[SWLUG] how much more CPU performance can one get these days?

[Mark Summerfield]

On 2009-09-18, Huw Lynes wrote:
[snip]
> Intel's current stable architecture. Core2 Duo being the equivalent of
> the chip in your machine. i7 is the new shiny chip, but it comes with a
> shiny price-tag while core2 is currently nose-diving through the
> pricelists.
> 
> Your current chip is based on the old netburst architecture. The core
> architecture has notable advantages such as running two floating-point
> operations on each FPU per clock cycle. And of course all the modern
> chips have a higher memory bus speed which can't hurt.

OK, thanks for that info. I know what to look out for.

> That being said if the code itself is badly written it doesn't matter
> how much hardware is thrown at it, it won't go faster.

Yes of course. But I don't think it's badly written, just expensive
because the calculations it does involve feedback loops.

> Which is why I
> recommend testing it rather that making a speculative hardware purchase.

Yes, but setting up the environment isn't trivial.

I guess what all this has suggested to me is that I might as well just
wait for when my machine "naturally" needs replacing and hopefully then
there will be _some_ speed up.

Thanks!

-- 
Mark Summerfield, Qtrac Ltd, www.qtrac.eu
    C++, Python, Qt, PyQt - training and consultancy
        "Programming in Python 3" - ISBN 0137129297