Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 20:07:44 -1000 (HST) From: Vincent Poy <vince@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET> To: Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> Cc: <lplist@closedsrc.org>, <kris@obsecurity.org>, <mwlist@lanfear.com>, <freebsd@sysmach.com?>, <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: the AMD factor in FreeBSD Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.31.0104181957520.4840-100000@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET> In-Reply-To: <F202kjeo4lB4BwOZxYS00002037@hotmail.com>
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On Wed, 18 Apr 2001, Charles Burns wrote: > > > # The other question is, will the AMD Athlon be a whole lot faster > > > # than a equivelent Intel PIII? and what about P4 support? or is that > > > # really worst than a PIII and AMD in terms of performance? > > > > > > Theoretically, a dual Athlon system would beat a dual Pentium III setup > > > not only because it has a better FPU, more L1 cache, but also because it > > > uses a 100/200Mhz or a 133/266Mhz DDR FSB. Also, a dual Pentium III uses > > > a shared bus to connect to the northbridge whereas a dual Athlon would > > > have two dedicated connections to the northbridge. This is where DDR > > > memory would have more of an impact on performance than SDRAM->DDR on a > > > single Athlon system. > > > > > > -- > > > Linh Pham > > > [lplist@closedsrc.org] > > > > > > // 404b - Brain not found > > > > Thanks for the insight but what about in a Single CPU environment? > > This depends on what you plan to do. The general consensus among the > hardware reviewers is that the Athlon is overall faster than any other x86 > compatible CPU. Yep, that's what I read as well but are there any drawbacks to being faster such as compatibilty and all that stuff? > The only significant performance advantage that the Pentium 3 has over the > Athlon is that its l2 cache memory is _much_ faster than that of the Athlon. > If you are going to be running applications that for some reason depend > almost exclusively on the bandwidth of the L2 cache (software with lots of > loops that are under 192K may be an example of this) than in some situations > a P3 at 1GHz will likely be faster than an Athlon at 1GHz. Hmmm, I guess that part is one I can't figure out since for FreeBSD, would this really count as a typical server? > This small detail is overshadowed buy some advantages that the Athlon has: > > The P3 has a bug that reduces its efficiency when using segmented registers. > This isn't the same as the PPro's slowness at 16-bit code. From what I > gather, the P3 uses a full register when a request for a partial register > (such as AX) is made, resulting in a terrible waste of valuable register > bytes. I can find more specific info on this if anyone is interested. Hmmm, that was probably the reason why a PentiumPro 166 under FreeBSD seems slower than a Pentium 166. > The Athlon has a superior floating point unit that is, in addition, more > deeply pipelined. When using software that isn't optimized for any > particular FPU, the Athlon is typically just under 30% faster. (Some > examples of this can be seen on comparisons between the two at Anandtech) Yeah, that's what I am concerned about. It seems that most things are optimized for the Intel CPU's. While the FPU is faster on the Athlon than the Intel, what about the non-FPU area? > The Athlon is available in higher clock speeds. While clockspeed isn't > everything, it is something. True since you get more clockspeed for less money. > The Athlon can take more advantage of higher memory bandwidth than the P3 > (but probably not the P4), thus you can get a greater performance benefit in > some cases using DDR RAM. Speaking about DDR RAM, what kind of performance hits would there be using DDR versus non-DDR RAM? > The Athlon is much, much cheaper. Motherboards, however, are more expensive. > The overall cost ends up lower with the Athlon, especially if you are > considering the price/perormance ratio. Yeah, that's what I realized as well. It seems like the VIA and AMD chipset based motherboards costs a lot more than the Intel variants. > There are a few other advantages that the Athlon has as well. This is not to > say that Intel made a crummy CPU core, of course. You have to consider that > the PPro core was released in 1996 whereas the Athlon core was released a > full three years later--an eternity in computer hardware time. This doesn't > really matter though. The Athlon is, at the moment, usually a better choice. That's good to hear. > The P4 is a different story entirely... I would avoid it like an old Cyrix > CPU if I were you. > Even if it weren't slower than the P3 or Athlon in most software, the socket > is soon to be changed so you will be left without the ability to upgrade > much in the future. The chip is terribly expensive (as is the rest of the > platform), has a short life, is amazingly inefficient with its transistors > and memory bandwidth, and is overall certainly something to steer clear from > until Intel fixes some of its unacceptable weaknesses. Atleast from the guys at Anantech, they are all anti-Intel and one of the reasons is as you stated about the P4's socket. I guess the choices were easier during the Pentium days since you can just pop in a AMD K6 in place of a Pentium without a total reinvestment. > Good sites for hardware info: > www.tomshardware.com > www.anandtech.com > www.aceshardware.com > www.ars-technica.com > > Hope this helps Thanks, I'm familiar with all of those. I guess I just wanted to know how they do under FreeBSD since all the sites really benchmark it under Windows. Cheers, Vince - vince@WURLDLINK.NET - Vice President ________ __ ____ Unix Networking Operations - FreeBSD-Real Unix for Free / / / / | / |[__ ] WurldLink Corporation / / / / | / | __] ] San Francisco - Honolulu - Hong Kong / / / / / |/ / | __] ] HongKong Stars/Gravis UltraSound Mailing Lists Admin /_/_/_/_/|___/|_|[____] Almighty1@IRC - oahu.DAL.NET Hawaii's DALnet IRC Network Server Admin To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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