From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Nov 30 15:52:42 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D82C16A418 for ; Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:52:42 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: from mail-gw1.york.ac.uk (mail-gw1.york.ac.uk [144.32.128.246]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 257DE13C45B for ; Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:52:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: from mail-gw6.york.ac.uk (mail-gw6.york.ac.uk [144.32.129.26]) by mail-gw1.york.ac.uk (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id lAUFKbkj022632; Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:20:37 GMT Received: from buffy-128.york.ac.uk ([144.32.128.160] helo=buffy.york.ac.uk) by mail-gw6.york.ac.uk with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Iy7fR-0001Jj-LE; Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:20:37 +0000 Received: from buffy.york.ac.uk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by buffy.york.ac.uk (8.14.1/8.14.1) with ESMTP id lAUFKbu7021257; Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:20:37 GMT (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) Received: (from ga9@localhost) by buffy.york.ac.uk (8.14.1/8.14.1/Submit) id lAUFKaPh021256; Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:20:36 GMT (envelope-from gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk) X-Authentication-Warning: buffy.york.ac.uk: ga9 set sender to gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk using -f From: Gavin Atkinson To: Jim Pingle In-Reply-To: <475021CE.1000708@pingle.org> References: <475021CE.1000708@pingle.org> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:20:36 +0000 Message-Id: <1196436036.20314.12.camel@buffy.york.ac.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.10.1 FreeBSD GNOME Team Port X-York-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-York-MailScanner-From: gavin.atkinson@ury.york.ac.uk Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org, Pete French Subject: Re: Also seeing 2 x quad-core system slower that 2 x dual core X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 15:52:42 -0000 On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 09:44 -0500, Jim Pingle wrote: > This may be a silly question, but have you tried reducing the RAM on the > quad core machine to 4GB so the machines match in that respect as well? > > I seem to recall a thread a while back about someone who had slowdowns in a > certain situation with large amounts of RAM (>4GB). This was with the Intel 965 chipset, and was fixed with a BIOS upgrade, something to do with the way the BIOS set cache info up about memory above 4Gb. A BIOS upgrade may be worth trying. Removing memory from the slow one toleave it with 4Gb may be a useful datapoint. Note that I don't think you can just set hw.maxmem as that makes no guarantee as to *whicch* physical 4Gb will get used. Finally, I assume you are using FreeBSD amd64 and not i386 in PAE mode? Posting dmesg outputs from both systems somewhere might be useful, I can't see it in the previous posts. Gavin