[H-GEN] Compaq Proliant

[Robert Brockway]

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On Mon, 28 Jul 2003, David Jericho wrote:

> I'll often chose a 800MHz processor over a 400MHz processor anyday,
> regardless of task at hand.

Of course for a modern system there is a "price point" to worry about. A
2800Mhz system might cost 1.3 times as much as a 2400Mhz system (as an
example).  Unless you _really_ need the extra grunt, it'd be worth
sticking as close as possible to the optimal price point.  Of course if
you have an unlimited budget you may not need to worry ;)

> [1] The RISC vs CISC processor[2] design path has been interesting to
> watch. It's only now MIPS and SPARC are starting to cotton onto the
> fact that people do infact want faster clockrates, and throughput

The question is, is this coming from techs or management?  A SPARC
cpu provides a lot more grunt per clock cycle but the lower cpu clock
speed looks terrible on a glossy brochure.

> isn't everything.

No, but neither is cpu speed.  Too many people assume that all
there is to a box's performance is the speed of the cpu.  I think it is
this belief among the general public which has led to most PCs being
supplied by default in a virtually memory starved configuration.

If the disk is io-bound a lot of the time, the super fast cpu will never
properly be used.  If the box is memory starved it will end up swapping so
much that it becomes io-bound.  The cpu may also be used so heavily in
this situation (thrashing needs cpu) that users may think their cpu isn't
coping, when in reality the box just needs more ram (not exactly
expensive these days).

> [2] I know the lines of RISC vs CISC are quite blurred, but how
> do lump MIPS/SPARC/PA-RISC[3] into a different box from Intel and
> AMD?

CISC/RISC is probably the best distinction to make imho.  At least it is a
well understood distinction.

Cheers,
	Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org  ICQ: 104781119
Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah

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