From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Oct 14 12:42:43 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id MAA12506 for questions-outgoing; Tue, 14 Oct 1997 12:42:43 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions) Received: from cerberus.partsnow.com (gatekeeper.partsnow.com [207.155.26.98]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id MAA12501 for ; Tue, 14 Oct 1997 12:42:40 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from don@PartsNow.com) Received: (from bin@localhost) by cerberus.partsnow.com (8.8.5/8.6.9) id FAA25503; Tue, 14 Oct 1997 05:42:16 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: cerberus.partsnow.com: bin set sender to using -f Received: from nouvelle(192.168.100.9) by cerberus.partsnow.com via smap (V2.0) id xma025499; Tue, 14 Oct 97 05:42:04 -0700 Message-ID: <3443CA23.2697@PartsNow.com> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 12:38:11 -0700 From: Don Wilde Reply-To: don@PartsNow.com Organization: Soligen, Incorporated X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0C-E-KIT (Win16; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Marty Leisner CC: Jacques Hugo , questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: mmx or ppro References: <9710141846.AA00297@gnu.sdsp.mc.xerox.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Since no software is written for MMX extensions, a PPro will work better than a Pentium/MMX, but a PentiumII will beat either, since a) it has larger caches and b) it has faster clock rates. Even if the software were compiled with MMX, only the X/graphics code would see improvement. There are very few situations where the MMX instructions are helpful, and there are some times when it could be actively harmful. MMX basically refers to the ability to use the floating-point registers to do simple adds and bit-masks to 8 bytes at a time instead of one 80-bit floating point number. 99.4% of all code doesn't fit this application. -- oooOOO O O O o * * * * * * o ___ _________ _________ ________ _________ _________ ___==_ V_=_=_DW ===--- Don Wilde [don@PartsNow.com] [http://www.PartsNow.com ] /oo0000oo-oo--oo-ooo---ooo-ooo---ooo-ooo--ooo-ooo---ooo-ooo---ooo-oo--oo