Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 07:21:21 03/28/01
Go up one level in this thread
On March 28, 2001 at 02:30:35, Benny Ng wrote:
>On March 27, 2001 at 22:03:31, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On March 27, 2001 at 18:12:42, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>
>>>On March 27, 2001 at 14:08:03, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On March 27, 2001 at 12:55:10, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>That's right.
>>>>>
>>>>>Actually as the title says, the message is directed to people who are
>>>>>considering to buy a dual.
>>>>>
>>>>>As far as I know quads are so expensive that it would be ridiculous to buy one
>>>>>just to play chess.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>At the moment, perhaps. 6 years ago duals were just as expensive. Now they
>>>>are dirt cheap. As quads become more common, their prices will continue to
>>>>drop. 5 years ago a quad MB for pentium pro 200s would set you back almost
>>>>$8,000. Today you can buy an Intel SC450NX for 2500 bucks, that includes
>>>>three hot-swappable 400 wat power supplies, motherboard, 6-slot hot-swap raid
>>>>disk cage, 3 on-board scsi controllers, 1 on-board video controller, etc.
>>>>
>>>>All you lack is cpus, memory and drives.
>>>>
>>>>That is a huge reduction. The curve is going downward each year. Now the
>>>>quads are slowly reaching reasonable price points while the 8-way boxes are
>>>>way expensive. In 5 years that too will change I'll bet...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>So I would advice people who are considering buying a dual right now to delay
>>>their buy by several years...
>>
>>Using that logic you should advise everyone to _never_ buy a computer, because
>>next year will _always_ have a faster processor.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>You are always thinking with unlimited resources in mind!
>>>>>
>>>>>I don't disagree with you here, but in real life there are people wondering if
>>>>>it's worth it to buy a dual.
>>>>>
>>>>>And depending on how much money they can put on it, they will have to choose
>>>>>between a single 1.GHz and a dual 1GHz.
>>>>
>>>>OK... but there the dual will perform like a 1.7ghz machine. Which will
>>>>turn into around 60 rating points improvement. That is not trivially
>>>>ignorable.
>>>>
>>>>Each time I teach a parallel programming course here, I will find around one
>>>>out of every 10 students has a dual-processor machine already. And when I ask
>>>>what they paid, they generally say 500-1000 US bucks...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>In the place I live, I cannot even buy a dual. I must order it overseas.
>>>
>>>Bob, there are people outside the United State of America, you know.
>>
>>
>>I ordered mine. There is no "local store" that sells quads here. You can
>>go to any local computer store and find a dual however... Gateway even sells
>>them at the local outlet..
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>You are very lucky to live in a place where you can get all kind of high tech
>>>stuffs for a fraction of your monthly salary, but in other countries a dual
>>>represents a huge amount of money.
>>
>>A dual represents 500 bucks for 2x800 or so. I don't know what the exchange
>>rate is, but that can't be huge...
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>For example, a dual represents more than my average monthly salary.
>>
>>
>>You _really_ make less than $500 US dollars per month?
>
>It's hard to compare monthly salary between countries, especially with US. My
>salary as a computer programmer in Indonesia back in 1999 was $250! That was
>before I move to Singapore. But still, the salary in Singapore is not as high as
>US! :(
>
>Cheers,
>
>Benny Ng
That must be news for Bob.
Christophe
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