Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 11:00:31 +0200 (MEST) From: hans@artcom.de (Hans Huebner) To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Hardware Concerns. Message-ID: <m0yU6Fb-000008C@mail.artcom.de> In-Reply-To: <199804280530.BAA05103@pollux.loco.net>
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In article <199804280530.BAA05103@pollux.loco.net> you write: >> Hi! I am working on some specs for a machine I am going to build, and I >> have been unable to resolve the following 3 concerns. [...] >> 3) What differnces exist between MMX and non-MMX CPU's of the same speed >> (with regards to FreeBSD)? Which is prefered? >Many say that MMX is a kind of snake oil. Since you are not planning on >doing multi-media, and since the gcc compiler, to my incomplete knowledge, >does not generate MMX instructions, (perhaps one could code them in >assembler), I would say that this doesn't matter. It is true that the MMX instruction set itself is rarely used, and thus does not contribute to system performance much. But the Pentium MMX CPU's have, apart from the MMX instructions, an increased L1 cache size, which makes them faster (~10%) for non-MMX instructions also. If you are opting for an Intel CPU, there is no choice anyways, as non-MMX-Pentiums are not sold anymore. -Hans To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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