[H-GEN] New Machine

[Frank Brand]

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On Mon, 06 Dec 1999, Craig Armour wrote:

> umm... believe it or not... a single cpu system will alwyas be more
> efficient then an smp box... (for any equivilant grunt)  where and smp
> box would help is if you are running lots of different tasks at the same
> time (say gimp and make )

Yep, agree with you, most people wanting SMP probably do not need it so it is
better to invest in a better single processor

> if not... then a single cpu box is the way to go... and the novelty of
> an smp box would not last once you learn that you probably are not
> takeing full advantage of it

However, in many cases the OBSERVABLE difference in performance between a $185
Celeron 466 and a $500 Athlon 500 will be very, very little...especially in
systems such as Linux without the full high speed UDMA support, video support,
high speed RAM etc. etc. As chip speeds get higher and higher it is more and
more the speed of periferals and sub-systems that determine what final speed
results.

That is why I have said dual Celeron 433's ($149 ea) or 466's ($ 185 ea) might
give nearly as good single processor speed but also provide SMP for the same
budget as an Athlon 500 and well under the higher speed Athlons.

--
Frank Brand
E-mail: fbrand at uq.net.au
Home Page: http://www.uq.net.au/~zzfbrand

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