[Wylug-discuss] Linux on Intel 64-Bit Xeon

[John Hodrien]

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, Mark P. Conmy wrote:

>
> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, John Hodrien wrote:
>> 
>> I can tell you that the dual Xeon 3.6 box we've got with 2Gigs of RAM is a
>> screamer, honestly the fastest thing I've ever used at the desktop.  The
>> graphics card will help a little with that (Quadro FX 4400), although not
>> much.  But then I've not used an equivalent AMD64 box to compare it 
>> against.
>
> One testimony I've had is from someone who has been playing with
> a pair of beowulfs (one AMD one Xeon).  The AMD works much better
> and, while the hardware is largely comparable, there may be other
> factors involved.
>
> As you say, comparisons are tricky things.

I hear lots of favourable things about AMD too, and certainly their
hypertransport appears to offer lots of theoretical benefits.

Although once you start looking a dual-core, I think things are going to look
fun for AMD.  Take an old dual CPU board, flash it with a new BIOS, buy a
couple of dual-core chips and laugh.

With Intel you buy a new motherboard (which will cost lots no doubt), a couple
of dual-core chips, and watch as your FSB starved design struggles to scale.

Once you push that to 8 and 16 way I think AMD are going to be able to pitch
some tasty machines.

jh

-- 
"Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination."
                                                      -- E E Cummings