RE: A Question about Dual CPU systems

[Ed Troy <etroy@aeroconsult.com>]

I keep hearing how good the AMD Athelon chips are, and how fast they are. 
Since I am always looking for, and needing, the fastest computers I can 
get, they are interesting to me. My only problem is that it seems that 
every time I use something that is "compatible" or "just like", I end up 
with problems. This has been especially acute with printers that "were HP 
compatible", and the outputs were unusable in many cases when I tried to 
use HP drivers. I've had similar, but even more severe problems, with 
software running on dual processor machines, even though they were Intel. 
Specifically, I am wondering if anyone has ever had a problem running an 
operating system, or a software program, in the last few years, on an AMD 
processor. If not, then I will probably go to an Athelon on my next 
multi-processor unit. If not, I will probably go to a dual processor PIII 
Xeon system.

In terms of pure, raw, power, I've been told by many sources that the 
Compac (used to be DEC) Alpha is the fastest computer available. But, 
unfortunately, there is little software available for it, unless you buy 
very expensive compilations of common software, or compile stuff yourself. 
I have noticed that the DEC Alphas tend to blow the doors off virtually 
anything else when it comes to processing Seti@home data, which is similar 
to the task we are talking about.

A Sun workstation for less than $1k is obviously interesting, but the 
software tens to be very expensive. Does anyone know of links to speed 
comparisons between, say, Athelons, PIII, PIV, Sun, and Alpha computers?

Thanks,
Ed

At 03:53 PM 5/13/2002, you wrote:
>The marking folks at Intel are pretty smart.  Here is what they
>did when they went from the Pentium III to the Pentium IV.
>
>They figured correctly that "Joe Consumer" who shops at Best Buy
>knows only one thing about computers "more Gigahurts is goodder"
>
>So in one brilliant move, they simplified the CPU logic so that it now
>takes more clock cycles per operation and then run up the clock speed
>so that now a 1Ghz P-III is about equal to a 1.4Ghz P-IV but the
>P-IV is on a smaller die and costs less to manufacture.  The Intel
>bean counters are happy. Joe sees a higher clock speed and is happy
>too.
>
>People who know what's up buy the Athalon XP/MP but Intel doesn't
>care as people who know what's up account for about 0.01% of the
>PC market.
>
>Sun is selling $995.00 SPARC based boxes now.  These shouldn't be
>overlooked.  They only run at 500Hmz but they are full 64 bit CPUs
>that do fast floating point and the box is only 1U tall.
>
>
>
>--- Bob Dubner <rdubner@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
> > Whether you go dual or single, I have some experience with
> > floating-point
> > number-crunching applications running under Windows.
> >
> > Think Athlon.
> >
> > Athlon CPU chips are cheaper, clock cycle for clock cycle, than
> > Pentium
> > chips.  And their floating-point unit is more efficient.  In my
> > experience,
><SNIP>
>
>=====
>Chris Albertson
>   Home:   310-376-1029  chrisalbertson90278@yahoo.com
>   Cell:   310-990-7550
>   Office: 310-336-5189  Christopher.J.Albertson@aero.org
>
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