Intel Speed step...safe to use in Linux?
- Thread starter Daniel~
- Start date
To boot anything other than RAID 1 requires a bootable RAID controller. As motherboard controllers are almost without exception 'soft' RAID, they have no support for booting.
Now, if you don't intend to BOOT from a RAID 0, then pretty much distro I'm aware of supports RAID 0, and has for years.
As for SpeedStep, that's really a matter of your usage pattern. SpeedStep is intended to scale back your voltage and clock speed to maximize power savings, based on the load you are putting on the CPU. As you increase the the loading, the clock speed will increase (and the core voltage as well, in accordance with the speed).
If you e.g. typically have folding running while your machine is on, SpeedStep isn't going to do anything for you, because your CPU will be fully loaded all the time anyway.
Note that this all assumes you AREN'T overclocking or underclocking to start with. I've always found that changing your settings from default and then enabling something like SpeedStep or its AMD equivalent is a recipe for disaster.
Now, if you don't intend to BOOT from a RAID 0, then pretty much distro I'm aware of supports RAID 0, and has for years.
As for SpeedStep, that's really a matter of your usage pattern. SpeedStep is intended to scale back your voltage and clock speed to maximize power savings, based on the load you are putting on the CPU. As you increase the the loading, the clock speed will increase (and the core voltage as well, in accordance with the speed).
If you e.g. typically have folding running while your machine is on, SpeedStep isn't going to do anything for you, because your CPU will be fully loaded all the time anyway.
Note that this all assumes you AREN'T overclocking or underclocking to start with. I've always found that changing your settings from default and then enabling something like SpeedStep or its AMD equivalent is a recipe for disaster.
Thank Gizmo...stay tuned for further questions of Semi-import! ":O}
I may be confused as to my RAID numbers, I'm looking for fast RAID and yes I'd need to boot to it as it would be my main drive. I use to use a raid card back in my "Demented Destro" i.e. Windows days...
I may be confused as to my RAID numbers, I'm looking for fast RAID and yes I'd need to boot to it as it would be my main drive. I use to use a raid card back in my "Demented Destro" i.e. Windows days...
I've investigated this, and my conclusion was that there is very little, if any, palpable performance gain using SSDs in RAID0. The numbers may be ever so slightly better in some categories and scenarios, but as far as user experience that you can *feel*, it's basically nil. Using only one is as fast as I need it, and it's much easier to set up.
And if you're using SSDs, RAID0 on your HDs isn't nearly the wonder it used to be, in general. So if your choice is to boot 2 fast HDs in RAID0, or boot 1 SSD, it's the SSD, hands down.
That being said, if you are using an SSD for your OS, and you have two matching HDs, you could put your most frequently accessed data on them and make them RAID0; for instance, I have my Win7 install on SSD, and all of the game installations on 2 Raptor HDs in RAID0. Game loading is quite fast this way.
PS. Speedstep is evil for overclockers. I didn't know much about it until I bought my first board that had it - and spent days and days trying to figure out why I couldn't overclock properly. Of course, when I turned it off, everything worked as I thought it would.
It's always off on every box I own, for the reasons Gizmo said - it really isn't designed to work in conjunction with changed overclocking settings very well.
And if you're using SSDs, RAID0 on your HDs isn't nearly the wonder it used to be, in general. So if your choice is to boot 2 fast HDs in RAID0, or boot 1 SSD, it's the SSD, hands down.
That being said, if you are using an SSD for your OS, and you have two matching HDs, you could put your most frequently accessed data on them and make them RAID0; for instance, I have my Win7 install on SSD, and all of the game installations on 2 Raptor HDs in RAID0. Game loading is quite fast this way.
PS. Speedstep is evil for overclockers. I didn't know much about it until I bought my first board that had it - and spent days and days trying to figure out why I couldn't overclock properly. Of course, when I turned it off, everything worked as I thought it would.
It's always off on every box I own, for the reasons Gizmo said - it really isn't designed to work in conjunction with changed overclocking settings very well.