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Tony Hill wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Sep 2004 19:44:50 -0400, JK <JK9821@netscape.net> wrote:
> >
> >Tony Hill wrote:
> >
> >> Well, first off, defining "equivalent" is not a very easy thing to do.
> >> In some applications Intel's P4 design tends to do pretty well, while
> >> in others AMD's AthlonXP line does well and in others still it's AMD's
> >> Athlon64 line that really pulls ahead. So equivalency here depends
> >> largely on what application is most important to you.
> >>
> >> What's more, prices are rather fluid and tend to change a lot
> >> depending on where in the price/performance scale you are looking.
> >> For example, Intel's top-end P4 Extreme Edition chips are VERY
> >> expensive ($900+), and generally perform about the same as an Athlon64
> >> 3500+ ($365) or 3700+ ($500). On the other hand, if you were to
> >> compare a P4 3.0GHz, it would usually perform more or less on par with
> >> AMD's Athlon64 3000+ (again, depending on the applications you use),
> >> where here AMD's processor is only about $20 cheaper.
> >
> >Which wouldn't be so bad if the Pentium 4 being discussed was a 64 bit one.
> >Unfortunately it is a 32 bit one. Assigning no extra value to the Athlon 64's
> >64 bit mode doesn't seem to make much sense. In 2005 many of those
> >who bought a high priced 32 bit processor in '04 might become upset
> >that they didn't use foresight and buy a 64 bit processor. I wonder what great
> >64 bit applications we will see in 2005.
>
> Don't hold your breath for too much. 64-bit is nothing new, it's been
> around for 10+ years in other processors.
Do any of the other 64 bit chips have integrated memory controllers?
> The benefits and drawbacks
> are well known.
Are they?
> Usually those drawbacks (pointers twice as large and
> therefore twice as much memory use/cache use/bandwidth use) outweigh
> the benefits and applications tend to be slower unless you really need
> 64-bit integers (very rare for most apps) or you need more than ~2GB
> of addressable memory (the real reason for 64-bit).
>
> Of course, all is not equal in x86-64, as AMD also did a bit of
> tidying and doubled the number of integer registers. This will tend
> to make applications about 5% to 10% faster. For example, for SPEC
> CINT2000 base, AMD showed an 8.9% improvement overall. However in
> that 8.9% improvement there were three tests (181.mcf, 197.parser and
> 300.twolf) that ran slower, two that ran MUCH faster (186.crafty was
> 41% faster while 252.eon was 49% faster), and all the rest that were a
> little bit faster.
>
> Of course, all this will be for naught for 95%+ of all users if
> Microsoft doesn't get their act together and get WinXP for x64
> released sometime this decade.
>
> > I wonder what 32 bit applications will
> >be ported to 64 bits and show tremendous improvements in performance
> >when the 64 bit is run compared to the 32 bit version on an Athlon 64
> >or Opteron. Here is a link to one application already out in 64 bits whose
> >64 bit version runs 25% faster than the 32 bit version on an Athlon 64.
> >
> >http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=257&p=1
>
> More important than the 25% improvement is the issue they ran into on
> the first page, some things were just not possible on a 32-bit machine
> due to lack of memory address space. Kind of flies in the face of
> those who say 64-bit is not necessary on the desktop for the next 5+
> years.
>
> >Other applications might show a much greater performance increase.
>
> Some will. Some applications will show a 100% improvement in
> performance. Others could easily show a 10% loss in performance.
> Most will be about 5-10% faster. Not much, but it's free, so hey, why
> not?
>
> I do tend to agree with you, AMD's processors are often a better buy
> these days even if the price is the same. However, that wasn't what
> the original poster asked.
>
> -------------
> Tony Hill
> hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca