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Athlon MP Reviewed
RendEr writes "At The Tech Report, there's a review of AMD's latest multiprocessor chip, the Athlon MP 1900+. Watching this thing smoke through Linux kernel complies is a beautiful thing. Combined with AMD's new 760MPX chipset, these chips could help usher in a new era of cheap dual-processor desktop systems. "
Given the athlon's heat issues, it might literally be smoking!
(yes, i'm well aware of the follow-up article but can you actually buy one of these new thermal control motherboards? i thought not.)
... dare I commit a computer junkie sin, and ask what is *truly* the point in running dual processors, if when you are already running a decent (1 gig +) board and chipset... the difference is only in a few seconds? I haven't been using *nix systems for very long (I just started running Debian recently) but the first thing I noticed after switching from windows was that the sheer processing power from my 1 gig chipset (with my measly 128 ram) is already fast enough that compiling the kernel isn't a long wait at all... I'm almost afraid to know how fast it would have compiled if I had been running a dual chipset.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'd *love* to be able to use numerous copies of photoshop (if I had windows and if the version of windows I had been using even used both chips... afaik win 98 would get real cranky about 2 processing chips and just use the one), but I've never had the oppurtunity to put that to the test because I've never been able to afford a dual chipset. (so if you know how windows does with dual processors, I'd be delighted to find out.)
One thing I am wondering though, is during the test, they used the Duron chips verses the athlons... its downright obvious which chipsets going to win... If i am not mistaken, the Duron was AMD's reply to the Celeron... a "cheap" chip that lacks as much sheer power as the Athlons. (And if I'm not mistaken, the Duron gives the Celeron a good run for its money).
Now if I had the spare... howver much money it would cost for the chips and board (and some newram to go with it) I would probably buy it in a heartbeat, though I don't know what good it would *really* do a computer user like me... the most cpu intensive program I use is the gimp. (One thing I miss about windows is ps6.0...*sigh*)
What I would like to see is tests of the athlon verses intels latest prize... that would be a competition worth snickering at. I'd like to see intel get blown out of the water.
-- RJ