From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Aug 14 05:07:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id FAA13438 for chat-outgoing; Thu, 14 Aug 1997 05:07:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bagpuss.visint.co.uk (bagpuss.visint.co.uk [194.207.134.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id FAA13427 for ; Thu, 14 Aug 1997 05:07:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dylan.visint.co.uk (dylan.visint.co.uk [194.207.134.180]) by bagpuss.visint.co.uk (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id NAA02831; Thu, 14 Aug 1997 13:06:58 +0100 (BST) Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 13:07:07 +0100 (BST) From: Stephen Roome To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" cc: mika ruohotie , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: speed test In-Reply-To: <13234.871558788@time.cdrom.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, 14 Aug 1997, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > But the alpha thing is odd, what's the alpha's memory bus speed and what > > byte width memory does it use. Is that 166MB/s show above approaching the > > I'm not sure what the bus speed is, but the memory width is 64 bit. > You have to use 8 SIMMS at a time with the Durango motherboard, > nothing smaller. Okay, x86 architecture sucks in comparison, I new this already. I suppose it interleaves each group of 8 64bit SIMMS. Shame PC's have so much archaic backwards compatibility... (seen this topic before!) > > > If so, then that alpha better not have cost more than 2000 UK pounds (or > > $2000 I suppose considering the price of hardware here.) > > It's less than that and remains a pretty good deal. Don't forget that > memory speed isn't the only benchmark it wins. :-) Yes, I think the memory speed test has been overhyped and it's meaning lost a bit, make world is a more useful benchmark perhaps, but really all these numbers (SpecINT etc.) don't impress me that much. Really what's the difference between an alpha fileserver and an Intel fileserver both with a good RAID setup ? (apart from cost.) The disks in an alpha probably aren't going to be much/any faster than the same disks in a pentium are they ? -- Steve Roome - Vision Interactive Ltd. Tel:+44(0)117 9730597 Home:+44(0)976 241342 WWW: http://dylan.visint.co.uk/