Re: [gentoo-user] core i5

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 3:38 PM, Stefan G. Weichinger <lists@×××××.at> wrote:
> Am 24.06.2010 00:13, schrieb Mark Knecht:
>
>>> I don't know if the builtin graphics will allow gaming on the same
>>> level, I should go for some benchmark results. But this is
>>> definitely not important ... just a nice to have feature maybe.
>>
>> Depending on the MB you choose - I'm using an Intel DH55HC - you
>> might not even get access to the built-in graphics chip. It requires
>> certain chipsets and then certain connection on the MB and not all
>> Core i5 MB's that accept the i5-661 have it. I'm sure you know that
>> already but maybe the info is helpful for others later.
>
> I knew part of it ;-)
>
> I preferred Intel boards for years now and wasn't disappointed.
>
> Maybe this time I chose a Lenovo machine with 3 yrs support ...?
>
> M90p they call it, I don't know ....
>
>> The DH55HC has been a pretty good MB over the last 4-5 months that
>> I've been running the machine and the graphics are OK. They were not
>> so good 5 months ago but the driver has gotten noticeably better.
>
> Windows driver, I assume?
>

No, I was speaking of the IntelGFX drivers. Sorry for any confusion.
Although I am somewhat forced to use this machine most of the time
running Windows I've tried to keep my comments mostly directed toward
running MythTV & Gentoo.

>>> So you run "make -j13" or something?
>>
>> Exactly. -j13. However there are things to learn about machine
>> configuration at this level. The disk systems start operating
>> differently when you have a lot of memory. I'm running 24GB of DRAM
>> on that machine and this effects the way the kernel looks at write
>> back to disk and what not. No problems, just new things to learn.
>
> interesting.
>
> How do you use up 24 gigs of DRAM?
> Just tell me, I would like to justify that for me as well ;-)
>

5 copies of Win7 running in vmware VMs. Each VM gets 20GB of RAID0, 2
processors and 4GB of RAM. That's 100GB, 20GB DRAM and 10 threads
total. I then have 2 i7-980X threads & 4GB DRAM for running Gentoo as
the host. Gentoo runs on RAID1 and I have an additional RAID1 which I
use to back up the RAID0 daily.


>> I've wanted to check out compiz but haven't had the time to learn.
>> One down side to running Gentoo is that you cannot do much of
>> anything like that without considerable study before hand...
>
> Sure ... compiz is part eyecandy, part useful little features. I got
> used to the features (=would somehow miss them) and the eyecandy (= "ah,
> yes, it rotates ... hmm, sure ...").
>
> :-)
>
>> For the price it's been a good purchase I think. I've run Windows XP
>> and Win 7 in vmware and the speed is pretty close to identical on
>> the apps I use. (Mostly TradeStation) I won't do live stock trading
>> in Win 7 under Gentoo yet but maybe one of these days. It's been very
>> stable but for safety most of the time when I'm trading I just run
>> Win 7 native.
>
> dualboot then. Haven't booted Windows for months here. Should maybe do
> and do some gaming instead of hacking around ...
>

Yeah, dual boot is what I'm doing with the i5-661. The i7-980X only
runs Gentoo and if I need Windows it's in the 5 VMs described above.

The 980X is expensive to run. It's got 5 hard drives in it (2 for
RAID0, 3 for RAID1) plus the processor and all that memory burns over
300W at idle.

Cheers,
Mark

> ;-)
>
> Thanks, greets, Stefan
>
>