From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Dec 20 9:50:11 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from dc-mx04.cluster1.charter.net (dc-mx04.cluster0.hsacorp.net [209.225.8.14]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ED57F37B405 for ; Thu, 20 Dec 2001 09:50:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from [24.158.214.244] (HELO gforce.johnson.home) by dc-mx04.cluster1.charter.net (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 3.4.6) with ESMTP id 10374146; Thu, 20 Dec 2001 12:56:26 -0500 Received: (from glenn@localhost) by gforce.johnson.home (8.11.6/8.11.6) id fBKHo5Y00913; Thu, 20 Dec 2001 11:50:05 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from glenn) From: Glenn Johnson Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 11:50:04 -0600 To: Tom Parquette Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Multiprocessor boards benefit a workstation? Message-ID: <20011220175004.GA2401@gforce.johnson.home> Mail-Followup-To: glenn@FreeBSD.ORG, Tom Parquette , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG References: <1008834290.651b0ff2Tom_Parquette@myrealbox.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1008834290.651b0ff2Tom_Parquette@myrealbox.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.24i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thu, Dec 20, 2001 at 02:44:50AM -0500, Tom Parquette wrote: > I'm selecting components for a workstation machine and I would like > some input. > > I'm planning to use an AMD processor (Athlon or Duron) and a Tyan > motherboard. I have had good luck with my Athlon and Tyan board in my > curent machine. > > Question #1: Does an SMP configuration benefit a workstation machine's > performance enough to justify the costs? e.g. two of the Athlon MP > chips in a Tyan multi processor board. It depends on what applications you run. I do not think that multi-threaded applications are currently able to benefit from multiple processors on FreeBSD just yet but I may be wrong about that. The real benefit would be if you run parallel jobs such as MPI or PVM, or many long running CPU intensive serial jobs, such as simulations. Be sure you get a system with enough memory for your applications because CPU intensive jobs are usually also memory hungry. > Question #2:I remember seeing a couple of items asking about > experiences with the Athlon in an SMP configuration. The Questions > mailing list archive does not seem to be available so I cannot search > it. What are the experiences with the Athlon MP systems? I have 4 systems with Tyan S2460 boards with dual 1200MHz Athlon MP processors. I have not had any problems with them. -- Glenn Johnson glennpj@charter.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message