Author: Charles Worthington
Date: 13:57:54 02/20/03
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On February 20, 2003 at 15:16:50, Matt Taylor wrote: >On February 20, 2003 at 14:03:50, Charles Worthington wrote: > >>Are you referring to the fritz server quotes? Actually my figures were not >>quoted as a comparison of AMD and Intel. I am sure that the 2600 is close to >>being the equal of the P4 3.06. The figures posted there were actually to >>compare the outrageous benchmarks I have seen posted here to the actual >>benchmarks that are being posted in the field...Many of the people posting these >>benchmarks play on the fritz server and I have seen their machines run >>personally. All I am saying is....it just ain't so. They are not getting near >>that speed. I have 120,000 playchess games in my db with the avg. kNs per game >>of each machine posted in the analysis. Thats about the largest db of anyone >>there and you wont find a posting over 2400 kNs in that whole db. The purpose of >>this formus is so that we can all learn what configurations perform well and >>which ones don't so we can improve our own performance. It is hard to achieve >>that goal if inflated figures are being posted. Many people like myself who are >>not computer experts come here for advice on configurations. It is quite >>confusing when you start seeing vastly diverse figures on what is supposedly the >>same cpu. Yes, I think it is obvious that I prefer Intel systems myself. >>But....I also like the AMD systems and am looking to purchase a 2600MP myself. I >>think the 2300 kNs that i have seen posted from the 2400MP is outstanding >>performance and in line with what I would expect from 2.6 to 2.8 Xeons. My only >>question in regard to AMD products is I think not unreasonable: Are they of >>equal quality to Intel's products? In a society where "you get what you pay for" >>price is the way most people tend to judge quality. Since I am no expert on >>processor design I look to the next thing: what does it cost? Now once I have >>the 2600MP in hand I may fall in love with the system...who knows? I don't have >>a bias against AMD...I am just ignorant of their products. I have never owned >>one nor operated one. i have stuck with intel because that is what I have always >>owned (like many people). I am willing to give the AMD a spin and see how she >>performs. Eventually I plan to purchase a quad system. I am still testing the >>waters with the duals though to see which platform to go with. Cost aside I will >>always go with whichever one performs best. If AMD comes out with a quad that >>will dust the Xeons then I will bye it and hapilly save myself some money in the >>process. But...Every independant study I have seen recently has ranked the 2.8 >>Xeon ahead of the 2400MP in most areas. That is the bottom line to date. That is >>why I purchased Intel. Perhaps one day that will change...but not today >> >>Charles > >I used to believe the "you get what you pay for" idiom applied to computing as >well. At that time I was a fan of Intel, myself. I had friends who bought AMD >K6s and talked about how great they were. I was a skeptic for a long time. I >think what convinced me was seeing the Athlon narrowly lead the Pentium 3 >clock-for-clock in optimized code and simply dominate in legacy code. Eventually >I replaced my Pentium 120 with a K6-266. After running the K6 for years, I can >say that I have had nothing but good experiences working with that chip. My >experiences with Athlon have been equally good. > >The Athlon itself has borrowed many things from the DEC Alpha. (My own >conspiracy theory is that the Athlon -is- a modified DEC Alpha 21264.) Nobody >questions the quality of the Alphas. > >By the way, if you are interested in a quad-processor machine, you might turn >your gaze toward Opteron. Within 2 short months (sometime in April), it will be >releasing eight-CPU systems between 1.6 and 2.0 GHz. AMD makes claims of 25% >performance increase over the Athlon in 32-bit software, and the Opteron >supports 64-bit computing which will also be somewhat beneficial to Chess. The >Opteron has support from Linus Torvalds, Sun Microsystems, Dell, Microsoft, and >a number of other big names. I can't say how expensive an eight-CPU Opteron >system will be, but I know it will be fast. > >-Matt Maybe I would be better to wait for that one instead of purchasing an Athlon. At 8x2GHz that one will smoke! :-) At any rate I will keep an open mind and see what the next few months hold before deciding either way. In reality thogh I think the speeds of AMD and Intel will stay neck and neck for awhile.
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