home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
- Path: sparky!uunet!microsoft!wingnut!satishc
- From: satishc@microsoft.com (Satish Chittamuru)
- Subject: Re: Question about ISA/IDE disk throughput (pc newbie)
- Message-ID: <1992Dec23.222302.2871@microsoft.com>
- Date: 23 Dec 92 22:23:02 GMT
- Organization: Microsoft Corporation
- References: <MUTS.92Dec21193512@PMCS.estec.esa.nl> <1992Dec21.220009.12403@utagraph.uta.edu>
- Distribution: comp
- Keywords: speed bus IDE EISA ISA SCSI VESA
- Lines: 33
-
- In article <1992Dec21.220009.12403@utagraph.uta.edu> turbo@cse.uta.edu (Chris Turbeville) writes:
- > In article <MUTS.92Dec21193512@PMCS.estec.esa.nl> muts@estec.esa.nl (Peter Mutsaers) writes:
- > >Sorry if you see this message twice. I posted before but the article
- > >didn't seem to show up.
- > I didn't see it twice.
- > >
- > >In a magazine I read for a couple of 386sx PC's that disk access (IDE)
- > >is only at 200 kbyte/s. This seems terribly slow to me, especially
- > >for an OS like unix. Is this really true? Do 486dx's have much better
- > >IO speeds? How can UNIX live with such a low bandwidth. Are local
- > >busses much faster (how much)?
- >
- > 200kB/s sounds about right for IDE (save the newer caching controllers)
- > and it is terribly slow. 486dx's make no improvement on disk transfer
- > speed. It is your 16bit 8Mhz ISA bus which is limiting it. I don't
- > think full blown vmunix would live well in such an environment. Local
-
- Umm...Sorry to burst your bubble, but... I have a ISA bus 486/33 with
- a generic (read $20) IDE & I/O board controlling a Seagate ST3283A. I
- have achieved peak transfer rates of 1250KB/sec. The iozone benchmark
- under linux (with a Minix partition) consistently does 550KB/sec writes
- and about 640KB/sec reads. Ofcourse, I run my I/O bus at 11MHz instead
- of the standard 8MHz but 200KB/sec is too low. A caching controller
- with lots of memory will probably do much better, but you are better
- off buying more main memory with a vanilla IDE controller than a
- caching controller.
-
- > Thanks
- > -Chris
-
-
- --
- Satish K. Chittamuru satishc@microsoft.com
- =====
- Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein, either stated or implied, are
- solely my own and do not reflect Microsoft's views in any manner.
-