Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 10:40:29 -1000 (HST) From: Vincent Poy <vince@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET> To: Jeremiah Gowdy <jgowdy@home.com> Cc: Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com>, <lplist@closedsrc.org>, <kris@obsecurity.org>, <mwlist@lanfear.com>, <freebsd@sysmach.com?>, <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: the AMD factor in FreeBSD Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.31.0104191037080.4840-100000@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET> In-Reply-To: <001b01c0c8e3$a65f78e0$015778d8@sherline.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Jeremiah Gowdy wrote: > > > > Thanks for the insight but what about in a Single CPU environment? > > > > > > This depends on what you plan to do. The general consensus among the > > > hardware reviewers is that the Athlon is overall faster than any other > x86 > > > compatible CPU. > > > > Yep, that's what I read as well but are there any drawbacks to > > being faster such as compatibilty and all that stuff? > > The compatibility and all that stuff days of the K5 and K6 are long gone. > Today, generally, if a cpu is x86 compatible, that's that. There are no > compatibility issues with the Athlon. That's good to hear but isn't there the issue of whether the software is optimized for the Intel CPU or the AMD CPU? I thought that factor still exists. > > > The only significant performance advantage that the Pentium 3 has over > the > > > Athlon is that its l2 cache memory is _much_ faster than that of the > Athlon. > > Could you explain this ? If you're comparing Thunderbirds to Coppermines, I > didn't think that was the case. > > > > The Athlon has a superior floating point unit that is, in addition, more > > > deeply pipelined. When using software that isn't optimized for any > > > particular FPU, the Athlon is typically just under 30% faster. (Some > > > examples of this can be seen on comparisons between the two at > Anandtech) > > > > Yeah, that's what I am concerned about. It seems that most things > > are optimized for the Intel CPU's. While the FPU is faster on the Athlon > > than the Intel, what about the non-FPU area? > > In business applications benchmarks the Athlon always stomps the P3. True but isn't business applications more of what's run on the Microsoft platform and not really the FreeBSD platform? > > > The Athlon can take more advantage of higher memory bandwidth than the > P3 > > > (but probably not the P4), thus you can get a greater performance > benefit in > > > some cases using DDR RAM. > > > > Speaking about DDR RAM, what kind of performance hits would there > > be using DDR versus non-DDR RAM? > > If I remember correctly, depending on the type the best SDRAM gets about 800 > megs/sec. DDR SDRAM comes in two flavors, 1.6 gigs/sec and 2.1gigs/sec. Interesting but what about percentage wise? > > > The Athlon is much, much cheaper. Motherboards, however, are more > expensive. > > > The overall cost ends up lower with the Athlon, especially if you are > > > considering the price/perormance ratio. > > > > Yeah, that's what I realized as well. It seems like the VIA and > > AMD chipset based motherboards costs a lot more than the Intel variants. > > You can get an Athlon motherboard for $100. Even if the Intel motherboard > was half that, at $50, the difference in the prices of the cpus is FAR more > than $50. Up to $200 in the higher end processors. People always speak of > the higher cost of Athlon motherboards but I don't see the point if the AMD > cpu is 40% cheaper and the difference in motherboard prices is relatively > pennies when you're speaking of a multi-hundred dollar purchase. Yeah but the Athlon motherboards at $100 are probably crappy. I'll give a example. the ABIT BE6II v2.0 which is Intel 440BX based and the ABIT KT7A-RAID which is VIA based. > > Thanks, I'm familiar with all of those. I guess I just wanted to > > know how they do under FreeBSD since all the sites really benchmark it > > under Windows. > > It's the same. If the code is written and compiled properly, the difference > should be seen in all OSes. True but isn't most code still optimized for Intel CPU's though? Cheers, Vince - vince@WURLDLINK.NET - Vice President ________ __ ____ Unix Networking Operations - FreeBSD-Real Unix for Free / / / / | / |[__ ] WurldLink Corporation / / / / | / | __] ] San Francisco - Honolulu - Hong Kong / / / / / |/ / | __] ] HongKong Stars/Gravis UltraSound Mailing Lists Admin /_/_/_/_/|___/|_|[____] Almighty1@IRC - oahu.DAL.NET Hawaii's DALnet IRC Network Server Admin To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.31.0104191037080.4840-100000>