New MB recommendations

[Net Llama!]

On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Tony Alfrey wrote:
> Net Llama! wrote:
>> On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Tony Alfrey wrote:
>>> I think it's time to get a faster box 'cause I have some linux CAD apps
>>> that want more speed.  Towers are clearly cheaper than laptops.  I have
>>> SCSI drives on my present Pentium II box.  Does it make sense to try to
>>> get a fancy new fast MB, and attempt to plug in these drives or is this
>>> silly?
>>
>> Are you sure that your CAD apps are hitting a bottleneck in the CPU/disk
>> rather than the GPU?
>
> I don't know how to determine that.  The vendor of the app says I need 2
> GHz.  I have their old version that runs fine on 400 MHz.  The new
> version is very slow.

Ah, well, you're likely screwed in that case.

>
>>
>> What makes sense is to determine where the bottleneck is,
>
> Any suggestions?

Only if the software could be reasonably expected to run ok on your 
current hardware, yet was not.

>
>> and addressing
>> it.  Granted, a PII is pretty ancient these days, so almost anything sold
>> in the past year is going to be dramatically more performant.
>>
>> Note, that is the SCSI drives are bootable, you'll need the same
>> controller, or a kernel with support for the new controller.
>>
>
> I would try to keep the same controller.
> I would try to simply swap out the MB and fire it up.  Will my older
> kernels work on a P4, for example?

Depends on how customized those old kernels are.  If its a distro kernel, 
then it should be fine, except for the initrd.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman                        netllama at linux-sxs.org
LlamaLand				http://netllama.linux-sxs.org