Hardware choices

I've currently got latency periods of the oder of 64000.
I've tried reading all the advice and hardware choices, but what there is seems to be inconsistent, to put it mildly.
Is it purely down to chance on what your particular combination of cpu/hdd/video card comes up with ?

Where do you start - different video card or different hdd ?

My current system is GA-5AX / amd K6-2/500 / 655Mb / ATI C-1 8M, and at the moment the whole process is getting pretty depressing.

Encouragement would be welcome.
John

Further to the above, I've found that my mobo has a ACPI setting at irq 9, but there appears to be no bios control over this.
I've noticed the screen goes blank after a period yet to be determined, and though I've disabled all the bios controls I can find, I can't stop it happening.
Have I made a poor choice with the mobo ?

Hi,as you have found motherboard is most killer but grafics cards also play a role too i find.
(many things also but the main two above is what i find)

motherboard i try to stick to well known support chipsets, Intel, Via etc that board u like to looks like it has a ALi Aladdin V so this may be cause, as it may not be that well support in the kernel.

also grafics cards, i try start away from ones that try and use system memory as part of the memory help reduce the CPU/mem load and time taken to do that process.

check out the wiki to see what hardware people are using and what looks to work for the setup u need etc.
rob

Thanks for the input robh.
I just had a brainwave. Swapped hdd's with a system I have already in use, a compaq desktop, and Jackpot.
Now getting latency round the 10k mark with glxgears running.
The downside is that the other system doesn't boot up, so I'm not out of the woods yet, but at least something positive at last.
John

putting drive in compaq from truble system worked? or other way around?

always good fun trying to find what is different or changed to cause the bad setup.

good luck
rob

Hi all.
robh - the hdd into the compac system worked srtaight away, without me touching the bios at all !
Mind you, I can probably mess that up pretty quickly if I try.
The windos98 hdd, placed into the newer system went completely base over apex, and I'm still sorting it, using a third desktop to do a compare and contrast(I never throw anything away if I can help it. )
Big J - I've lots of bits I can swap around. I'm a great believer in "you never know when that grunge widjet might come in useful"

Regards
JohnB