3620 Memory Threshold

[Scott McKay <SWM@sapsucker.scrc.symbolics.com>]

    Date: Wed, 7 Sep 88 11:39 EDT
    From: barmar@Think.COM (Barry Margolin)

	Date: Wed, 7 Sep 88 09:32 EDT
	From: JSP@ibm.com (J. Scott Penberthy)

	    Date: Tue, 6 Sep 88 17:58 PDT
	    From: Spock%SAMSON.CADR.DIALNET.SYMBOLICS.COM@yktvmh.watson.ibm.com (Spock)

	    What's the threshold?  We have 1.5 megawords on ours at the moment.  And
	    I wonder what the "threshold" on the MacIvory is?

	I had similar problems (?) with the 3620.  I now use 4 Megawords on our
	3620, and it's faster than a 3640.  I found that anything less than 2
	MW results in horrible performance.  I didn't notice any "significant"
	improvement in performance once I passed 2.5Mw.

    It's not just 3620's that need at least 2MW.  I was using a 3640 with
    1.5MW for a couple of months, and it was incredibly painful.  When I
    went back to 2MW it was fine.  My understanding is that Symbolics
    recommends at least 2MW for any system running Genera 7.2.

I don't know about Symbolics, but I would certainly recommend 2MW as the
minimum, and in my experience diminishing returns set in at about 2.5MW.
I use 3MW myself, and it's really not too much better than 2.5MW for
most of the things I do.