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I've just built a shiny new i3 system for use as a home server and to host a Minecraft world. The CPU is clocked at 3.1 GHz and I have added 8 GB memory, yet the system is substantially slower than the Atom (clocked at 1.6 GHz) I was using before.

The system is unable to serve files at more than about 200kB/s, takes about ten seconds to format a manual page, and the Minecraft server continuously complains about not being able to advance game time as fast as real time.

Any ideas what might cause such drastic problems? The last time I've seen an effect like this was with uncached memory on an i486. :)

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Just for clarification: is it under the same load as your previous atom-based machine, or is the Minecraft world new? –  Lukasa May 11 '11 at 8:42
Please post the complete setup of the machine, including OS and AntiVirus software and hardware. –  Bobby May 11 '11 at 8:45
Have you checked BIOS options to make sure that caches are enabled and all relevant options checked as installed relevant Windows software? –  Mokubai May 11 '11 at 8:46
The OS is Debian squeeze, and has not been modified for the mainboard switch. –  Simon Richter May 11 '11 at 8:49
I would try to disentangle between memory, harddisk,cpu and network performance by running individual benchmarks such as ramspeed (RAM), hdparm -t (harddisk) and iperf (network). –  Andre Holzner May 11 '11 at 9:33

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up vote 1 down vote accepted

I think I've found the issue, two misbehaving network cards that leave their level-triggered IRQ asserted.

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Once you confirm this is the answer, please be sure to accept your own answer. –  Flimzy Jun 17 '11 at 5:35

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