Dual core AMDs (was Re: [Gllug] Recording Ogg streams?)

[John Hearns]

On Mon, 2005-07-11 at 22:12 +0100, John Hearns wrote:

> > 
> > Do you need a new motherboard for a dual core processor, or will they go
> > in an existing one with an appropriate socket?  
> They just slot into the socket. No new motherboard needed.
> 

I should explain why dual-cores are a good thing.
You get maybe 90-95% gain in performance (will depend very much
on the application. Do your own benchmarking, that is a wetted finger
raised in the wind figure). Same space, not much more demands on
power and air conditioning loads.
As lots of of customers have limited space for clusters, and can't keep 
running in more 100 amp feeds, then dual cores will make sense for
departmental sized clusters.
Also a dual system will be a small 4-way SMP machine, and  I think you
will see more people running 4-way jobs on these.

Hate to boast, but we're also due to ship eight-CPU systems to a
university soon. Can take up to 128 gigs of RAM (if you can
afford it!). So the day of the small SMP system is coming again.
Such systems are costly if compared to PC server prices, but are pocket
change if compared to old-school big iron.

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