is installed.
But since the extra Opteron CPU costs about the same as a 2 GB memory module, that shouldn't be much of a concern. Price is in the vicinity of $15K with 2 x Opteron 248 and 16 GB RAM.
Re:IBM eServer 326 (Score:3, Informative)
Accesses from one processor to the further away bank must go through hypertransport, but as long as the OS scheduler is NUMA-aware, jobs should tend to run on the processor which is local to the memory it has been allocated, making for some screaming memory performance relative to single memory controller solutions (most Intel SMP setups).
Just use a solid state "disk" for this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Solid State storage (Score:5, Informative)
My recommendation (Score:4, Insightful)
First, I would recommend going with a server vendor. I honestly do not mean any offense by this, but if you are looking at places like Tom's Hardware for recommendations (a website which is frequently incompetent even at reviewing l33t g4m3r d00ds hardware, let alone server-grade hardware), you are probably not qualified to build a system which would actually need 16GB of RAM (e.g. a corporate server which must be relied upon). I do not know what the system will be used for, but if it is for a many-person organization, my recommendation stands, and if it is just for you and some friends, 16GB of RAM is almost always going to be absurd overkill.
Now that that's out of the way, Tyan has several dual Opteron boards which support 8 DIMMs. Look at their Thunder line, and put just one Opteron in them, and 2GB DIMM modules.
64 gigs as a RAM disk? Why not a HyperDrive? (Score:2)
Server boards (Score:2)
I'm actually building a system right now. Dual Opteron 224. The Tyan Thunder server boards are your best bet. This is the one going in my system:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.h t ml
It has 8 DIMM slots and supports 16GB of memory.
You just aren't going to find any i386 archs to support more than that right
Consider Intel (Score:5, Informative)
Instead, consider an IBM x366 or an HP DL580; either one can be configured with 32GB RAM and 1 processor for under $30K.
Some possible solutions (Score:5, Informative)
There are a few possible solutions you might want to look at for a big-RAM server. Now, if you really want 64GB and AMD Opteron processors than you really only have one choice, the HP Proliant DL585 [hp.com]. That's the only Opteron solution that I know of which supports 64GB of memory.
If you can get by with a bit less memory then you have some other solutions. Tyan carries quite a number of boards [tyan.com] with varying capabilities. The trouble here is that the Opteron processors are limited to 8GB of memory per processor, so to get 16GB you're going to be looking at a dual-processor board (quad processor for 32GB). Since the memory controller is right on the CPU with the Opteron you will actually need a second processor in the socket to use this memory.
For this reason, you might actually want to consider one of Intel's new 64-bit Xeon chips [intel.com]. I know that Supermicro offers some boards that can handle up to 32GB with only a single Xeon processor. Something like the X6DHE-XB [supermicro.com] seems like it might fit you're bill reasonable well. Fairly inexpensive to get you up to 16GB of memory, though going to 32GB is quite expensive. Crucial [crucial.com] has a list of compatible memory for this board, including some 4GB modules.
Of course, if you're not limited to x86 systems then there are other solutions that would work. You could get something like an IBM Power system or Sun UltraSparc system with pretty much any amount of memory you need (or can afford).
Thanks, and some answers for the curious (Score:5, Informative)
As to the purpose of the box, I can't say too much, except its intended as a sortof main-memory database cache solution (ala TimesTen [timesten.com] ) to serve a potentially very large user base, with a lot of cached images associated with the cached data.
I also considered a piecemeal commodity approach, e.g., filling racks with cheap 4 gig RAM 1U's running Linux, but then I'd have to come up with s/w that can coordinate those systems (basically, a head-end to hash the requests to the right 1U). memcached looks intriguing, but I'm still concerned about interconnect latencies.
Based on my cocktail napkin estimates, the h/w cost of a big RAM system (if it can be got) would probably be about 2x the cost of the piecemeal system, but hopefully signifcantly reduce interconnect latency, and use simpler s/w (assuming I can get Linux to config a ramdisk that big).
Since latency is the prime concern, solidstate disks using the usual HD interconnects just didn't seem an acceptable solution, esp since the cost reduction doesn't seem that significant.
As for failure recovery, my thoughts were just a couple fast HDs that would ping-pong taking snapshots of the ramdisk; hopefully, the ramdisk recovery would never lose more than an hour's data (the lost data wouldn't be critical, and would be recoverable from other sources...its really the delivery speed thats essential)
But I may need to go back to my napkin and do some more queueing analysis to see if there are better commodity solutions.
64G ramdisk??! (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably won't find one (Score:3, Informative)
The next problem is the electronic signaling. Getting 4 memory slots to work together at today's speeds can be tricky. That's why in the past couple of years it has become increasingly important to use memory modules that are listed as supported by your motherboard manufacturer. Wiring together more than four slots and getting the signalling/timing down right is much more difficult. This isn't as big of an issue on SMP Opteron systems because each CPU has it's own memory interface and dedicated memory, so 8 slots on a 2-way equals 4 slots per CPU, still with easily achieveable goals.
That leaves you with having to fit larger memory modules into your four memory slots. The largest that I have seen generally available are the 2GB modules. I wouldn't be suprised if someone were selling 4GB modules, but they will be very hard to come by and very expensive. Right now you can buy 1GB ECC modules for around $280-$300 each. The 2GB ECC modules are about $800 each. I can't imagine what 4GB modules would cost, but I know that I wouldn't want to pay for them.
Since you were talking about using it as a RAMdisk a better option might be a solid state hard disk.
Xserve (Score:5, Informative)
You can configure an Apple Xserve this way, with either one or two CPUs. Not an AMD board, but it is 64bit, and you can still put Linux [yellowdoglinux.com] on it if you like.
$14,599--One CPU, 80GB HD, CD-RW, no video support, but 16GB of RAM and an unlimited user Server OS. You can do better if you purchase through the Education or Government channels, and you can do better if you purchase the 2GB DIMMs elsewhere.
Although I actually couldn't find 2GB DIMMs at the popular aftermarket places, but they are now available from Apple direct (just be sure to get the Xserve with at least one 2GB DIMM, to be sure it has support for 2GB DIMMs on the MLB).
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than saying, "I need this to solve my problem, and I'm not saying what my problem is!" it is better to say, "Here is my problem, I am thinking of doing this. How can I do that, or are there better solutions that I haven't thought of?" He'll get better answers that way.
If he doesn't know where to purchase a large memory system then it is possible that he doesn't really know if that is what he wants.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:2)
Why?
Because if the system crashes, the db is lost.
Ergo, the system will either dribble output to magnetic media, or the db will be run off disk directly. Since people who design databases for a living understand caching issues, they'll probably do a much better job at managing 4+GB of main memory than someone asking for motherboard advice on Slashdot.
Sure, big memory will help this a lot, but the fact that t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, let's say that you've got 15 gbytes of raw data on db2/oracle/informix, as well as 4-8 gbytes of memory.
First step is storage: don't use raid-5 (requires extra writes), instead you'll want something like raid-10. Then ideally get 28-56 or so drives, and you can spread data, indexes, logs, and tempspace across all drives. Obviously 15k rpm ultra320 drives with a caching controller would be best (if you can't afford fibre).
Next make sure that your memory is tuned right - multiple gbytes set aside for buffering, sorting, asynchronous agents, etc. With these databases it's easy to ensure that all of your indexes are always in memory, that all writes to disk are asynchronous, and that most sorts are in-memory. The buffering should ensure that 98% or so of your disk access actually hits the bufer instead of the disk.
Given the above scenario a database running on a ramdisk could be faster - what? 0-5%? And in return for that possible speed increase it'll cost more and lack the reliability of the disk-based database. Probably not a good deal.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:4, Informative)
Profile your application before making such committments. You might be surprised at what you find.
What's interesting here is how securely "in the box" people are thinking. They are on a do-or-freaking-die mission to press a consumer architecture into service as a mid-range engineering system.
My shop uses Sun hardware for midsize applications like this, but we also run some Alpha systems (Both older DEC and newer HP).
We have a couple of Sun E20K but I don't know how they are configured exactly (I don't get to touch stuff that belongs to financial depts, nor would I want to
But somebody who is thinking in terms of "What motherboard should I buy?" probably isn't prepared for the sticker prices of SunFire servers, EMC storage, etc.
When a skunkworks shop needs some large scale system on a budget approaching zero dollars, some creativity is needed. So we get into storage solutions like consumer RAID, and we hear questions like the OP, "what's the largest memory configuration on a commodity 64-bit microcomputer?"
Dual Xeon boards that take 32GB RAM are common enough, but I think that's 16GB per processor and I have no idea how it's addressed or whether any given application knows how to address it.
32GB in premimum RAM will run over $20 grand. Nothing compared to the half-million for an E20K, of course.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:2)
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:3, Insightful)
> access than a properly configured RAID can give it.
was wondering this too, how about this unlikely scenario:
1. very low concurrency application - in which you never or almost never have more than one connection at a time to a database.
2. you need the fastest possible response to the query.
3. you've got 15 gbytes of data along with 500 mbytes of indexes
4. your queries don't fit into any pat
Applications: Scientific uses (Score:4, Informative)
All major players in the CPU industry use this technology, so I am sure AMD has some systems like that in their design labs...
Model checking is also used in some software projects where the complexity of the system is "manageable", such as for device drivers or embedded systems.
Other scientific uses needing a lot of RAM are simulations. The level of detail simulations can manage is mostly limited by the amount of RAM (and of course also CPU speed). Again, the sky is the limit for how much RAM one could use if it was available... so you see it is not problem to fill 32 GB of RAM in a couple of seconds with such simulations.
Re:big ram server.. (Score:5, Funny)
You ough to know that 500megs of ram is enough for everyone.
Re:big ram server.. (Score:5, Informative)
-Julius
Re:big ram server.. (Score:5, Informative)
Can the Virtual Memory be turned off on a really large machine?
Strictly speaking Virtual Memory is always in operation and cannot be "turned off." What is meant by such wording is "set the system to use no page file space at all."
Doing this would waste a lot of the RAM. The reason is that when programs ask for an allocation of Virtual memory space, they may ask for a great deal more than they ever actually bring into use -- the total may easily run to hundreds of megabytes. These addresses have to be assigned to somewhere by the system. If there is a page file available, the system can assign them to it -- if there is not, they have to be assigned to RAM, locking it out from any actual use.
--
Why is there so little Free RAM?
Windows will always try to find some use for all of RAM -- even a trivial one. If nothing else it will retain code of programs in RAM after they exit, in case they are needed again. Anything left over will be used to cache further files -- just in case they are needed. But these uses will be dropped instantly should some other use come along. Thus there should rarely be any significant amount of RAM 'free'. That term is a misnomer -- it ought to be 'RAM for which Windows can currently find no possible use'. The adage is: 'Free RAM is wasted RAM'. Programs that purport to 'manage' or 'free up' RAM are pandering to a delusion that only such 'Free' RAM is available for fresh uses. That is not true, and these programs often result in reduced performance and may result in run-away growth of the page file.
Re:big ram server.. (Score:4, Informative)
Doing this would waste a lot of the RAM. The reason is that when programs ask for an allocation of Virtual memory space, they may ask for a great deal more than they ever actually bring into use -- the total may easily run to hundreds of megabytes. These addresses have to be assigned to somewhere by the system. If there is a page file available, the system can assign them to it -- if there is not, they have to be assigned to RAM, locking it out from any actual use.
Not true. When a program allocates a large chunk of ram, all it gets are the page table entries. Only when it actually writes to a page does the ram get used. This means that I can allocate 1.5G of ram and scribble in half of it and only be using 750M
Re:big ram server.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:big ram server.. (Score:3, Informative)
Linux and Windows have fundamental virtual machine differences. Linux swaps pages to disk, Windows keeps a page backed store. What this means is that every memory address in Winodws is backed up by some kind of virtual memory. For code and some data segments, the "page" is the executable file on disk itself, so it doesn't need to ever copy those pages to swap. (Incidentally, this will show up as "swap file in use" even though it's not in yo
Re:big ram server.. (Score:5, Insightful)
He asked about how to fix it on Windows. How about I respond to every problem with Gnome and KDE or Linux with "Maybe you should switch to a supported platform like Windows"? We'll see how often that tripe gets modded "Insightful".
Re:big ram server.. (Score:4, Informative)
That only stops Windows from paging out parts of the OS itself (like the kernel and currently-idle device drivers).
On XP, you can just set the pagefile size to zero. And yes, it does work, in the sense that it stops Windows from hitting the disk twice per second even when doing nothing at all.
On 2000, you need to assign the pagefile to a RAMdrive (and one that supports NTFS and doesn't identify itself as RAM, since Windows won't normally let you put the pagefile on a RAMdrive).
Finally, for anyone disabling paging - Also disable memory dumps and automatic reboot on bluescreens, or you will regret it.
Otherwise, it works just fine, regardless of what the naysayers and MS Knowledgebase fanboys might say. Quite a boost in performance, too.
Re:Possible Problem (Score:3, Informative)
Where did you get these facts?
The kernel has three memory models. = 1GB, = 4GB and = 64GB.
I've run Linux on a 1.5GB box before just fine [they were PC-133 sticks on sale bought three 512MB sticks...]. You just have to enable the different memory model.
Tom
Re:Possible Problem (Score:2)
Nice try, AC.
Re:I don't know of such things... (Score:3, Interesting)
-The submitter didn't explicitly state it but I'm guessing since he did mention the popularity/existence of 64 bit processors that he intends on using one.
-32bit CPUs are not limited to 4gigs of ram. Only 4 gigs directly addressable at a time, yes. But google "page address extension" to find all you'd ever want to know about it. The Linux kernel has supported 64gigs on 32bit processors since the late 2.5.x's
But, of course, I agree 64 bit is the way to go because it avoids all that addres
Re:large memory systems (Score:2)
Note that if you're using ramdisk for file system, your statement only holds if you are hitting less than cache sized chunks and the rest of the system is not using the cache for something else. When you have something like a huge sequential file or a bunch of them (streaming vi
Re:I recommend an Apple (Score:2)
Re:I recommend an Apple (Score:2)
Libtool
What does apple do? Adds their own spin to it.
Yeah.... that's totally meant to not be anti-competitive...
Tom
Re:I recommend an Apple (Score:2)
It doesn't have the same interface as what you normally see on a Linux/BSD distro. The man page has Apple branding all over it, etc...
I don't actually have a Mac but when I've had to shell into one to do a build it's always been a pain in the ass.
Not that apple's Libtool is hard to use. Just that it's purposefully different as to make it not standard.
Tom
Re:hardware ram disk (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't speak for the OP, but possibly because IDE maxes out at 1.06 Gbps (Gigabits per second) for ATA-133 and 1.20 Gbps for SATA, whereas PC3200 DDR SDRAM can push 25.60 Gbps?
(all numbers above handily supplied by http://www.forret.com/tools/bandwidth.asp [forret.com] )
Re:hardware ram disk (Score:2)
Re:hardware ram disk (Score:2)
I think it was limited to four DIMMS though but maybe they have worked that out...
Re:Limitations (Score:2)