Received: from maia.hub.org (maia-5.hub.org [200.46.204.29]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4B484632668 for ; Thu, 8 Jul 2010 16:51:47 -0300 (ADT) Received: from mail.postgresql.org ([200.46.204.86]) by maia.hub.org (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.29]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 70518-07 for ; Thu, 8 Jul 2010 19:51:39 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from skunk.mtbrook.bozemanpass.com (skunk.mtbrook.bozemanpass.com [69.145.82.195]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9BA2E63245B for ; Thu, 8 Jul 2010 16:51:38 -0300 (ADT) Received: from [69.145.82.235] (unknown [69.145.82.235]) by skunk.mtbrook.bozemanpass.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14484558039 for ; Thu, 8 Jul 2010 14:02:55 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <4C362C1C.7060509@boreham.org> Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:50:52 -0600 From: David Boreham User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.10) Gecko/20100512 Thunderbird/3.0.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 CC: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org Subject: Re: performance on new linux box References: <4C3532CC.6070601@squeakycode.net> <4C3591F40200002500033219@gw.wicourts.gov> <4C35A23B0200002500033220@gw.wicourts.gov> <4C360677.1090608@emolecules.com> <95971335.20100708211351@erwied.eu> <488953776.20100708213233@erwied.eu> <4C35E4CA020000250003327E@gw.wicourts.gov> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-0.879 tagged_above=-10 required=5 tests=BAYES_00=-1.9, MISSING_HEADERS=1.021 X-Spam-Level: X-Archive-Number: 201007/129 X-Sequence-Number: 39518 On 7/8/2010 1:47 PM, Ryan Wexler wrote: > Thanks for the explanations that makes things clearer. It still > amazes me that it would account for a 5x change in IO. The buffering allows decoupling of the write rate from the disk rotation speed. Disks don't spin that fast, at least not relative to the speed the CPU is running at.