AMD vs Intel ...

[Charles Swiger]

On Feb 9, 2004, at 1:20 PM, Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Charles Swiger wrote:
>> I know you're not a troll, Marc, but this question is much like asking
>> whether emacs or vi makes a better editor.  :-)
>
> Actually, I wasn't asking which one was better though :)  I'm only 
> curious
> as to how I can compare the two ... its kinda like Sun vs Intel ... I 
> know
> that the Sun should usually outperform Intel on fp, but Intel tends to 
> do
> a pretty good job against Sun on int operations ...

I'd tend to agree, and Kenneth also, it seems-- the raw FP performance 
of the P4s is kinda pokey compared to their int performance.  But 
whether that matters depends on what tasks you're doing.

>> ...although the spec2000fp numbers are 641 vs. 726, so the Xeon does
>> better at floating point.  For that particular test, anyway.  Do you
>> require SMP capabilities?  What are you trying to do with this 
>> machine?
>
> Server environment, Dual Processor ... web/mail/ftp generally ... all 
> our
> current servers are Intel based, but looking at the costs, the AMD are 
> so
> much cheaper, just figured for next one I'd check out what AMD had to
> offer as comparable ...
>
> Just trying to do some comparison shopping ... :)

OK.  The price difference for AMD vs. Intel is pretty significant, but 
be aware that you'll also pay a significant premium for dual-proc 
hardware versus single-proc machines: compare an AMD 2400MP versus the 
2400XP price, or the 2.4GHz Xeon P4 vs. a Northwood P4, and then factor 
in the additional costs for a MP-capable motherboard.

Are your machines especially busy, ie CPU-bound?  Two 2.4GHz processors 
is a lot of computing horsepower, although dynamic web content 
generation or virus scanning can be resource intensive if there's 
enough traffic...

-- 
-Chuck