Hi all,

I am currently running the RedHat built 2.4.20-30.9 kernel (rpm) on my RedHat 9 system compiled for Athlon (CPU is XP 2600+), my kernel rpm which I downloaded from updates.redhat.com was:

kernel-2.4.20-30.9.athlon.rpm

Does anybody know if I can run with this architecture on a new AMD Sempron CPU? Or will I need to go back to an I386-arch. kernel?

Thanks for your input,

David.

No change is necessary. It should work.

Agreed - it'll work just fine. Good article about the Sempron at Tom's Hardware Guide, if you need more info:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040728/

Thanks guys - I've gone ahead and upgraded the 2600+ Athlon to a 2500+ Sempron ( but more RAM and a better dual-channel board) and all is well; runs fine - no hang on boot.

After about 6-24 hours of running though it kern-pannicks... I think it's the nforce2 network driver I installed from nVidia for the 2.4.20-31.9 Red Hat kernel. Aargh. Kern pannicks. Looks like I'm going to have to reinstall as Fedora Core anyway...

This is somewhat related - I am trying to put Fedora Core 3 on my new Sempron, and it's running extremely slow.. which makes me think I might have installed the wrong architecture. I installed i-686, then I installed fedora 1 i-386 over it, and everything is still way slow, which is weird considering this is a fast computer.. if it were windows it would would be rocking (i hate to say that).. should I have done something else? maybe installed Redhat 9 for AMD as the above user said? I don't know.. i'm lost and somewhat a noobie, and I must have Red Hat/Fedora Core because I need Planet CCRMA, as I plan to use this thing solely for an audio machine. Thank you thank you everyone for your advice!

VIc

there are many things that will factor into performance.
Is swap being used & is so how much?
What are you IDE transfer settings and have you tweaked them with hdparm?

A question about the processor, with your upgrade, did you sacrifice any L1 or L2 cache on the processor. That might make a performance impact.

I didn't upgrade actually (perhaps I shouldn't have posted under this topic? i just found it in a google search) I have two different computers, a Cempron 2300 and an Athlon XP 2600+. The Athlon seems alright actually although still under par, but the Cempron is the odd one. It ran very fast with Linspire, which it came with, I immediately replaced it with DeMundi, which is basically Debian with Gnome and some audio apps, which also ran very fast. I installed Fedora Core 3 (i-686) which lagged big time, and then FC 1 (i-386) which lags slightly less.. right now I'm running Knoppix off of the CD and it's about as fast as any Fedora version I've installed.. is there something weird about Red Hat that Debian-based distros don't do? Which architecture should I be installing for the Cempron, have i gotten that right?

as for your questions, I do have swap apace, somewhere around 500mb, and as far as hdparam goes, I honestly have no idea, what should I be doing with that. Thank you for your help!

Vic

It really doesn't matter how much swap space you have as much as it matters if you are using it. Using swap slows down performance. This slowness is probably nanoseconds, but it is there. Also, Fedora might be a bloated distro including tons of apps that you'll never use. If possible, you should be using i686 as it is developed for the system architecture you are running. It will take advantage of newer instruction sets that the i386 architecture will ignore. Google around for some hdparm guides. Most of them suck, but there are a few good ones. I'm at work, so there not in my favorites right now or I'd post it.

Fedora 3 is quite bloated indeed, but all the apps only fill up the hard drive, so in what way would that slow it down? It came with Linspire, which is also bloated, but ran super fast.. I've heard little thingies about stopping unnecessary services to increse speed.. I'm not sure, what is all of that? So it's possible to NOT use swap space to increase speed? (Providing I have the RAM to compensate for it?) Linux will use all available RAM before resorting to swap, no? I've only got 128mb i believe

Thanks for the arch. info, that was really bothering me cause I couldn't find out anywhere, now at least I can install the right distro I want and tweak it from there.

I'd be stoked to see an hdparam guide you recommend when you get the chance.

This is a shot in the dark, but could it have anything to do with the way Fedora makes a partition table?

hda1 - /boot (grub) files only - 102mb
hda2 - / root filesystem whatever - 37gigs
hda3 - swap - 188mb

I have no clue why linspire would be fast. I don't want anything to do with that disease, I mean distro. Your correct about stopping services, and Redhat should have some GUI tool to do that. I've never been a fedora fan simply because it is their "test bed" for moving things into a stable product. The more apps installed which cause the hard drive to fill up, the longer it takes to access information that is requested. Now, that is based on where the information is on the hard drive, but it would slow things down. Again, this is probably nano-seconds, but slowing down is slowing down.

Linux definitely won't use swap if it doesn't have to. Many of my machines don't use swap space. Now, this doesn't mean that putting a gigabyte of RAM into a machine is going to make it super fast either. There are many articles about how much RAM a computer should have based on what you do with a computer. There is always a point of diminishing returns when putting more and more RAM into a machine.

Your Window Manager plays a HUGE part in speed of a computer. They typically run like this:
KDE (which I use) = slowest
Gnome = Microsoft Windows Speed
drop-line GNOME = slightly faster than regular GNOME (dropline is developed for Slackware)
anything else = Pretty fast

Now, someone has the right to flame me because systems can be build that are Blazing fast and use KDE or Gnome. I'm not saying they are always slow. When installed on the right system with the correct resources, they can be quite fast. My KDE's are quite faster than MS windows and all my friends know it and hate me for it.