Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 11:00:39 -1000 (HST) From: Vincent Poy <vince@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET> To: Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> Cc: <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.4.31.0104191048370.4840-100000@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET> In-Reply-To: <F209gJKVApwOLZCHusM00002b18@hotmail.com>
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On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Charles Burns wrote: > > > 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 last problem that AMD processors had that was in any way significant was > when a few old K6 processors would become flaky with more than about 40MB of > RAM. This was back when RAM was about $45/MB in the U.S. so most people > never got that much anyway (and when they did they weren't using K6 chips) Hmmm, perhaps that's why one of our machines with a K6-200 non-MMX seems unstable with 64 megs of RAM.. The RAM actually costed more like $50/MB for 72 pin EDO SIMMs. > Oddly enough, as of late AMD's platform has been more reliable than Intel's. > Intel released a chipset for the P3 that was designed exclusively for Rambus > RAM. When Intel figured out that Rambus wasn't the greatest, they hurriedly > implimented a "memory translator hub" that allowed the chipset to use SDRAM > on top of the RAMBUS packet protocol. > This obviously made the motherboard damn slow, but it also led to data > corruption in certain cases which is a big nono. Intel recalled the chipset. > They were in such a hurry to leapfrog AMD that they failed to properly test > the chipset. This will long be a taint on Intel quality in the memory of > many computer professionals. True but isn't the 440BX supposed to still be the robust Intel chipset? > Intel also released a Pentium-3 at 1.13GHz. You may have noticed that you > can't buy these--that is because Intel didn't seem to test them very much at > all. Rather than learning from their mistakes, they rushed another product > and had to recall it when almost none of them would even compile a Linux > kernel. I thought they recalled it as soon as they announced it, this was what drove their stock prices down. > Their latest prize, the P4, has been the joke of the computer industry. "Why > pay $1100 for a GHz Pentium three when you can pay $2500 for a lower > performing 1.5GHz P4!?" In one article that I read, an Intel rep was quoted > as saying "It's 1.5GHz. Of course it's faster." > Ad nausium. Hehe, it's marketing... > Athlons have one current issue--heat. They are very stable at very high > temperatures, but just in case, you should get a very good heatsink. > Recently Anandtech (www.anandtech.com) tested several Socket-A heatsinks and > crowned a king. I can't remember offhand what it was, though. With the > 1.33GHz Athlon dissipating about 72.9 watts, you need some pretty decent > cooling. This isn't to say that P3s and P4s aren't pretty toasty. It had to be either the GlobalWin or the other ones... The Orb's is a joke. > > > 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. > > > > Hmmm, I guess that part is one I can't figure out since for > >FreeBSD, would this really count as a typical server? > > It does help, but the Athlon seems to be slightly faster at the same > clockspeed for the majority of tasks (and is available in higher > clockspeeds) Yep, true... > > 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? > > Theoretically the Athlon is 50% faster at non-FPU (integer) calculations. In > practice, it is 5-25% faster, depending on the application. > Don't worry too much about optimizations. The Athlon is designed to run P3 > optimized software. The only optimizations that don't benefit the Athlon > involve SSE optimizations (which make the P3 about 2% faster than the > Athlon, depending on the application, in FPU intensive stuff at the same > clock speed) and fixes for some of the P3's bugs, which the Athlon doesn't > have. (Not to say that the Athlon is bug free, but all have been fixed in > microcode because there aren't any known serious design flaws) Thanks, I guess at 2% increase, it's not worth it since with the same amount of money, the AMD will probably win anyways even for less money... > > Speaking about DDR RAM, what kind of performance hits would there > >be using DDR versus non-DDR RAM? > > None. DDR RAM is faster. > Well, ok technically DDR ram has a higher latency, but if you use a chipset > that is designed around low latencies like the AMD 760 chipset, this becomes > a non-issue. (In fact, latencies are often lower than those of normal RAM) > DDR stands for Double Data Rate. It's bandwidth is theoretically twice that > of normal RAM. In practice the actual system performance is 1-10% higher, > but this may improve as applications start to take more advantage of higher > bandwidth and as SMP Athlons come out. Yeah, true... Now, only if there is a AMD 760 chipset based motherboard with a ISA slot since I need it for my $600 soundcard :( > Tom's Hardware recommends using ONLY the AMD 760 chipset for DDR Athlons. > Tom's Hardware is usually right, so I would take that into consideration. I > have an AMD 750 (the old AMD chipset) on my system now and it has been > rock-solid even when overclocking my 1st generation Athlon from 500 to > 800MHz. Stability is, of course, the main factor when considering server > hardware. > Asus generally makes the most stable motherboards. True but I think ABIT motherboards have been good as well. ASUS has a problem with the ATA100 area from what I heard. > > > 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. > > The EV6 bus is more complex and thus more expensive to implement. (FYI) Yeah, I guess I forgot about that. > > > 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. > > > > Atleast from the guys at Anantech, they are all anti-Intel and one > >of the reasons is as you stated about the P4's socket. I guess the > >choices were easier during the Pentium days since you can just pop in a > >AMD K6 in place of a Pentium without a total reinvestment. > > I often hear "Such-and-such a site is anti [AMD/Intel/Cyrix] because of > such-and-such." Yeah but on Anantech, atleast in the forums, people are all for the Athlon with very few for the Intel side. > Usually Tom's Hardware is accused more than Anandtech because they are mor > apt to be harsh on something that doesn't live up to the hype, but Anandtech > isn't immune. I haven't visited Tom's Hardware in ages... > I have followed many hardware sites for years and have even written a few > reviews. With the exception of sites like AMDzone and Intelzone, they are > anti-stuff-that-is-unwise-to-buy, not anti [insert brand]. > Really, why should anyone care what brand a chip is? If a given platform is > a good deal, great. If not, avoid it. I don't care who makes my computer > stuff as long as they have a good rep, a good product, and didn't BS too > much in their marketing. Yep, that point is true since what matters is the end product and how it performs... > Intel just dropped P4 prices. If the chip somehow gets the best > price/performance ratio, I will have to consider it in the future. I think Intel will still cut prices once more later this month and I think AMD just cut prices as well. > > 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. > > Ya... Isn't that irritating? I usually compile a Linux kernel with an > optimized compiler and with the default compiler to test myself. Typically > Windows software seems to perform similarly to similar Unix software, at > least for me. I guess it's easy to test it yourself after you have the hardware itself already. It's just hard to figure out what to buy. 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