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Date:      Thu, 19 Apr 2001 22:05:17 -1000 (HST)
From:      Vincent Poy <vince@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET>
To:        Charles Burns <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com>
Cc:        <jgowdy@home.com>, <seanp@loudcloud.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:  <Pine.BSF.4.31.0104192200420.2730-100000@oahu.WURLDLINK.NET>
In-Reply-To: <F83AHrey7dlGJZNuIkd00004ceb@hotmail.com>

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On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, Charles Burns wrote:

> >	Hmmm, isn't there one more thing about the P4 that it uses the
> >PII's FPU and is less advanced than the PIII's?
>
> The P2's FPU /is/ the P3's FPU. The P3 is just a P2 with some new
> instructions pasted on (SSE) and now with a tweaked L2 cache. Hardly the
> generational gap between the P1 and the P2. I swear Intel is getting almost
> 10% as bad as Microsoft--letting the marketing team run the whole company.

	Hmmm, I just remember reading that the P4's FPU is like worst than
the P3's so it may be one that was even before the P2.

> >	Okay, I guess the reason I asked earlier about using PC133 SDRAM
> >versus DDR is that I have 768MB (3 256MB) PC133 modules already on my
> >Intel platform and it seems like the DDR has 184 pins versus 168 pins so I
> >have to make a new investment so that's why I was asking if the
> >performance hit will be big if I got one of the VIA KT133A chipset
> >motherboards and ran a AMD 1.33Ghz DDR CPU on it or would that be a big
> >no?
>
> If you have 768MB of SDR RAM don't even touch DDR. DDR may be twice as fast
> but here in the real world it is only 1% to 10% faster. Hardly a reason to
> spend hundreds of dollars on more RAM, IMO. Of course you seem to have money
> so you may just want to go for it. Hell, why not wait for the Tyan
> dual-Athlon mobo then stick two 1533MHz Palomino Athlons in it and 4 256MB
> modules. Do a make -j 10 world and don't tell me how fast it goes.

	Hmmm, that's a idea I guess....  What's currently the speed record
for a make world build?

> >	True... I guess what Intel needs is to work on newer stuff in
> >secret and then all of the sudden just release it rather than having the
> >entire world expecting some announcement on so and so date.. heh.
>
> Then they'd have a great product that just the hardware enthusiasts would
> know about. It's a marketing world and they have to hype products months
> (indeed-Years) in advance to get the word out among the 95% of people that
> don't know Megahertz from megabytes and think Windows is the only game in
> town--but know that MSword 2010 won't take a week to load if they buy the
> new whiz-bang Pentium-5.

	Yeah...  I guess marketing and the software and hardware vendors
helping each other to make each others products obselete.

> Weird name, BTW. Pentium basically means "five-ium". We are now on the
> Fiveium-four. Can't wait for the Fiveium-five.

	or the Fiveium-six!

> >	Maybe the Celeron 2 is really just P3's that don't past certain
> >tests and instead of putting it in the trash or as problem chips, the
> >marketing department thinks of selling it as a lower end CPU.
>
> Remember 486SX's? Intel originally destroyed all 486s the had bad FPUs. They
> later decided to go ahead and try to market them and, to their surprise,
> they sold very well. It was only many months later that they actually began
> making 486s that had no FPUs. In fact, some SX's had WORKING FPU's that had
> just been disabled to keep up with demand. That said, the Celeron 2's may be
> dug out of Intel's stock of P3's that had some (not all) bad cache, saved
> because of the 486SX lesson they learned.

	Yep, I guess they are taking advantage of all the sand used ;)

> Too bad they use another 486 idea today--having only 8K of L1 cache memory
> on the Pentium IV.

	Yeah...  8k is really bad.  I guess with all these cost cutting,
companies are just releasing things with less things in them.

> If the trend of lowering performance continues, we might see marketing like:
>
> "The new Pentium 'VI'--runs the 'VI' editor without long processing delays!"
> (...Then AMD market's the new AMD EMACS processor)
>
> Hmm, ya know I haven't written one word about FreeBSD in the last 10 or so
> messages. This is getting really bad. Sorry for spamming everyone!

	Atleast vi is from Berkeley!


Cheers,
Vince - vince@WURLDLINK.NET - Vice President             ________   __ ____
Unix Networking Operations - FreeBSD-Real Unix for Free / / / / |  / |[__  ]
WurldLink Corporation                                  / / / /  | /  | __] ]
San Francisco - Honolulu - Hong Kong                  / / / / / |/ / | __] ]
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