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Well, the Athlon is just a lot better than the P4. :-)
Save your big Xeon bucks! AMD just announced SMP for the Athlon.
In a message dated 6/6/01 11:31:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
imacauslan@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
> Gene
> Thanks!
>
> 1. I am surprised the Athlon 1.3 with DDR is faster than P-4 with
> RDRAM--doesn't Rambus RDRAM run at 800 MHz or something, while standard
> SDRAM
> (e.g., PC-133) run at the machine's front-side bus speed (e.g. 133 MHz) --
> and
> double-data-rate (DDR) RAM run at 2x bus speed?
>
> 2. If the access to system memory is the bottleneck (not processor
speed),
> I
> would think XEON would be an excellent choice for this reason
(particularly
> if
> one gets the 1 MB or 2 MB L1 cache version, vs. the smaller 256K-cached
XEON)
> .
> If I recall, Xeon's cache runs at full processor speed, too -- unlike the
> garden
> variety P-3's, which runs at bus speed??
>
> 3. As I said, I have a 750 MHz Athlon now. I *think* I read somewhere the
> newer Athlon Thunderbirds (> 1 GHz) take a Xeon-like approach with the
cache,
>
> running it at full processor speed--while Athlons between 750 and 1 Ghz
had
> only
> half-speed cache. Have you heard anything along these lines?
>
> ian
>
>
> Gene Pope wrote:
>
> > Hi Ian,
> >
> > I was comparing a twin XEON 450 mhz with 500megs and UltraSCSI 3
> > vs. 1.3gig Athlon with 500megs DDR memory and Ultra ATA.
> >
> > That Athlon was 3x faster in computational speed, and at least as fast in
> > the hard disk department. And that 3x speed was with a program that is
> > "multi-CPU" aware, which TS, and a lot of other financial software, is
not,
>
> > which means for TS, the difference is even more graphic.
> >
> > >From everything I've read from a tech standpoint, the raw speed of the
> CPU,
> > or it's cache size, which between L1, L2 and L3 can be very complicated
to
> > measure, is NOT the bottleneck in today's systems... it's the access to
> > system memory. Most of these fast CPU's are on standby most of the time
> > waiting for memory access.
> >
> > So my approach was, what was the fastest memory/motherboard combo? The
> > Athlon / DDR memory appears to be the winner so far. It's why a 1.3 gig
> > Athlon can still kick butt with a 1.7gig P4 system with RDRAM, although
> the
> > lead is getting smaller, and for some esoteric functions, the very top P4
> > systems are indeed faster. (like MP3 encoding... shucks).
> >
> > But in our case...i.e. backtesting the snot out of a system as fast as we
> > can do it, the single processor is a much better bet.
> >
> > Hope this helps.
> >
> > Gene
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Ian MacAuslan" <imacauslan@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > To: <gene@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2001 1:55 PM
> > Subject: Re: More than 512MB RAM a benefit?
> >
> > > Hi Gene
> > > Just a followup on your post to Omega List -- I'm considering buying a
> > > Xeon machine because of the supposed performance benefit of its larger
> > > and faster on-die L-2 cache
> > > and I/O benefits vs. a standard P-3.
> > >
> > > I currently am using a 750 Mhz Athlon. Do I read you right--that the
> > > Athlon is way-outperforming your dual-Xeon machine??
> > > thanks,
> > > Ian
> > >
> > > Do I read you riught
> > >
> > > >Running Win2000 on 1.3 gig athlon with 512meg DDR, ultra-ATA100 for
> > > some
> > > >months now... no problems yet. Next to my older twin Xeon workstation,
> > > I see
> > > >a 3x speed increase... very happy with speed.
> > >
> > > >best regards,
> > > >Gene
> > > --
> > >
> > > imacauslan@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
> --
>
> imacauslan@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
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