Fujitsu Siemens TX600 S3 performance issue

[Ivan Voras]

Ludger Bolmerg wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I installed FreeBSD 6.2 on a Fujitsu Siemens TX600 S3 with 2 dual core
> Xeon processors and 4G RAM.
> 
> The SMP kernel is awfully slow.  make buildkernel takes about 6 hours to
> complete.  When I boot a UP kernel the build completes within 12
> minutes.  I don't see any unusual message in any log file.

First, what exactly is slower: CPUs, I/O or something else? Run a CPU
benchmark before/after (ubench is a simple one), and also a disk
benchmark (e.g. bonnie++) before/after and compare. Do you use powerd?
Did you change timecounters? This looks like a Pentium4-type Xeon, did
you try toggling hyperthreading? (also in BIOS?) Does "vmstat -i" output
suggest an interrupt storm?