*BSD News Article 38281


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: BSD sluggish compared to Linux?
Message-ID: <1994Nov21.141514@hobbit>
From: copley1@marshall.edu (Ronald Copley)
Date: 21 Nov 94 14:15:14 EDT
References: <3am248$7kv@itu1.sun.ac.za> <3am2s0$7nl@pdq.coe.montana.edu> <3amia8$iiv@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Marshall University
Nntp-Posting-Host: frodo.marshall.edu
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> 	But, to confuse matters, I installed NetBSD 1.0 on a machine that was
> 	using the same MB and processor as the Linux box [486DX2/50] but with
> 	only 500 Meg of disk and 8 Meg or RAM.  BSD seemed to crawl on this 
> 	box, even compared to my 486SX/25.  I blew away the BSD installation,
> 	re-installed DOS and Windows, and noticed that the machine was STILL
> 	crawling. The problem:  no L2 cache on that machine as opposed to 
> 	64K L2 cache on the 486SX... And it made a BIG difference.
> 

It can be utterly amazing as to what effect even the smallest amount of L2
cache can have. I specified 128KB L2 when I bought my 486DX-50 many years ago
and, although it was expensive (at the time), it has definately paid for
itself.



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