Re: [MLUG] Urgh, I hate dell/intel (trying to install gentoo linux)

[Phillip Kelchen <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Okay, I might be able to help. I recently installed Gentoo 2006.0 (AMD64) on 
my dual-core Athlon 64 X2 machine as I wanted to compile in support for 
Xinerama because I was given a 19" LCD for safekeeping for a year and I 
wanted to dual-head it with my monitor :D ) 

Here's what I have found:
1. The Optiplex GX620s use the original 90nm Smithfield-core Pentium Ds. The 
Pentium D 8xx chips are merely two Prescott 1MB L2 dies stuck together in one 
processor package. They run *extremely* hot, especially the 840 and 840EE 
versions. 

2. The smaller form factors of the Optiplex GX620s do not have adequate 
ventilation to keep a Pentium D cool when it is running under any load for 
any amount of time. When you have one on idling for more than about 30 
minutes, the fan will kick on and be very, very loud. I have worked with an 
Optiplex GX620 small-form-factor machine with a Pentium D 820 and this fan 
behavior is very annoying. However, since the machine was not mine and it had 
32-bit WIndows on it, I didn't get to monitor processor temps or anything. 

3. When the Pentium Ds get hot, they throttle and/or shut off one of the cores 
until the temps reach an acceptable level.  

4. There is a frequency and voltage scaling mechanism on the PD 830, 840, and 
840EE similar to "SpeedStep" on Pentium M and "Cool and Quiet" on AMD's K8 
series, except the minimum frequency is 2.80 GHz instead of 600-800MHz 
(Pentium M) and 1GHz (Athlon 64s.) This is called EIST and has NOT been 
working right on Pentium D chips, Intel actually removed it from the newer 
65nm Pentium D 900 chips because of that reason. If you boot Gentoo with the 
acpi=on, it loads the cpufreqd module and will attempt to scale the frequency 
on your chip. That could cause the trouble, but it won't if you have a 
Pentium D 820 as it doesn't support frequency scaling.

5. The power supply units on the GX620 line are rated from 220 in the 
ultra-small-form-factor to 305 watts in the tower format. A Pentium D 820 and 
830 pull about 110W at 75% load and the 840 and 840EE pull 135 watts at 75% 
load, even more at 100% load. If you have a graphics card, a CD-ROM, and 
other peripherals, you could be drawing too much power and causing the 
computer to crash and act funny.

My recommendation is to take the top of the case off of the computer and point 
a floor fan on it. If it runs better, then heat was your problem. If the 
temps are okay, then try to hook up a bigger power supply to the computer. 
Gateway sells desktops with Pentium D chips in them and they run *600W* power 
supplies. I would bet that you compiled the kernel and everything correctly, 
didn't leave out any modules, so that shouldn't a problem. About the only 
other thing I can think of is to run Memtest86+ for a a couple of hours and 
see if the RAM is bad- that would give off random errors. 

Also, you can monitor the temperatures and CPU frequency to see if it is 
getting too hot and throttling. I suppose a little thing like this would do 
the trick:

cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/temperature >> temp.log
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "cpu MHZ" >> freq.log


Gentoo 2006.0 AMD64 version is running better than anything I've ever used 
before on this somewhat similar setup of mine, so it's not like Ubuntu 5.10 
where the included 64-bit SMP kernel would just randomly lock up on people, 
but if they compiled it themselves with the same kernel sources, it would 
work like a champ. I wish you luck with your problem.

Phillip

On Friday 26 May 2006 13:45, McIntosh Jason wrote:
> We just got in some new Optiplex GX620 machines with dual core
> processors.  Ya gotta love how crappy these machines are.  For a VERY
> overpriced, price, you get a ton of crap (literally).  On to the
> problems now that I've stated that:
>
> I've been fighting with one of these machines for quite a while now.
> Initially, things went really well.  It seemed to be decently fast
> (although I still think the Opteron's/Athlon 64's are faster).
> However, after using this thing for a few days, I discovered some ...
> problems.  Now, some of these problems may be related to trying to
> use the 64 bit version of Linux, but it's very odd that it only crops
> up after the machine has been running for a day and a half.  And,
> that if I let the machine sit for a bit of time, whereupon I can run
> it for about 5 minutes, before I get problems again.  I'm guessing
> this is heat related, but it's DANGED annoying.  I've gotten a lot of
> kernel panics, or just complete hangs at various points.  I'm trying
> the x86 version now.  My first attempt to boot I received tons of
> errors, and now, well...  it booted, but then it felt really really
> slow... URGHHHH.
>
> Ok, enough of that rant.  Anyone ever seen a similar issue with these
> machines?  I'm about to put my fist through it right now... ERGH.
> Jason
>
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