Performance Issues with AMD64 3000+, 1.5GB RAM, FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE

[Mark Kane]

Ariff Abdullah wrote:
> These are my suggestions:
> 1) enable 'options PREEMPTION'. This is a MUST.
> 2) use SCHED_ULE instead of SCHED_4BSD. ULE is pretty stable on me,
>    but I can't guarantee (especially combining with PREEMPTION).
>    It doesn't hurt to give it a try.
> 3) Apply these patches:
> 
> http://staff.mybsd.org.my/skywizard/FreeBSD/sound/jroberson_flushbuf_RELENG_5.diff
> http://staff.mybsd.org.my/skywizard/FreeBSD/sound/snd_RELENG_5_20050825_035.diff

Well I added PREEMPTION to the kernel yesterday as well as the first 
patch by Jeff Robertson. Immediately upon kernelinstall and reboot I 
tried untarring Firefox and Thunderbird, as well as tarring them both 
back up. Not a single skip, stutter, or freezing of the mouse/display!

I did more testing last night like listening to audio with downloads 
open and encoding video, and I didn't hear one skip at all. The only 
time I heard a little static was when I was burning a DVD and listening 
to audio at the same time, but I can understand that.

Thanks to everyone who replied, this seems to be fixed for now. :)

-Mark