Encouraging results from 2.4.10-pre14 + preempt

[J Sloan]

I am very encouraged by the latest linus kernel, and
thought I'd pass this along -

Platform info -
----------------
PIII 933/Intel mobo
512 MB RAM
2 30 GB IDE disks
Ensoniq ES1371 sound card
Red Hat 7.1 + bits of rawhide
kernel 2.4.10-pre14 + preempt patch

The testing was done while running X windows (icewm), Netscape 4.78,
iptraf, and misc other services (named, sendmail, apache, iptables
firewalling etc.

During the dbench runs mpg123 was playing mp3s -

Highlights -
------------
 - There was absolutely no mp3 skipping during dbench 16 & 32.
 - There was minor skipping during dbench 40, when load was near 40.
 - Best of all, the desktop remained completely responsive the entire
time.

dbench summaries:
---------------------------
Throughput 49.6162 MB/sec (NB=62.0202 MB/sec  496.162 MBit/sec)  16
procs
Throughput 32.5531 MB/sec (NB=40.6913 MB/sec  325.531 MBit/sec)  32
procs
Throughput 24.8711 MB/sec (NB=31.0889 MB/sec  248.711 MBit/sec)  40
procs

Screenshot at http://mirai.cx/dbench40.png