Can anyone tell me where I can find (or just tell me) the best 'make menuconfig' options for a Core 2 Duo 6600 processor.
I can work out most of what I want but there are some grey areas. These are the settings I have at the moment:-
[*] Symmetric multi-processing support Subarchitecture Type (PC-compatible) ---> Processor family (Pentium-4/Celeron(P4-based)/Pentium-4 M/Xeon) [*] Generic 86 support [*] HPET Timer Support (2) Maximum number of CPUs (2-255) [*] SMT (Hyperthreading) scheduler support [*] Multi-core scheduler support Preemption Model (No Forced Preemption (Server)) ---> [*] Preempt The Big Kernel Lock ... (the rest seem pretty straightforward)
My main question is whether I have the processor type set correctly? Should it be Opteron/Athlon64/Hammer/K8 rather than what I have selected as the Core 2 Duo, although it's an Intel processor, has some of the AMD-64 optimisations I believe. Or maybe I should select soemthing else completely.
A supplementary question is whether to set the "Maximum number of CPUs" to 4 rather than 2 since Hyperthreading is enabled.
I will eventually come to the end of all these questions relating to my new system! :-) It's very nearly there now, I have Slackware 11 up and running well on it and vmware installed with a Windows XP guest. Once I get these final bits of tuning done I'll disappear back into the woodwork.
On Thu, 2006-10-26 at 10:31 +0100, cl@isbd.net wrote:
My main question is whether I have the processor type set correctly? Should it be Opteron/Athlon64/Hammer/K8 rather than what I have selected as the Core 2 Duo, although it's an Intel processor, has some of the AMD-64 optimisations I believe. Or maybe I should select soemthing else completely.
A supplementary question is whether to set the "Maximum number of CPUs" to 4 rather than 2 since Hyperthreading is enabled.
AFAIK core2 duo chips don't have hyperthreading cores (you only see two cpu's right ?) or do you have the Extreme Edition (that I think may have HT enabled)
If that is the case then drop the SMT scheduler and personally for a desktop machine I would consider changing the preemption model.
You don't want the AMD/Opteron etc extensions...but if there is a Processor family that has the EMT64 extensions by default then that might be worth going for, EMT64 aside core2 is more like a Pentium mobile chip than anything else.
On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 10:34:38PM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Thu, 2006-10-26 at 10:31 +0100, cl@isbd.net wrote:
My main question is whether I have the processor type set correctly? Should it be Opteron/Athlon64/Hammer/K8 rather than what I have selected as the Core 2 Duo, although it's an Intel processor, has some of the AMD-64 optimisations I believe. Or maybe I should select soemthing else completely.
A supplementary question is whether to set the "Maximum number of CPUs" to 4 rather than 2 since Hyperthreading is enabled.
AFAIK core2 duo chips don't have hyperthreading cores (you only see two cpu's right ?) or do you have the Extreme Edition (that I think may have HT enabled)
Yes, I was misled by someone else who said the Core 2 Duo chips had hyperthreading. I did some Google'ing and none of the current Core 2 Duo chips have it (not even the Extreme Edition ones).
If that is the case then drop the SMT scheduler and personally for a desktop machine I would consider changing the preemption model.
Yes, it's a bit of a toss-up which to choose as this machine is both a desktop machine and a server (Samba, mail, etc.), I'm also running vmware on it so I'm not sure whether that pushes it towards being a server.
Looking at the help in menuconfig I think I'll stay with things as they are, the machine is so fast anyway I don't think I'm going to be worried by 'lack of smoothness' in desktop response.
You don't want the AMD/Opteron etc extensions...but if there is a Processor family that has the EMT64 extensions by default then that might be worth going for, EMT64 aside core2 is more like a Pentium mobile chip than anything else.
Hmmm, a bit of Google'ing on this suggests that I probably should select AMD64 but it's rather unclear.
If I wanted a 64-bit kernel then I definitely should select AMD64 as that's what EMT64 is basically. However I'm not building a 64-bit kernel (I've got 'only' 2Gb of memory at present and while I might increase to 4Gb I doubt I'll go any further) so it could well be that one of the 'Pentium' options is better.
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cl＠isbd.net -
Wayne Stallwood