From owner-freebsd-amd64@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Feb 8 00:50:00 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C2FC416A406 for ; Thu, 8 Feb 2007 00:49:59 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from andrew.george.hammond@gmail.com) Received: from nf-out-0910.google.com (nf-out-0910.google.com [64.233.182.187]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5F7C313C441 for ; Thu, 8 Feb 2007 00:49:59 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from andrew.george.hammond@gmail.com) Received: by nf-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id m19so623678nfc for ; Wed, 07 Feb 2007 16:49:58 -0800 (PST) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=kJqkHplAcAyCHJpss/C5OcJc4GZx24a1fyaTdyd3a8vzz7xolX2zauORypOhhvIUai351R/G0mEOhlS37fn0qcC8HxUrs1A2q0ZGal7oV/BtIalX3wWYqrSc4WVaaq+WQFZGK5aIFY35x0K58LK2n9UW/mu0jNFLihpNEts3dmQ= Received: by 10.82.153.5 with SMTP id a5mr664619bue.1170894119693; Wed, 07 Feb 2007 16:21:59 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.49.57.17 with HTTP; Wed, 7 Feb 2007 16:21:59 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <5a0a9d6f0702071621w3badaf54o2aca29c496b379f4@mail.gmail.com> Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2007 16:21:59 -0800 From: "Andrew Hammond" To: "Nicole Harrington" In-Reply-To: <676973.69182.qm@web34510.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <676973.69182.qm@web34510.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Dual Core Or Dual CPU - What's the real difference in performance? X-BeenThere: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the AMD64 platform List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:50:00 -0000 On 2/7/07, Nicole Harrington wrote: > Hello all, > I have been building/using servers that were dual CPU > AMD Opteron systems for some time. (usually 246 > Opteron cpu's) > > Now of course the world is shifting to Dual Core. > > Using FreeBSD, what is really the difference, besides > power and ability to shove in more memory, between > having the two seperate CPUS's? Well, you also have two additional HT buses for memory access. And one additional HT bus for peripheral access although most motherboard manufacturers don't actually do anything with it. > What if I did 2, Dual Core cpu's? Would the SMP > overhead and sharing to a [Giant Locked] disk and or > network erase any benefits? Benefits to what? Your computer can idle quite effectively with a 386 processor while consuming less power, producing less heat and requiring much less capital outlay than any Opteron box. Or did you have a workload in mind? If that's the case then you might want to tell us what it is, what analysis you've done on your current system to figure out where the bottleneck is, and what your performance goals for it are. Andrew