The reason many CPU's run at stock speeds far below their maximum is supply and demand. Intel and AMD can't sell all their chips as the fastest speed grade even if they all pass the tests!
I believe that your cynicism is correct in this case. I have a Pentium 4 1.8 chip and a Pentium 2.4B chip.
Both of these CPUs have an 18x multiplier.
I have run both of them at a 140 MHZ FSB speed, on the same motherboard (GA-8IRXP), and they have identical performance and operate at the same average temperature. The only difference is that the 1.8 is _supposed_ to run at only 100 MHZ FSB (instead of 133 or 140), but in reality it can do everything the 2.4 can do. Oh, and it has been crunching Seti@home constantly now for almost 11 months at 40% more than its rated clock speed, with no signs of degradation.
The P4 pricing is designed so that all the stoopid rich people with more money than brains can go out and get the fastest processor in the range, not realizing that they can still get the same performance from a CPU 2 or 3 notches lower down.
But this is what I am doing. The 2.2Ghz Celerons are cheap and are entry-level. Believe me, these boxes are quite cheap to build. If I were buying secondhand PCs, then I would consider your suggestion of 450Mhz DeskPros. But since I have been asked to buy new PCs, I believe the 2.2's are suitable as they are expected to remain in service for the next 3 years.
Also, these guys need to run a particular web application which *Requires* IE6, which runs like a pig on the older hardware.
They do not come to work because they get to play with a fast box, they come to work to work.
True, but by far the largest number of complaints I get about the PCs in our network fall into the 'MY PC is too SLOW' - category.
Our previous generation of SOE PCs are a mixture of Celeron 433's and PIII 500's. While I think these are still adequate for office use today, these newer 2.2G's are very noticably 'zippier' than our previous generation.
I like to keep the users happy - its part of my job.
I have recently been testing prototype Celeron 2.2Ghz systems for use in an office environment, using ASUS Terminator P4 Barebones boxes with 512MB RAM and Windows XP / Office XP. I have basically been trying to come up with a simple, cheap desktop machine to run office apps, web browsing and Citrix ICA Client, for a rollout of 100 or so machines for our Company.
As user perception is EVERYTHING, what I have been looking for is simply a machine whose user interface FEELS fast to the user, and not necessarily have outstanding number-crunching abilities. In other words, as long as things "open quickly", the users will be happy. They don't give a shit about 3dMark scores or Seti@home crunch times, because the machine will spend 99% of its life running Word or Internet Explorer. My approach has been to give the 2.2G boxes a very basic WinXP Pro setup, with plenty of RAM and a decent Harddrive.
So far, the prototypes I have built have passed with flying colours in this regard. I have tested a few out on real users, and have got very positive feedback so far.
So, I would say that the 2.2G Celerons are ideal for this situation, and probably more reliable than the AMDs.
Please people, there is no universal CPU. You need to choose the most appropriate processor for the role. Although this sounds really obvious, it is rarely put into practice, and lots of supposedly smart people get bogged-down in monotonous holy-wars about AMD vs Intel or whatever. AMD and Intel both make great chips - all you need to do is look at it objectively and choose the right one for the job.
... getting a bit monotonous now. It was funny for a while, but now its just tragic. Every single topic that comes up has one now.
How long must this go on ?
..about these results. He's been telling everyone that the real speed of gravity is many orders of magnitude greater than that of light !!
For those that don't know, his web site is here..
http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/speed_of_gra vity.asp
Yeah thats fine if you work some some fatass company with money to burn. Trouble is, most (90%) of us don't have that luxury these days. Spares for every type of equipment ? Redundant everything ?
Yeah, right, I can just imagine our company doing that... NOT !!! At the moment, we need to get sign-off from the boss just to purchase a mouse or a harddrive. We're understaffed and work really hard to get the most out of what we have. And before you tell me to just work somewhere else, I'd like to say that the job market out here (Australia) is shit at the moment.
Tell you what, next time you get bored because your job is so EASY, we can swap jobs - You can have a nice interesting, challenging job for a change, and I can fuck around playing quake all day !!
Your post certainly will not win you any popularity competitions with all of us sysadmins working our ass off constantly. Just remember, you should never take anything for granted..
Its true that having several different desktops and packaging systems is a consequence of open source. People are free to contribute to Linux, and different people have different approaches to designing software. Different users also have different needs, so its not as simple as having one method clearly "emerge" from all the others.
Having a number of Distros, Desktop Environments, and package management allows users to choose what they are comfortable with. It really becomes a question of taste.
However, I feel that there still needs to be some kind of standard. The control Linus has with the Kernel should have been extended to other aspects of Linux outside of the Kernel. It always seemed odd to me that the kernel is ultimately under the control of one indivual, and yet the rest of the operating system is in a state of near anarchy. A bit of standardization would go a long way to regain a sense of direction for Linux. Executing this standardization in reality may be very difficult to achieve, however...
I used to do the same thing on Commodore 64's in stores. However, before putting the PC in an endless loop, I would disable the break key using a POKE command (POKE 808,234 if I remember correctly), so that my pathetic little program was unstoppable.
Yep. Dune is the best. Well, at least, the Frank Herbet ones are.
Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for his Son's work - The Brian Herbet Prequels just don't cut it. The writing is very weak and the characters are one-dimensional.
Still, the Prequels are nevertheless entertaining.
My advice to a Dune Newbie is to read the Frank herbet novels first.
The reason many CPU's run at stock speeds far below their maximum is supply and demand. Intel and AMD can't sell all their chips as the fastest speed grade even if they all pass the tests!
I believe that your cynicism is correct in this case. I have a Pentium 4 1.8 chip and a Pentium 2.4B chip. Both of these CPUs have an 18x multiplier.
I have run both of them at a 140 MHZ FSB speed, on the same motherboard (GA-8IRXP), and they have identical performance and operate at the same average temperature. The only difference is that the 1.8 is _supposed_ to run at only 100 MHZ FSB (instead of 133 or 140), but in reality it can do everything the 2.4 can do. Oh, and it has been crunching Seti@home constantly now for almost 11 months at 40% more than its rated clock speed, with no signs of degradation.
The P4 pricing is designed so that all the stoopid rich people with more money than brains can go out and get the fastest processor in the range, not realizing that they can still get the same performance from a CPU 2 or 3 notches lower down.
Give them what they need, nothing more.
But this is what I am doing. The 2.2Ghz Celerons are cheap and are entry-level. Believe me, these boxes are quite cheap to build. If I were buying secondhand PCs, then I would consider your suggestion of 450Mhz DeskPros. But since I have been asked to buy new PCs, I believe the 2.2's are suitable as they are expected to remain in service for the next 3 years.
Also, these guys need to run a particular web application which *Requires* IE6, which runs like a pig on the older hardware.
They do not come to work because they get to play with a fast box, they come to work to work.
True, but by far the largest number of complaints I get about the PCs in our network fall into the 'MY PC is too SLOW' - category.
Our previous generation of SOE PCs are a mixture of Celeron 433's and PIII 500's. While I think these are still adequate for office use today, these newer 2.2G's are very noticably 'zippier' than our previous generation. I like to keep the users happy - its part of my job.
I have recently been testing prototype Celeron 2.2Ghz systems for use in an office environment, using ASUS Terminator P4 Barebones boxes with 512MB RAM and Windows XP / Office XP. I have basically been trying to come up with a simple, cheap desktop machine to run office apps, web browsing and Citrix ICA Client, for a rollout of 100 or so machines for our Company.
As user perception is EVERYTHING, what I have been looking for is simply a machine whose user interface FEELS fast to the user, and not necessarily have outstanding number-crunching abilities. In other words, as long as things "open quickly", the users will be happy. They don't give a shit about 3dMark scores or Seti@home crunch times, because the machine will spend 99% of its life running Word or Internet Explorer. My approach has been to give the 2.2G boxes a very basic WinXP Pro setup, with plenty of RAM and a decent Harddrive. So far, the prototypes I have built have passed with flying colours in this regard. I have tested a few out on real users, and have got very positive feedback so far. So, I would say that the 2.2G Celerons are ideal for this situation, and probably more reliable than the AMDs.
Please people, there is no universal CPU. You need to choose the most appropriate processor for the role. Although this sounds really obvious, it is rarely put into practice, and lots of supposedly smart people get bogged-down in monotonous holy-wars about AMD vs Intel or whatever. AMD and Intel both make great chips - all you need to do is look at it objectively and choose the right one for the job.
The only thing worse is www.tomshardware.com
Or three chords, even ?
Yeah, and he should be using DSCP anyway, not TOS - its out of date. Sheesh!
Great, so we can all look forward to a few more years of predictable ISR jokes. Maybe Someone will set up an ISR bot to generate them automatically ...
... getting a bit monotonous now. It was funny for a while, but now its just tragic. Every single topic that comes up has one now. How long must this go on ?
..about these results. He's been telling everyone that the real speed of gravity is many orders of magnitude greater than that of light !! For those that don't know, his web site is here ..
http://www.metaresearch.org/cosmology/speed_of_gra vity.asp
Yeah thats fine if you work some some fatass company with money to burn. Trouble is, most (90%) of us don't have that luxury these days. Spares for every type of equipment ? Redundant everything ? Yeah, right, I can just imagine our company doing that ... NOT !!! At the moment, we need to get sign-off from the boss just to purchase a mouse or a harddrive. We're understaffed and work really hard to get the most out of what we have. And before you tell me to just work somewhere else, I'd like to say that the job market out here (Australia) is shit at the moment.
Tell you what, next time you get bored because your job is so EASY, we can swap jobs - You can have a nice interesting, challenging job for a change, and I can fuck around playing quake all day !!
Your post certainly will not win you any popularity competitions with all of us sysadmins working our ass off constantly. Just remember, you should never take anything for granted ..
Its true that having several different desktops and packaging systems is a consequence of open source. People are free to contribute to Linux, and different people have different approaches to designing software. Different users also have different needs, so its not as simple as having one method clearly "emerge" from all the others. Having a number of Distros, Desktop Environments, and package management allows users to choose what they are comfortable with. It really becomes a question of taste. However, I feel that there still needs to be some kind of standard. The control Linus has with the Kernel should have been extended to other aspects of Linux outside of the Kernel. It always seemed odd to me that the kernel is ultimately under the control of one indivual, and yet the rest of the operating system is in a state of near anarchy. A bit of standardization would go a long way to regain a sense of direction for Linux. Executing this standardization in reality may be very difficult to achieve, however ...
I used to do the same thing on Commodore 64's in stores. However, before putting the PC in an endless loop, I would disable the break key using a POKE command (POKE 808,234 if I remember correctly), so that my pathetic little program was unstoppable.
Yep. Dune is the best. Well, at least, the Frank Herbet ones are. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for his Son's work - The Brian Herbet Prequels just don't cut it. The writing is very weak and the characters are one-dimensional. Still, the Prequels are nevertheless entertaining. My advice to a Dune Newbie is to read the Frank herbet novels first.