New User - How Do I Get Better Latency?

I am new to EMC2 and Linux. I read some of the other similiar forum entries related to this. It seems that there is not an exact formula to get great results. I have my 2 newest PCs listed that I would like to use.....
(I am resisting older is better.)

So far I am using PC2 called out below. Exceeds specs in the manual. Freshly loaded with Linux and EMC2. I get a latency around the 100,000. Reading the user manuals it sounds like it would be better if I was down around 20,000. Stepconfig looks like it only lets me enter up to 50000.

Any tips to getting a better latency? (bios clock settings, etc)

PC2 also has NVIDIA card to. I thought I read something about NVIDIA maybe not being good if using the wrong driver. Did not fully understand it or figure out how to check it.

For the parallel port I am using the one right on the mother board. I have not installed a card for this yet.

If I am going to try something else.... go to my newer PC1 spec'd below or go backward to my older PCs that I have not spec'd out below.
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PC2 Specs!!!

1gb ram DDR400 (1012.4MiB)
ASRock P4S61 - FSB800 MHz
Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.40GHz
Ubuntu Release 8.04 (hardy)
Kernel Linux 2.6.24-16rtai
GNOME 2.22.3
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 AGP8X EVGA 256 MB DDR2 Video Card
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Other Computer PC1:

AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+ 2.41 GHz
2.00 GB RAM
ASROCK AM2NF6G-VSTA – FSB 1000MHz – PCI Express
Video Card etc.

some general hints you find here wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?Tro...ng#RTAI_Latency_test

I had success using this:
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?FixingSMIIssues
When latency times are very large (0.5 - 1 msec) the SMI is suspicious.

Gerd

I was wondering why the text was not there any more. I think it use to be viewable. I am not sure what happened.