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Date:      Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:09:20 -0400
From:      Mike Meyer <mwm-keyword-freebsdhackers2.e313df@mired.org>
To:        Roman Divacky <rdivacky@freebsd.org>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: CPUTYPE in general - was Re: Which CPUTYPE for a dualcore Xeon on AMD64
Message-ID:  <18048.12032.316862.338084@bhuda.mired.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070625192308.GA14544@freebsd.org>
References:  <467EF0C1.1010609@optiksecurite.com> <ab581e310706250250m4ec2432fide67251d7bcad132@mail.gmail.com> <467FFF41.10204@math.missouri.edu> <20070625192308.GA14544@freebsd.org>

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In <20070625192308.GA14544@freebsd.org>, Roman Divacky <rdivacky@freebsd.org> typed:
> you should know what cpu you bought, or just use cpuid (found in ports)
> and determine what cpu you have.

Knowing what CPU you bought doesn't help a lot for the case asked
about of "nocona" vs. "prescott". Those are the names of P4 and Xeon
cores, not CPUs - and not the last cores used in either line. cpuid
will tell you what features your CPU supports, but not the name of the
core. So it only helps if you know what you're looking for. P4 and
Xeon are just marketing names, and the features available vary quite a
bit across the lines. Even knowing the core names doesn't help, as
some prescott cored P4s have all the gcc "nocona" features.

Assuming the gcc man page is correct, use cpuid to check the feature
sets of your CPU. If you don't have SSE2, then you should be using
something prior to pentium 4. If you have SSE2 but not SSE3, then you
want pentium-m, pentium4 or pentium4m. If you have SSE3, then you
should be using either nocona or prescott. If you have 64 bit support,
you want nocona, otherwise prescott.

For the record, I believe the nocona cores are:
pentium 4/some prescott, prescott 2m, cedar mill
pentium D/all
core 2 duo/all
All xeons with sse3 except the sossaman cored Xeon LV.

The prescott cores are:
pentium 4/some prescott
xeon lv (sossaman core)
core solo
core duo 

	<mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.



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