Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 12:50:30 -0400 From: Nathan Vidican <webmaster@wmptl.com> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Dual-Athlon vs Dual-PIII ... opinions? Message-ID: <39982356.C9B1018@wmptl.com> References: <14739.16001.736066.397333@guru.mired.org>
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Mike Meyer wrote: > > Nathan Vidican writes: > > Dual Athlon based systems are not available (yet). I'd still reccomend > > you go with AMD though. I find that if you spend the extra money that > > you would have spent on the CPU's/Mainboard to be running Intel on more > > Ram/better Disks/etc, that you can generally build a better system. I've > > Makes sense - spend the money you saved on the CPU on making other > things faster, and the system will perform better. Considering how > much faster CPUs are than everything else these days, that makes > sense. The same logic applices to IDE disks vs. SCSI disks for > single-user, single-disk workstations. But... > > > got a dual PIII 500mhz machine with 768megs of ram, and to be > > completely honest with you I find almost no difference in processing > > speed to that of the 800mhz Athlon system I run at home. Both are > > running the same release of FreeBSD (4.0-STABLE). The Athlon has > > only got 256megs of RAM, but I never end up using all of it anyhow. > > Seems like your experience contradicts your own advice; you bought > more memory than you normally use anyway! > > > I know this is a little hipocritical in that I actually used a dual > > PIII system myself, but I tell you looking back I'd have MUCH rather > > spent the money on some faster hardrives than the CPU's. I'd stick with > > AMD, (in fact I have been now for quite a while), on any new box. I've > > setup somewhere between 30 and 40 AMD K62-500mhz machines to run as > > FreeBSD servers by now, and have never regretted doing so. The CPU's > > were cheap enough that I could usually double the ram or storage > > capacity for the same price as using an Intel CPU would have been. > > My own experiences contradict yours. My primary workstation has dual > 400MHz PII Xeons and an all-SCSI disk subsystem, with 256 meg of > ram. I've got an 500MHz AMD K6-2 with a UDMA-33 drive and 64 Meg of > ram. Even though the Xeon box starts two copies of setiathome at boot > time, and I don't bother with X on the AMD box, the AMD box just seems > sluggish. Both are usually running -CURRENT less than a week old. > > On the other hand - the current cost of a PII Xeon CPU is about what I > paid for the AMD cpu+motherboard last month. > > Personally, if I were going to build a workstation these days, I would > feel remiss if I didn't at least price a dual Celeron system. The new > celerons have on-chip cache that runs at CPU speed. > > <mike > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message There is a HUGE difference in performance between the AMD K6-2 500mhz and a PII 500/pIII 500mhz; the architecture of the CPU is different. You're comparing apples-to-oranges here. To be fair, run a 500mhz Athlon system next to a 500mhz Xeon box and see what you come up with. This posting was regarding the Athlon... not the K6-2. I'd pit my Athlon 800mhz box against your dual PII 400 box any day of the week, it's anything but sluggish. Seti@Home packets usually 6-10 hours depending on how much other stuff I'm running on it. -- Nathan Vidican webmaster@wmptl.com Windsor Match Plate & Tool Ltd. http://www.wmptl.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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