# Why is one computer substantially faster?

## evoweiss

Hi all,

Just a quick query... I have two machines that are roughly identical in nature, though one has a slightly better P4 chip and 1 gig vs. 512 megs of RAM. The other big difference is that the HDDs in the box with the better chip and more RAM are scsi drives (/dev/sdx) and on a RAID system. I noticed that the better system is substantially faster in many respects, including kde. While I am sure all of the factors I've outlined contribute to this, which is likely the most responsible for the difference? My guess is that it's the HDDs as an emerge --sync completes much faster.

If it is the HDDs, what sort of upgrade might make for a useful improvement on the other system?

Best,

Alex

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## Keruskerfuerst

1. Amount of RAM

2. Raid system is usually faster. SCSI HDDs do rotate with 10000 rpm or faster, PATA or SATA drives with 7200 rpm.

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## dsd

IDE DMA enabled on the slower box? see the IDE section of  http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kernel-config.xml#doc_chap3

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## nevynxxx

I would say KDE is due to the Memory, the emerge --sync is due to the disk array.

What type of RAID is it on the disks? Have you tried lauching an applet to see what your memory consumption is on KDE, on the slower machine? 

If one machine is swapping and the other isn't  there will be a vast difference.

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