Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 22:09:43 -0700 From: "Charles Burns" <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> To: vince@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET, lplist@closedsrc.org Cc: kris@obsecurity.org, mwlist@lanfear.com, freebsd@sysmach.com?, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: the AMD factor in FreeBSD Message-ID: <F202kjeo4lB4BwOZxYS00002037@hotmail.com>
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> > # The other question is, will the AMD Athlon be a whole lot faster > > # than a equivelent Intel PIII? and what about P4 support? or is that > > # really worst than a PIII and AMD in terms of performance? > > > > Theoretically, a dual Athlon system would beat a dual Pentium III setup > > not only because it has a better FPU, more L1 cache, but also because it > > uses a 100/200Mhz or a 133/266Mhz DDR FSB. Also, a dual Pentium III uses > > a shared bus to connect to the northbridge whereas a dual Athlon would > > have two dedicated connections to the northbridge. This is where DDR > > memory would have more of an impact on performance than SDRAM->DDR on a > > single Athlon system. > > > > -- > > Linh Pham > > [lplist@closedsrc.org] > > > > // 404b - Brain not found > > 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. 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. If you are going to be running applications that for some reason depend almost exclusively on the bandwidth of the L2 cache (software with lots of loops that are under 192K may be an example of this) than in some situations a P3 at 1GHz will likely be faster than an Athlon at 1GHz. This small detail is overshadowed buy some advantages that the Athlon has: The P3 has a bug that reduces its efficiency when using segmented registers. This isn't the same as the PPro's slowness at 16-bit code. From what I gather, the P3 uses a full register when a request for a partial register (such as AX) is made, resulting in a terrible waste of valuable register bytes. I can find more specific info on this if anyone is interested. 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) The Athlon is available in higher clock speeds. While clockspeed isn't everything, it is something. 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. 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. There are a few other advantages that the Athlon has as well. This is not to say that Intel made a crummy CPU core, of course. You have to consider that the PPro core was released in 1996 whereas the Athlon core was released a full three years later--an eternity in computer hardware time. This doesn't really matter though. The Athlon is, at the moment, usually a better choice. The P4 is a different story entirely... I would avoid it like an old Cyrix CPU if I were you. Even if it weren't slower than the P3 or Athlon in most software, the socket is soon to be changed so you will be left without the ability to upgrade much in the future. The chip is terribly expensive (as is the rest of the platform), has a short life, is amazingly inefficient with its transistors and memory bandwidth, and is overall certainly something to steer clear from until Intel fixes some of its unacceptable weaknesses. Good sites for hardware info: www.tomshardware.com www.anandtech.com www.aceshardware.com www.ars-technica.com Hope this helps _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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