From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Apr 20 2:18:30 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6231037B42C for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 02:18:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: (qmail 82813 invoked by uid 100); 20 Apr 2001 09:18:25 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15071.65249.943110.371512@guru.mired.org> Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 04:18:25 -0500 To: "Charles Burns" Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: the AMD factor in FreeBSD In-Reply-To: <52898647@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Charles Burns types: > Xeon is simply a P2 or P3 that has lots of on-chip cache memory and is > extremely overpriced. When I bought mine, Xeon's were also the only P2s - P3s weren't available yet - that had a cache that ran at the CPU clock speed. The benchmarks indicated that for many typical Unix applications, the cache speed was nearly as important as the base CPU speed. My tests afterwards weren't quite so clearcut, but it ran rings around the 350MHz ultrasparc that I had been considering. If I remember correctly, the clock speeds were also the same - the fastest P2 and the fastest Xeon were both 450MHz. And yes, on-chip cache is dear. The price on P2 Xeon's has fallen to something reasonable, so I've upgraded those as far as I can - 450MHz with 2M of on-chip cache. With the recent commentary about the P3 core sucking, I'm wondering if there's any point in going to P3 Xeons, as the fastest the motherboard will go is 600MHz. Thanx, http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message