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Current Processors Tested With Linux
Happy-Jollies writes "The team at LinuxHardware.org have kept us up-to-date on the latest in processors for quite some time now and they're at it again. With the latest release of the Pentium 4 'Prescott,' many Linux users will be deciding where to spend their money. LinuxHardware.org's round-up takes a look at the Prescott, Northwood, Extreme Edition, and the AMD Athlon 64."
Actually, there's some fairly hefty core changes involved in making the integer pipeline 31 stages instead of 20. Almost enough to account for most, if not all, of the additional transistors in this thing.
I'd actually be suprised if the AMD64 extensions were in this chip...most of what I've been hearing/seeing has Tejas being the earliest we could see them.
I will always use AMD for my home PC mainly because of the price. IMHO Intel is over priced, you're paying for the name not the product/quality.
Don't forget the extra pipe stages... those count for a lot. I can't say how many transistors, but it should make a dent in the numbers.
A 1 MB L2 cache will be at least 50 million transistors, assuming 6T/bit (1024 * 1024 * 8 * 6), not including sense amps, decoders, tags, coherence, predecode bits, etc.
Don't let the fact that they proclaim the Athlon 64 to be the 'clear looser' in the SPECViewperf discipline because of the poor results in the DX-08 and DRV-09 tests fool you.
Those scores are probably not representative of the true performance of the AMD processor but rather of the early stages of optimization of the Linux support for the Nvidia NForce 3-150 chipset. The very same weakness was observed in the past in other reviews that used Specviewperf on Windows platforms, such as this one from THG. Subsequent versions of the Nvidia drivers have since brought noticeable improvements.
The AMD scores would likely have been much more competitive if a motherboard based on another Athlon 64 chipset like the VIA K8T800 would've been used for this review.
Unfortunatly AMD not being 100% compatable with the standard causes problems.
Good old FUD -- when Windows crashes on an Intel box, it's because of Microsoft. When Windows crashes on a AMD box, it's because the AMD "isn't 100% compatible". Uh huh. I'll buy either AMD or Intel without a hesitation (I'm not a fanboy) where one is the clear winner, but I still see FUD when someone spouts it.
Here's a clue for you -- neither AMD or Intel are x86 processors, but rather both have a converter that converts x86 to their own internal microcode. The x86 standard that they're converting is EXTREMELY well known and standardized (I mean -- other people have to write the software that runs on it). AMD is 100% compatible with core x86.
Intel also has much more R&D into making a chip that won't fry itself if it gets too hot. AMD? Naw, they'd rather make you buy a new chip than bother to make it prevent a problem before it occurs.
Tom, is that you? Firstly, Intel and AMD chips are comparable in heat levels (actually the Prescott sets all new levels for heat generation, making Intel the clear winner in the egg cooker category), but secondly you are correct -- Intel has been more fervent in putting heat protection on their chips, though it is arguably over-engineering. It's like having guidewires "just in case" around all of your high rises. It's generally unnecessary as, apart from Tom's Hardware PR stunts, heatsinks don't fall off processors in regular use. My car doesn't have a special fuel purge if I decide to fill it full of ketchup.
"Prescott, Northwood, Extreme Edition, and the AMD Athlon 64."
In all honesty--unless you absolutely need 8GB of memory--there's little difference between these processors in terms of performance. They're all more or less in the same ballpark. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower, depending on the benchmark. None of them is a huge breakout CPU performance-wise.
Here's what's different:
PRICE: There's a lot more than a few percent variation in price.
WATTS: In exchange for your 5-15% speed boost, note that you're getting more than a 15% increase in power usage.
That doesn't make sense. Yellow Dog is an Apple Authorized Reseller who will ship you a brand-spankin new G5 or XServe with Yellow Dog Linux running on it and under warranty from Apple.
They really should have used a Yellow Dog box or named it an x86 shootout.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
be warned - to get the boosts yr going to have to start at a low stage install and this results in a looong install time. on my imac it took (wait for it) a week to install. and updates take forever too. but, as long as you read up on your use flags and set them well you'll get a fast core system.
2 1337 4 u!