Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 19:20:21 -0700 From: Rob <europax@home.com> To: Sean Peck <seanp@loudcloud.com> Cc: Jeremiah Gowdy <jgowdy@home.com>, Vincent Poy <vince@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET>, 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: <3ADF9CE5.6E348F9B@home.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.31.0104181957520.4840-100000@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET> <001b01c0c8e3$a65f78e0$015778d8@sherline.net> <3ADF44B4.547DE65D@loudcloud.com>
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Hehehe, my Athlon 1.2Ghz DDR machine encodes mp3's 10 times faster than my 650mhz P3. Rob. 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. > > 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. > > 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. > > 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 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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