Opensuse-10.2 Ok With 4gb Memory, Slow With 8gb

I recently upgraded my motherboard to an Intel DG33FB, with Core 2 Duo (E6850)
and reinstalled Suse-10.2 (64-bit version). There are a few problems, since the board
is new (network card not recognized, only basic framebuffer support, no acpi), but
otherwise everything I need is working. One problem is that if I install the full 8GB of memory,
the system gets really slow. It still boots, but takes ages. Is this a known problem?
Maybe an issue with some drivers (SATA controller?) or bios? Right now I have
4GB memory (2x2GB) and everything works fine.

Hopefully SuSE-10.3 will support a few things better. I read somewhere that the acpi
support would be better in the 2.6.23 kernel, at least. For now I can get by with an
extra network card and fixed resolution framebuffer.

just a wild guess, as i don't have 64bit system, but, are you using bigsmp kernel ?

andy

This is what I get from uname:

... 2.6.18.8-0.5-default #1 SMP Fri Jun 22 12:17:53 UTC 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

try installing SuSE with the big-smp kernel, might help. look for it in yast

andy

Some people are confused by the differences between the SMP and BIGSMP kernels included in SUSE Linux, and which one to use for their system. A quick look at the build configuration for both kernels shows several differences, but the most significant involves the supported amount of RAM and number of CPUs.

The SMP kernel contains the following parameters:

CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y
CONFIG_NR_CPUS=32

Thus allowing a maximum of 4G RAM and 32 processors.

The BIGSMP kernel, however, has these:

CONFIG_HIGHMEM64G=y
CONFIG_NR_CPUS=128

Enabling support for 64G memory and 128 processors.

If a system has either more than 4G RAM or more than 32 processors, the BIGSMP kernel must be used to fully utilize the system.
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df caught it first...

Thanks for the tip!

I guess there is an option for this in the installer when installing a new version
(For example OpenSuse-10.3)? Or is it not needed during the installation?

dunno about 10.3, but, the option is there during install with 10.2 & earlier versions. you can also install it after a normal install

andy

try installing SuSE with the big-smp kernel, might help. look for it in yast

andy
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I don't think, that's a good idea. The 64bit kernel should work better with this system than the 32bit big-smp. I suspect a hardware problem of the board. Maybe a bios update helps.

Also do a memory check before bootup. The memory check will also give the transfer rates.

2.6.18.8-0.5-default #1 SMP Fri Jun 22 12:17:53 UTC 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux[/b]

means 64-bit OS.

no memory limit and no Big-SMP (by default 64-bit is capable to address more than 4GB of RAM, so no mem options in the kernel)

looks as a hardware issue. Might be hardware config only or bad RAM (there is a BadRAM kernel patch)

go with broch or eberhard's comments, they know a bit more than i do on 64bit systems

andy