*BSD News Article 85338


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!nntp.crl.com!news1.crl.com!nexp.crl.com!usenet
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Seeking advice on new system purchase
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 21:21:19 -0800
Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <32BE16CF.167EB0E7@FreeBSD.org>
References: <59dhb9$p6g@shellx.best.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: time.cdrom.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (X11; I; FreeBSD 3.0-CURRENT i386)
To: Tony Porczyk <tporczyk@best.com>
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:32886

Tony Porczyk wrote:
> 1. What is the perceived speedup between regular Pentium (say, 166 which
>    I'm using now) and PPro (180 or 200)?  Is it worth the extra
>    expense?

"That depends" ;-)

For some tasks, it might not be worth the extra money (or you might have
performance bottlenecks elsewhere in your system which make the extra
CPU performance less tangible).  In other situations, or for a carefully
tuned system, the performance might be more noticible.  I like my PP/200
just fine, but then I always have to have the fastest of everything. :-)

> 2. I have read good reviews of the latest Diamond 3D 3000 (VRAM) card.
>    Since the new release of FreeBSD includes v.3.2 of XFree86, I've
>    checked the docs but didn't see a specific mention of that card.

Me neither, though you might want to ask the XFree86 folks before you
make your decision.  See http://www.xfree86.org

> 3. Within a foreseable future I would like to add a SCSI tape and
>    perhaps even a writeable CDROM (primarily for use with another OS).
>    Would Adaptec 3940 be appropriate for such a task? (to split the

I think that would be overkill. :)  A single 2940 should do fine for
what you're trying to do.

> 5. For the type of use I have described, does it make much of a
>    difference to go to UW for SCSI?

This might be something you do more for future expansion.
-- 
- Jordan Hubbard
  President, FreeBSD Project