Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 11:06:49 -1000 (HST) From: Vincent Poy <vince@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET> To: Sean Peck <seanp@loudcloud.com> Cc: Jeremiah Gowdy <jgowdy@home.com>, Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com>, <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.4.31.0104191104240.4840-100000@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET> In-Reply-To: <3ADF44B4.547DE65D@loudcloud.com>
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On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Sean Peck wrote: > I have been running AMD processors with both FreeBSD and BSDi for quite some > time now, and ATHLON is by far the better choice than the PIII or the P4. I guess it is cheaper too and delivers far better performance for the pricing and you can still get a better or equivelent system for much less. > The only real issue with AMD is heat related they put out a lot of heat.. but > that's about the only "concern" and I have never had this be a problem. Yep, I heard heat is the problem especially with those over 1Ghz... > I would highly recommend purchasing AMD over any Intel offering in > equivalent cost. You will get far more bang for your buck with > Athlon/Duron over anything that Intel has in the price range, period. True. Now, speaking about the Duron, are the Duron's really faster than the Athlon's when both are overclocked? Some guy who runs a cluster of 20-30 AMD's for rc5 crunching says the Duron is faster. 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 > Jeremiah Gowdy wrote: > > > > > > 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 compatibility and all that stuff days of the K5 and K6 are long gone. > > Today, generally, if a cpu is x86 compatible, that's that. There are no > > compatibility issues with the Athlon. > > > > > > 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. > > > > Could you explain this ? If you're comparing Thunderbirds to Coppermines, I > > didn't think that was the case. > > > > > > 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? > > > > In business applications benchmarks the Athlon always stomps the P3. > > > > > > 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? > > > > If I remember correctly, depending on the type the best SDRAM gets about 800 > > megs/sec. DDR SDRAM comes in two flavors, 1.6 gigs/sec and 2.1gigs/sec. > > > > > > 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. > > > > You can get an Athlon motherboard for $100. Even if the Intel motherboard > > was half that, at $50, the difference in the prices of the cpus is FAR more > > than $50. Up to $200 in the higher end processors. People always speak of > > the higher cost of Athlon motherboards but I don't see the point if the AMD > > cpu is 40% cheaper and the difference in motherboard prices is relatively > > pennies when you're speaking of a multi-hundred dollar purchase. > > > > > 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. > > > > It's the same. If the code is written and compiled properly, the difference > > should be seen in all OSes. > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > > -- > Garbage Collection... the bell bottoms of programming.. > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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