Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 00:36:32 -0800 From: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <michaelv@MindBender.serv.net> To: William Maddox <maddox@cs.berkeley.edu> Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Pentium vs. Pentium Pro Message-ID: <199702130836.AAA16651@MindBender.serv.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 12 Feb 97 23:51:34 -0800. <199702130751.XAA01365@madrone.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
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>I'm putting together another FreeBSD system and am trying to determine
>whether a Pentium Pro is worth the extra expense.. I would appreciate
>any pointers to meaningful benchmarks on the relative performance of
>the Pentium 133 and Pentium 166 vs. the Pentium Pro 200 and Pentium
>Pro 180 under FreeBSD. The system will be used primarily for program
>development, i.e., lots of compiling.
My experience, doing benchmarks like make worlds, and large software
builds, is that a P6 200/256K is roughly twice as fast as a P5 133MHz.
(When doing comparisons, remember that a P5 200 is NOT 200/133 faster
than a P5 133, due to bus saturation.)
People never seem to listen, or never seem to learn. DON'T BUY 150's
AND 180's. A 180MHz part is slower than a 166MHz part (either P5 or
P6), in almost all normal usage. Similarly, a 150 will usually be
slower than a 133. A P6 166MHz with 512K cache will especially be
faster than a P6 180 with 256K cache.
Remember, chips that run at even multiples of 30 only run their memory
bus at 60MHz, and their PCI bus at 30MHz. Chips that are multiples of
~33 run their memory bus at ~67MHz, and their PCI bus at ~33MHz.
>I'd also be interested in any comments, good or bad, on the Intel
>Venus and the ASUS P/I-XP6NP5, as well as the vendors Aberdeen and
>NetExpress.
I own an Asus P6NP5 (P6 Natoma), and a P55NP4 (P5 Triton-1). Both
have always worked flawlessly, and rock-solid, as expected. My only
complaint with Asus is they don't make their boards expandable enough
(i. e. they try to make them too compact, cutting down on slots and
SIMM sockets). I'd prefer a full-size board, myself. However, there
are no faults to find with the reliability and performance.
DON'T BUY FROM Aberdeen. They are really nice folks, and well
meaning, and all. But if you have any problem at all, it takes at
least two weeks for them to turn around the simplest RMA. For
example, you order a motherboard, it doesn't work, you spend an hour
with a tech explaining why it doesn't work, and convincing him that
you know what you're talking about, he says send it in. You start
calling them over a week later, asking them where your board is.
Finally, you receive it two to three weeks after you sent it in.
Repeat two or three times if you were dumb enough to let them sell you
a SuperMicro board.
Never tried NetExpress.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@MindBender.serv.net
--< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >--
NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32...
NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
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