Re: system usage stats (Was: Re: Why Not MySQL? )

> > A Celeron is basically a PII with 128k of full-speed cache. NOT a
> > server processor, I know but sadly I can't do much about it at this
> > point.. It's my understanding that "we" want to wait for an AMD board
> > that has a 64-bit PCI slot because "we" don't like the i840 chipset
> > for some reason "we" can't understand.
> Can someone out there that understands CPUs help me out here? My
> understanding is that Intel vs AMD has benefits depending on
> use. Unfortunately, I don't recall how it goes ... as a server, Intel is
> faster, and for graphics processing, AMD is ... or something like that?

From what I've read, the extra cache in the PII/III gives you a 5%
boost over the Celeron (I'll guess more for some server apps). Intel
still sells the Xeon chips, which have a cache twice as big as the
PII/III, but I'm not sure the clock has kept pace and it was always
overpriced wrt performance.

I don't remember which way the Intel/AMD thing goes, but most folks
won't notice a 5% difference in speed.

Not that anyone asked, but imho the best price/performance x86 machine
has always been a dual processor box one or two clock jumps behind the
fastest available. You get ~80% more performance for ~5% more cost
than a uniprocessor at the fastest speed. I haven't looked recently to
see if there are now uniprocessor machines at the low end that can
beat the price/performance of the dual-processor setup.

- Thomas

--
Thomas Lockhart lockhart(at)alumni(dot)caltech(dot)edu
South Pasadena, California