Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 14:45:29 12/29/03
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On December 29, 2003 at 17:06:32, Miguel A. Ballicora wrote: >what CPU? FX or not? Opteron? When I investigated this recently, I came to the conclusion that for a chess program, any of the AMD 64-bit cpus will probably be about equal. The main differences between the Athlon64, Athlon64 FX, and Opteron seem to be along the lines of memory bandwidth, and the FX has some extra stuff that should make real time multimedia applications better (mainly 3D games and that sort of thing). Of course, the FX is pretty expensive too. You might get that 10% speed increase, but you said you don't want to pay double for it, so I'd pass on that one. I would just get the highest clock speed you can afford. Memory bandwidth has never been very important for chess programs, and that seems to be the main difference between the various AMD 64-bit cpus. Of course, if you're getting a dual, I think that limits you to the Opteron (no Athlon 64 or FX). Be sure to get the 200 series if you get a dual, and a 100 series if you get a single cpu (ex. an Opteron 148 is for a single cpu machine, while a 248 is for a dual, 848 is for an 8-cpu machine). >Are any compilers that produce binaries that take advantage of the 64 bits? >GCC? Intel? gcc will. The Intel compiler is free for linux, but I don't think it will compile 64-bit code (well, it will compile for the Itanium). I'm almost sure the new Microsoft compiler will (.NET 2004?). I don't know if it is officially released yet or not. >If the hardware is compatible with Linux much better because I plan to use that >OS for other scientific programs. You could always dual boot if necessary (if, for instance, you wanted to use the Microsoft compiler and also have Linux for your other scientific programs). I have no idea about the motherboards either.
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