Performance gain from 4GB to 8GB

[TwinDaddyKev]

My current motherboard is SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SPA-H-O Intel Atom D510 1.66Ghz with 4GB Max memory.

How much of a performance gain would I get if I go with 8GB or even 16GB memory using a Mini ITX motherboard combo similar to ASRock E350M1/USB3? I see this on Newegg and really want to try it http://***.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157247

 

[survive]

Hi TwinDaddyKev,

Without knowing anything about how you actually use FreeNAS it's going to be sort of tough to say, but I would think going to an E-350 with 8GB you would see a decent increase in performance over what you have now, but I think you would see much less of a gain going from 8GB to 16GB. Going above 4GB enables prefetching, which you can also enable via a variable you set in the loader.conf file. Assuming you will only use a single Gig-E connection all you really can get out of the box is about 120MB/s so that's really all you need to aim for. Take a look in the forums as there are a number of users with E-350 boards who have been posting their results.

-Will

 

[matthewowen01]

what drives are you using, how are the configured.

 

[TwinDaddyKev]

I'll be using 4 WD VelociRaptor 300GB drives in a Raidz.

 

[matthewowen01]

I'm not sure if you'd be able to tell 4 GB from 8 GB. part of it being the drives are very fast and will be able to seek very quickly lessoning the need for cache.

don't forget performance drops off after 50% or so and very quickly at around 75%. so don't plan on having to much more than half a TB.