Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 14:30:09 -0700 From: Sean Peck <seanp@loudcloud.com> To: Vincent Poy <vince@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET> Cc: Jeremiah Gowdy <jgowdy@home.com>, 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: <3ADF58E1.3660FD8E@loudcloud.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.31.0104191104240.4840-100000@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET>
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I don't know if the DURON is faster when overclocked, I personally stay away from overclocking, I don't need it. The only differences between the Athlon and the Duron is on chip cache, and speeds of the front side bus, if I am not mistaken. Athlons have larger L2 Cache I believe than the Durons, and are available with up to a 200MHZ bus. These are the only differences between the chips from my understanding (if I am wrong I am sure someone here will set me straight) Vincent Poy wrote: > On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Sean Peck wrote: > > > I have been running AMD processors with both FreeBSD and BSDi for quite some > > time now, and ATHLON is by far the better choice than the PIII or the P4. > > I guess it is cheaper too and delivers far better performance for > the pricing and you can still get a better or equivelent system for much > less. > > > The only real issue with AMD is heat related they put out a lot of heat.. but > > that's about the only "concern" and I have never had this be a problem. > > Yep, I heard heat is the problem especially with those over > 1Ghz... > > > I would highly recommend purchasing AMD over any Intel offering in > > equivalent cost. You will get far more bang for your buck with > > Athlon/Duron over anything that Intel has in the price range, period. > > True. Now, speaking about the Duron, are the Duron's really > faster than the Athlon's when both are overclocked? Some guy who runs a > cluster of 20-30 AMD's for rc5 crunching says the Duron is faster. > > 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 > > > 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. > > > > > > > > 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. > > > > > > > > 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. > > > > > > > > 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. > > > > > > > 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. > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > > > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > > > > -- > > Garbage Collection... the bell bottoms of programming.. > > > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message -- Garbage Collection... the bell bottoms of programming.. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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