Intel's prices are aggressive for being a brand new chip. Very competitive with AMDs offerings. And in the server market, CPU cost is usually only about 10-15% of the total cost (it's the disk drives that eat up a large portion of the hardware budget). Most of the time when we're spec'ing machines, we try to get the most cores for the least money so that we can spend more on RAM.
On the desktops, the new Intel dual-core CPUs are still a bit expensive ($200-$250). But it forced AMD to drop their X2 prices low enough ($151) that those are worth putting into desktop systems (even lower-end systems). We decided against using the old Pentium D 805 chips even though they are available for only $100.
They're ideal for low-CPU network services such as DNS / DHCP. Pair of laptop drives or flash memory and you have a box that is very low-power and low-maintenance.
Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalize a use for my old 600MHz C3. My current plans are to do the DHCP / DNS with it so that I can shut other boxes off when they aren't needed.
Note that only the high-end CPUs have the 4MB of L2 cache. The mid-range and low-end Intel chips only have 2MB of L2.
At first, when I saw the 4MB numbers, I was worried because Opterons are 2x1MB L2. But once I dug into the real specs and saw that the majority of the Intel line is only 2MB L2 shared cache, I was less worried.
(And worried might be the wrong term. I'd like to see the two companies compete for the next 10-20 years rather then one or the other running away with the performance crown.)
For sysadmins, the big advantage of AMD64 was that there was little to no risk in choosing it. You lost no performance at running existing 32bit apps (maybe even a speed gain) and you were ready for the 64bit shift.
Which was unlike other attempts to move to 64bit which required compromises (running 32bit code in an emulation layer or taking a performance hit on 32bit code). Or that required that you recompile everything into 64bit mode in order to take advantage of the new architecture.
I've said it for 2 years now (longer?), AMD64's ability to run legacy software without a performance disadvantage is why the market embraced it. Or at least, why they didn't run away screaming from it.
Anyway, on the AMD side they should gain some of it back when they shrink from 90nm down to 65nm in the 4th quarter of 2006. I think that gets them some automatic power savings due to the process shrink and possibly a performance boost (higher frequencies?).
But the Intel Core 2 Duo chips are looking like very good chips which definitely catch up with AMDs offerings and even surpass it in some (all?) areas. Their pricing is also rather aggressive for being a dual-core CPU. Not quite cheap enough (even the Core Duo) to put into low-end desktops but definitely inexpensive enough to put into mid-range desktops for more demanding users.
It's a very good time to build / buy systems. We're switching from putting Athlon64 3000+ CPUs to dual-core X2 3800+ CPUs now that the price cuts have hit. The extra cost is pretty small (+$60? +$80?) and we get snappier desktop systems that will last an extra few years. I'm hoping for another round of price cuts to drive prices down even lower (so we can outfit with 2GB instead of 1GB).
Start with a good enclosure like the BYTECC ME-835U2F ($45). It has an internal power-supply using a standard A/C power cord so there are no funky wall warts or AC adapters to lose. It has both Firewire and USB so you can pick your poison. It's an aluminum shell so it will probably hold up well. Plus it has a 2nd internal fan which is designed to keep the hard drive cooler (most external units omit fans or only have a small 40mm fan in the back).
Tack on the 500GB drive ($250) and you're in the pricing ballpark of the pre-built 500GB external drives. However, the advantage that you have is that you can make sure and buy hard drives with 3-year or 5-year warranties.
Alternately, you can go the removable drive tray route (DRW115 series by StarTech). Costs are about the same ($45/caddy) but the drives are slightly smaller. For protection, look for "DRAWERBAG" part #s which are padded bags slightly larger then the removable drives. Between the shock mounting inside the drive tray and the padded bag, you'll have less worries about damage in transit.
Hmmm... the whole disk encryption is only available for enterprise versions though? I would think the whole disk encryption would be popular in the laptop market.
Personally I use both. System Restore *and* Acronis (on a weekly/monthly basis). And SecondCopy to mirror data files off to external drives every few hours.
Both have their uses (System Restore has pulled my system back from the brink once or twice). I use Acronis as more of a last-ditch defense against reinstalling from scratch. I prefer to let System Restore take a few swings at making things better prior to bringing out the heavy guns (which requires restoring the image then reloading any data that changed).
On newer systems, we simply use Knoppix+NTFSClone once the system is in a "known good" state. We might update those images every few months, but only if we know the user is installing new applications. Otherwise we rely on SecondCopy to backup their local user data (mostly mail files) to a central location. System Restore comes in handy more in those situations where we're not imaging the drives weekly. (Our goal in imaging is to save the hours of initial setup time if the O/S really goes south.)
Is there anything in the works beyond perpendicular storage? Even that is supposed to be topping out at only 4x today's capacities. i.e. 3.5" drives topping out at 2TB.
p133s were more likely to ship with 16-32MB of RAM. Rarely did you see one with 64MB or even 128MB. The 64MB machines were common in the late 90s and the 128MB machines were common just before Win2000 shipped (so 1998-1999). IIRC, I had a p90 with 16MB, but I might've upgraded it to 32MB or 64MB using EDO memory. My developer machine in 1999 came with 64MB stock and I convinced the IT group to up it to 192MB.
(Currently retiring a bunch of late 90s Dells that have survived all previous attempts. Most came with 32MB or 64MB and were 200-450MHz machines.)
A lot of the Dells made in the mid-late 90s (that I'm dealing with) could only support 32MB modules and only had 2 slots. A few rarer ones had 3 slots and could accept 64MB or 128MB chips. But those are 1999 models (give or take a year).
Price differences are definitely close to negligible now.
The 13" MacBook that we purchased recently cost about $2500 including required software. That includes the 2GB of RAM that we upgraded to (it was only a 512MB unit out of the box).
Toshiba Tecra and Lenovo T60s price in around $2050 for a similar setup. Even if we had paid a bit more for the MB it would still be worth it to have a very capable machine that the user is happy with.
But we don't buy at the low-end of the scale. We try to outfit our laptops for a 4-8 year lifespan. (Four years with a power-user, then another 4 years with a less demanding user.) That means things like dual-core CPUs, 2GB of RAM, docking stations to reduce wear and tear.
Hmm... spent the half hour and compacted all my folders (4.5GB down to 3.3GB for the profile).
Thunderbird 1.5's UI is still slow at selecting messages. Click on a message in the message list and it takes half a second for TB to highlight the message. Then there's the issue that rules are not always moving messages to the proper folders.
How is it at dealing with large volumes of e-mail now? I subscribe to 50 heavy traffic mailing lists and the 1.5 version is very slow. Even when it's not retrieving mail, it seems like it takes forever to allow me to select messages in the inbox (which only has 30 messages).
(All of my mailing lists are in their own folders, with sub-folders where I move the previous year's messages to to make the main folders smaller. Still I have around 4GB of e-mail in my Thunderbird profile folder.)
How well does it perform when loading multiple background tabs over a slow net connection?
(My biggest complaint about the 1.5 firefox code is the constant waits while a background / non-active tab talks to the DNS and web servers. The whole reason taht I loaded the tab in the background was that I knew it would take a minute to load and render...)
Amazon doesn't offer anything other than a low price.
Oh? I primarily use them because of convenience features such as:
- Never losing items in my shopping cart, even if I leave the cart idle for a few weeks or months. So I can add things to the cart on a whim, then come back at the end of the month and make a final purchase decision.
- Reviews by other users.
- Wish lists, being able to move things between my cart and the "purchase later" section of the cart.
- Instant link to buy used copies if I want to save some cash
- One stop shopping for a bunch of stuff that is a pain to track down otherwise.
- Varied shipping options to let me decide how fast or how much I want to pay for shipping.
Price really isn't the reason that I shop there. The first item in my list is probably the main reason though. I may see a book mentioned on Slashdot but won't want to buy it right away (when I can order 2-3 books later and save on shipping). With Amazon, I quick jump to their page, add it to my cart and not have to worry that I'll forget to purchase it later.
That's an interesting idea. Does the field of discipline tend to reward those who learn in a certain way? In IT/programming, visual and kinesthetic are natural fits since we program using visual feedback (along with lots of reading) and kinesthetic feedback (try it, did it work?). Plus, there's the ability to mentally picture the problem at hand and form the solution in your head (spatial thinking?) prior to implementing it.
I was originally drawn towards programming because I find it easy to picture the solutions in my head and the immediate feedback of changing a line of code was more rewarding then re-soldering a connection. Would I have been more likely to go into education or law if my aural skills were foremost?
We at work use some computers three years and some old. Their RAM went a four fold increase, from 256MB to 1GB. The latest computers had 1GB of RAM out of the box, and are expected to survive for some three years. While 64bit has no no use, its increased accessible memory might come in handy in the followind years.
Only 3 years?
Are your current workers CPU constrained (running simulations or other CPU-intensive tasks) or more general office work?
If the later, then our planned lifespan for new PCs is 6-8 years. Possibly as long as 10-12 for dual-core 2GB systems (which are expandable to 4GB down the road). Power users we might upgrade more frequently, but their older machines will simply move to others in the company who don't push their machines as hard.
(My laptop is already 4 years old, and will probably last until next spring when I upgrade to a dual-core 2GB laptop. At which point that laptop will be used by a less demanding user for another few years.)
My point is that this is no longer the late 90s when CPU power doubled every 12-15 months and a 3 year old machine was truly roadkill. Except for multi-core, it's felt like CPU speeds have been almost at a standstill the past few years (10-20% increase/year... tops). Which has allowed us to move away from the replace-every-3-years mantra to a more sane 5-10 year lifespan.
I have an older Tyan dual-CPU system (K8W S2875) where all the memory is connected to the first CPU. The second Opteron CPU has to go through the first one for memory access. That imposes a very noticable performance hit in certain cases where both CPUs are trying to pull from memory.
For example, creating PAR2 sets with QuickPar. If I run a single QuickPar process, it can work at a rate of around 650/sec (I forget the units) but it only keeps one CPU busy. OTOH, if I run a second Quickpar process, both units slow down to 500-550/sec (for a total of 1000-1100/sec). That keeps both CPUs busy, but they're stepping on each other in a mad stampede to get to the memory. It's still worth running 2 QuickPAR processes at the same time, just not as efficient as it might've been.
Multi-tasking performance also suffers a bit. The system is still responsive when one CPU is busy with a heavy task, but not as responsive if both CPUs had their own paths to RAM.
Next time, I plan on getting a newer Tyan Tiger K8WE (S2877) motherboard which has a separate memory bus for each CPU socket. At least, according to the block diagram in the motherboard manual.
AMD64 has been selling over the past few years was due more to its price/performance ratio then it actually being 64-bit.
That and it's future-compatible which is admittedly a nebulous attribute. If I'm getting good price/performance for existing 32bit code *and* I'm running a 64bit system in case the market shifts to 64bit before I retire the system, why not buy a 64bit CPU? I'm not shooting myself in the foot short-term because performance will still be good on today's tasks. And I'm not boxing myself in long-term either by running a 32bit CPU. What's not to like about a risk-free migration to 64bit capable PCs?
Very much a win-win for the consumer / IT departments and was, I believe, a strong competitive advantage for AMD over the past few years. Intel is finally in the game with their Core2 systems (the earlier Intel CPUs with 64bit extensions probably counted as well).
I don't know about the rest of the slashdotters, but from the experience i got from college i would get some books on the matter before attending any kind of training. I know this is not the quickest way out, but is the thorough way, and believe me sometimes in IT doing it right is much more important than doing it quickly.
That all depends on which mode of learning suits you best. Generally, this is broken down into (1) learning by touch/doing, (2) learning visually i.e. reading, or (3) aural learning where you listen to someone speak. There's some crossover between the 3 types but most people can identify a primary method as optimal for them. It's important to know where you fall in order to pick training that suits you.
Me? I'm kinesthetic, which means I do my best learning by working with the problem at hand or taking what I read on the page and putting it into practice to internalize it. I'm also a strong visual learner and can pickup concepts quickly when they are presented to me in print. But aural learning is difficult and I don't do well in sterile classroom / lecture environments that don't involve immediate hands-on learning.
For the most part, I pickup my knowledge from books and online articles. I try to plow through at least one technical book per month (on average). Otherwise I'm just coasting and generally falling behind those who are more motivated. That, and I like learning new stuff.
I've had mixed results with various session / state manager extensions in the past. Which is why I'm hoping that session memory makes it into the 2.0 line of Firefox.
I'll look at the Google's(?) utility, but if it's as I suspect, it relies on Google's servers. Thanks, but I prefer something that stays local or puts its settings on a shared network folder. Since I use a laptop 24x7, my primary desire would be shared bookmarks between my various systems at home.
(I only recently moved back to Firefox 1.5 after a few years using Mozilla Suite instead. So I haven't spent time going and looking for various extensions to see if they're better then a few years ago.)
Not necessarily. A dual-core system is more expensive, per-core-GHz, than a single-core system. That is, $300 might buy you a 2.0GHz dual-core CPU or a 3.0GHz single-core CPU (apples-and-apples GHz here, so AMD and not Intel).
Not much difference here on $ per-core-GHz either.
Your statement might have been true last week, prior to the AMD price cuts. But things are a lot nicer now (and the low-end dual-cores are almost an automatic choice). $68 for the 2nd core makes a lot of sense, even for a low-end CPU because it will add a few years of usability onto the lifespan of the machine. Or at least the machine will feel snappier for a few years longer then the single-core.
And the primary reason that AMD 64bit CPUs get so much goodwill? Unlike the Itanic, AMD came up with a 64bit design that provides for the future while still providing excellent performance for 32bit applications. So why not buy a 64bit chip even if you're still running 32bit? There's no performance hit and if the landscape changes and we all need to move to 64bit, you're already there.
Pretty much a no-risk decision as a result. You're not betting on 32bit or 64bit, you're simply prepared for either.
Given the small cost difference between a single core and a dual-core at the lower end, you'll get a lot of bang-for-the-buck out of that 2nd core. You'd have to be pinching pennies pretty hard not to go for the dual-core systems now that AMD has implemented price cuts on the X2 line. To give you an example of low-end computing, here are prices for budget DIY systems not including WinXP or Office:
(Prices include PCIe motherboard w/ integrated video, CPU, RAM, DVD-ROM, floppy, case, PSU, 80GB HD. OEM copies of WinXP and Office Pro will add around $430 to the cost.)
The price difference between the X2 3800+ and the 3000+ is only $81. In return you get a system that is going to feel snappy well into the mid-2010s. Especially if, 2 years from now, you add on another 1-2GB of RAM for another $50-$100. If you're a typical user, you could be looking at a system that is still ticking in 2016.
And that price delta might even get smaller in the fall if AMD cuts prices again in October. (More unconfirmed rumors...)
Slashdot Mirror
Intel's prices are aggressive for being a brand new chip. Very competitive with AMDs offerings. And in the server market, CPU cost is usually only about 10-15% of the total cost (it's the disk drives that eat up a large portion of the hardware budget). Most of the time when we're spec'ing machines, we try to get the most cores for the least money so that we can spend more on RAM.
On the desktops, the new Intel dual-core CPUs are still a bit expensive ($200-$250). But it forced AMD to drop their X2 prices low enough ($151) that those are worth putting into desktop systems (even lower-end systems). We decided against using the old Pentium D 805 chips even though they are available for only $100.
Other links about the L3 cache.
ARS Technica
Soft32
They're ideal for low-CPU network services such as DNS / DHCP. Pair of laptop drives or flash memory and you have a box that is very low-power and low-maintenance.
Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalize a use for my old 600MHz C3. My current plans are to do the DHCP / DNS with it so that I can shut other boxes off when they aren't needed.
Note that only the high-end CPUs have the 4MB of L2 cache. The mid-range and low-end Intel chips only have 2MB of L2.
At first, when I saw the 4MB numbers, I was worried because Opterons are 2x1MB L2. But once I dug into the real specs and saw that the majority of the Intel line is only 2MB L2 shared cache, I was less worried.
(And worried might be the wrong term. I'd like to see the two companies compete for the next 10-20 years rather then one or the other running away with the performance crown.)
For sysadmins, the big advantage of AMD64 was that there was little to no risk in choosing it. You lost no performance at running existing 32bit apps (maybe even a speed gain) and you were ready for the 64bit shift.
Which was unlike other attempts to move to 64bit which required compromises (running 32bit code in an emulation layer or taking a performance hit on 32bit code). Or that required that you recompile everything into 64bit mode in order to take advantage of the new architecture.
I've said it for 2 years now (longer?), AMD64's ability to run legacy software without a performance disadvantage is why the market embraced it. Or at least, why they didn't run away screaming from it.
(I think you mean "no contest" not "no content".)
Anyway, on the AMD side they should gain some of it back when they shrink from 90nm down to 65nm in the 4th quarter of 2006. I think that gets them some automatic power savings due to the process shrink and possibly a performance boost (higher frequencies?).
But the Intel Core 2 Duo chips are looking like very good chips which definitely catch up with AMDs offerings and even surpass it in some (all?) areas. Their pricing is also rather aggressive for being a dual-core CPU. Not quite cheap enough (even the Core Duo) to put into low-end desktops but definitely inexpensive enough to put into mid-range desktops for more demanding users.
It's a very good time to build / buy systems. We're switching from putting Athlon64 3000+ CPUs to dual-core X2 3800+ CPUs now that the price cuts have hit. The extra cost is pretty small (+$60? +$80?) and we get snappier desktop systems that will last an extra few years. I'm hoping for another round of price cuts to drive prices down even lower (so we can outfit with 2GB instead of 1GB).
It's better to build your own external drives.
Start with a good enclosure like the BYTECC ME-835U2F ($45). It has an internal power-supply using a standard A/C power cord so there are no funky wall warts or AC adapters to lose. It has both Firewire and USB so you can pick your poison. It's an aluminum shell so it will probably hold up well. Plus it has a 2nd internal fan which is designed to keep the hard drive cooler (most external units omit fans or only have a small 40mm fan in the back).
Tack on the 500GB drive ($250) and you're in the pricing ballpark of the pre-built 500GB external drives. However, the advantage that you have is that you can make sure and buy hard drives with 3-year or 5-year warranties.
Alternately, you can go the removable drive tray route (DRW115 series by StarTech). Costs are about the same ($45/caddy) but the drives are slightly smaller. For protection, look for "DRAWERBAG" part #s which are padded bags slightly larger then the removable drives. Between the shock mounting inside the drive tray and the padded bag, you'll have less worries about damage in transit.
Hmmm... the whole disk encryption is only available for enterprise versions though? I would think the whole disk encryption would be popular in the laptop market.
Personally I use both. System Restore *and* Acronis (on a weekly/monthly basis). And SecondCopy to mirror data files off to external drives every few hours.
Both have their uses (System Restore has pulled my system back from the brink once or twice). I use Acronis as more of a last-ditch defense against reinstalling from scratch. I prefer to let System Restore take a few swings at making things better prior to bringing out the heavy guns (which requires restoring the image then reloading any data that changed).
On newer systems, we simply use Knoppix+NTFSClone once the system is in a "known good" state. We might update those images every few months, but only if we know the user is installing new applications. Otherwise we rely on SecondCopy to backup their local user data (mostly mail files) to a central location. System Restore comes in handy more in those situations where we're not imaging the drives weekly. (Our goal in imaging is to save the hours of initial setup time if the O/S really goes south.)
Is there anything in the works beyond perpendicular storage? Even that is supposed to be topping out at only 4x today's capacities. i.e. 3.5" drives topping out at 2TB.
So how long before we see news pictures on the web that aren't the size of a postage stamp?
(Pet peeve is sites where the main image is 300x240 and their "zoomed" image is 400x300.)
p133s were more likely to ship with 16-32MB of RAM. Rarely did you see one with 64MB or even 128MB. The 64MB machines were common in the late 90s and the 128MB machines were common just before Win2000 shipped (so 1998-1999). IIRC, I had a p90 with 16MB, but I might've upgraded it to 32MB or 64MB using EDO memory. My developer machine in 1999 came with 64MB stock and I convinced the IT group to up it to 192MB.
(Currently retiring a bunch of late 90s Dells that have survived all previous attempts. Most came with 32MB or 64MB and were 200-450MHz machines.)
A lot of the Dells made in the mid-late 90s (that I'm dealing with) could only support 32MB modules and only had 2 slots. A few rarer ones had 3 slots and could accept 64MB or 128MB chips. But those are 1999 models (give or take a year).
Price differences are definitely close to negligible now.
The 13" MacBook that we purchased recently cost about $2500 including required software. That includes the 2GB of RAM that we upgraded to (it was only a 512MB unit out of the box).
Toshiba Tecra and Lenovo T60s price in around $2050 for a similar setup. Even if we had paid a bit more for the MB it would still be worth it to have a very capable machine that the user is happy with.
But we don't buy at the low-end of the scale. We try to outfit our laptops for a 4-8 year lifespan. (Four years with a power-user, then another 4 years with a less demanding user.) That means things like dual-core CPUs, 2GB of RAM, docking stations to reduce wear and tear.
Hmm... spent the half hour and compacted all my folders (4.5GB down to 3.3GB for the profile).
Thunderbird 1.5's UI is still slow at selecting messages. Click on a message in the message list and it takes half a second for TB to highlight the message. Then there's the issue that rules are not always moving messages to the proper folders.
It's all CPU-bound utilization.
How is it at dealing with large volumes of e-mail now? I subscribe to 50 heavy traffic mailing lists and the 1.5 version is very slow. Even when it's not retrieving mail, it seems like it takes forever to allow me to select messages in the inbox (which only has 30 messages).
(All of my mailing lists are in their own folders, with sub-folders where I move the previous year's messages to to make the main folders smaller. Still I have around 4GB of e-mail in my Thunderbird profile folder.)
How well does it perform when loading multiple background tabs over a slow net connection?
(My biggest complaint about the 1.5 firefox code is the constant waits while a background / non-active tab talks to the DNS and web servers. The whole reason taht I loaded the tab in the background was that I knew it would take a minute to load and render...)
Amazon doesn't offer anything other than a low price.
Oh? I primarily use them because of convenience features such as:
- Never losing items in my shopping cart, even if I leave the cart idle for a few weeks or months. So I can add things to the cart on a whim, then come back at the end of the month and make a final purchase decision.
- Reviews by other users.
- Wish lists, being able to move things between my cart and the "purchase later" section of the cart.
- Instant link to buy used copies if I want to save some cash
- One stop shopping for a bunch of stuff that is a pain to track down otherwise.
- Varied shipping options to let me decide how fast or how much I want to pay for shipping.
Price really isn't the reason that I shop there. The first item in my list is probably the main reason though. I may see a book mentioned on Slashdot but won't want to buy it right away (when I can order 2-3 books later and save on shipping). With Amazon, I quick jump to their page, add it to my cart and not have to worry that I'll forget to purchase it later.
That's an interesting idea. Does the field of discipline tend to reward those who learn in a certain way? In IT/programming, visual and kinesthetic are natural fits since we program using visual feedback (along with lots of reading) and kinesthetic feedback (try it, did it work?). Plus, there's the ability to mentally picture the problem at hand and form the solution in your head (spatial thinking?) prior to implementing it.
I was originally drawn towards programming because I find it easy to picture the solutions in my head and the immediate feedback of changing a line of code was more rewarding then re-soldering a connection. Would I have been more likely to go into education or law if my aural skills were foremost?
We at work use some computers three years and some old. Their RAM went a four fold increase, from 256MB to 1GB. The latest computers had 1GB of RAM out of the box, and are expected to survive for some three years. While 64bit has no no use, its increased accessible memory might come in handy in the followind years.
Only 3 years?
Are your current workers CPU constrained (running simulations or other CPU-intensive tasks) or more general office work?
If the later, then our planned lifespan for new PCs is 6-8 years. Possibly as long as 10-12 for dual-core 2GB systems (which are expandable to 4GB down the road). Power users we might upgrade more frequently, but their older machines will simply move to others in the company who don't push their machines as hard.
(My laptop is already 4 years old, and will probably last until next spring when I upgrade to a dual-core 2GB laptop. At which point that laptop will be used by a less demanding user for another few years.)
My point is that this is no longer the late 90s when CPU power doubled every 12-15 months and a 3 year old machine was truly roadkill. Except for multi-core, it's felt like CPU speeds have been almost at a standstill the past few years (10-20% increase/year... tops). Which has allowed us to move away from the replace-every-3-years mantra to a more sane 5-10 year lifespan.
Asus or Tyan?
I have an older Tyan dual-CPU system (K8W S2875) where all the memory is connected to the first CPU. The second Opteron CPU has to go through the first one for memory access. That imposes a very noticable performance hit in certain cases where both CPUs are trying to pull from memory.
For example, creating PAR2 sets with QuickPar. If I run a single QuickPar process, it can work at a rate of around 650/sec (I forget the units) but it only keeps one CPU busy. OTOH, if I run a second Quickpar process, both units slow down to 500-550/sec (for a total of 1000-1100/sec). That keeps both CPUs busy, but they're stepping on each other in a mad stampede to get to the memory. It's still worth running 2 QuickPAR processes at the same time, just not as efficient as it might've been.
Multi-tasking performance also suffers a bit. The system is still responsive when one CPU is busy with a heavy task, but not as responsive if both CPUs had their own paths to RAM.
Next time, I plan on getting a newer Tyan Tiger K8WE (S2877) motherboard which has a separate memory bus for each CPU socket. At least, according to the block diagram in the motherboard manual.
AMD64 has been selling over the past few years was due more to its price/performance ratio then it actually being 64-bit.
That and it's future-compatible which is admittedly a nebulous attribute. If I'm getting good price/performance for existing 32bit code *and* I'm running a 64bit system in case the market shifts to 64bit before I retire the system, why not buy a 64bit CPU? I'm not shooting myself in the foot short-term because performance will still be good on today's tasks. And I'm not boxing myself in long-term either by running a 32bit CPU. What's not to like about a risk-free migration to 64bit capable PCs?
Very much a win-win for the consumer / IT departments and was, I believe, a strong competitive advantage for AMD over the past few years. Intel is finally in the game with their Core2 systems (the earlier Intel CPUs with 64bit extensions probably counted as well).
I don't know about the rest of the slashdotters, but from the experience i got from college i would get some books on the matter before attending any kind of training. I know this is not the quickest way out, but is the thorough way, and believe me sometimes in IT doing it right is much more important than doing it quickly.
That all depends on which mode of learning suits you best. Generally, this is broken down into (1) learning by touch/doing, (2) learning visually i.e. reading, or (3) aural learning where you listen to someone speak. There's some crossover between the 3 types but most people can identify a primary method as optimal for them. It's important to know where you fall in order to pick training that suits you.
Me? I'm kinesthetic, which means I do my best learning by working with the problem at hand or taking what I read on the page and putting it into practice to internalize it. I'm also a strong visual learner and can pickup concepts quickly when they are presented to me in print. But aural learning is difficult and I don't do well in sterile classroom / lecture environments that don't involve immediate hands-on learning.
For the most part, I pickup my knowledge from books and online articles. I try to plow through at least one technical book per month (on average). Otherwise I'm just coasting and generally falling behind those who are more motivated. That, and I like learning new stuff.
I've had mixed results with various session / state manager extensions in the past. Which is why I'm hoping that session memory makes it into the 2.0 line of Firefox.
I'll look at the Google's(?) utility, but if it's as I suspect, it relies on Google's servers. Thanks, but I prefer something that stays local or puts its settings on a shared network folder. Since I use a laptop 24x7, my primary desire would be shared bookmarks between my various systems at home.
(I only recently moved back to Firefox 1.5 after a few years using Mozilla Suite instead. So I haven't spent time going and looking for various extensions to see if they're better then a few years ago.)
Not necessarily. A dual-core system is more expensive, per-core-GHz, than a single-core system. That is, $300 might buy you a 2.0GHz dual-core CPU or a 3.0GHz single-core CPU (apples-and-apples GHz here, so AMD and not Intel).
$154 - AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core 2GHz
$86 - AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2GHz
Looks pretty close to a wash in my book.
$327 AMD Opteron 165 Dual Core 1.8GHz
$170 AMD Opteron 144 - Box 1.8GHz
Not much difference here on $ per-core-GHz either.
Your statement might have been true last week, prior to the AMD price cuts. But things are a lot nicer now (and the low-end dual-cores are almost an automatic choice). $68 for the 2nd core makes a lot of sense, even for a low-end CPU because it will add a few years of usability onto the lifespan of the machine. Or at least the machine will feel snappier for a few years longer then the single-core.
And the primary reason that AMD 64bit CPUs get so much goodwill? Unlike the Itanic, AMD came up with a 64bit design that provides for the future while still providing excellent performance for 32bit applications. So why not buy a 64bit chip even if you're still running 32bit? There's no performance hit and if the landscape changes and we all need to move to 64bit, you're already there.
Pretty much a no-risk decision as a result. You're not betting on 32bit or 64bit, you're simply prepared for either.
Given the small cost difference between a single core and a dual-core at the lower end, you'll get a lot of bang-for-the-buck out of that 2nd core. You'd have to be pinching pennies pretty hard not to go for the dual-core systems now that AMD has implemented price cuts on the X2 line. To give you an example of low-end computing, here are prices for budget DIY systems not including WinXP or Office:
$0403 AMD Sempron 2800+ AM2 w/ 1GB RAM
$0422 AMD Athlon64 3000+ 939 or AM2 w/ 1GB RAM
$0503 AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ 939 or AM2 w/ 1GB RAM
$0554 AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ AM2 w/ 2GB RAM
(Prices include PCIe motherboard w/ integrated video, CPU, RAM, DVD-ROM, floppy, case, PSU, 80GB HD. OEM copies of WinXP and Office Pro will add around $430 to the cost.)
The price difference between the X2 3800+ and the 3000+ is only $81. In return you get a system that is going to feel snappy well into the mid-2010s. Especially if, 2 years from now, you add on another 1-2GB of RAM for another $50-$100. If you're a typical user, you could be looking at a system that is still ticking in 2016.
And that price delta might even get smaller in the fall if AMD cuts prices again in October. (More unconfirmed rumors...)