FreeBSD on the Athlon64 in 64bit vs Pentium4 3.2E

veliath writes "Came by a comparison from about three weeks ago, between two systems running FreeBSD. One is an Athlon64 running FreeBSD in 64bit mode and the other a Pentium4 3.2E running FreeBSD in 32bit mode."

Comments

Re:Ultimate 64 bit Nethack box!

[phoenix_rizzen]

You're forgetting something very crucial here ... the Athlon64 is clocked almost 1 GHz slower than the P4 ... yet the performance difference is virtually nil. That says a lot more about the performance of the Athlon64 than anything.

That's not a "ho-hum" benchmark to me. That's an "Intel has royally fubar'd themselves. Here's hoping their Pentium-M strategy brings them back on track."

Re:Ultimate 64 bit Nethack box!

[obeythefist]

Interesting point, but surely, Intel will be running into physics problems way faster than AMD will, because Intel are running much closer to the raw speed edge.

Megahurtz myths aside, frequency is still frequency and there is an upper limit. The first one to hit the wall loses, by the way. So the frequency/performance aspect of intel processors is definately worth keeping in mind. This is why the Pentium-M is becoming the forefront processor-More IPC than the PIV architecture. Perhaps intel has hit the wall already?

Likewise, one could reason that many of the tricks that Intel are using to increase frequency could be applied to AMD's architectures in the future, giving AMD much more room for growth, as intel has already exhausted many of the available technologies.