Dual core shoot-out: Intel versus AMD http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/processorsmemory/0,39024015,39233885,00.htm
For those not in a hurry to purchase, a new consideration is that AMD are introducing a new processor socket next year called M2. The current dual cores are Socket 939 and use DDR memory. The new dual cores will be M2 (940 pin) and use dual channel DDR2 memory. Presumably there will be some performance improvement. The new M2 socket is not the same as Opteron 940 (though it has same number of pins).
Are these less expensive or more expensive than Intel processors / boards ? I see these comparisons about but unless there was a price/risk incentive to use these I could not justify moving off of commodity intel hardware.
Cheapest dual AMD is a bit more expensive than cheapest dual Pentium, but performs better and runs substantially cooler and cooler is a GOOD THING. The motherboards are about the same, I think - it depends on 'features'. Nvidia and VIA are the big names in chipsets for AMD and both are well supported by Linux. Can't see much risk involved here, but there is probably not much incentive either unless performance is a top priority.
pci has really low bandwidth... it would be hard to fully take advantage of a multihead/multiple 256 3D pci cards because of this bottleneck.... imo.
what kind of processes would benefit from CPU power, rather than more RAM? if i doubled the clock speed but kept the RAM the same, would i experience a similar improvement of doubling the RAM but keeping the same CPU clockspeed...? i remember a long time ago, i upgraded my 386 from 4megs to 8 megs of RAM and it reduced my kernel compilation time by over half. (it used to take me over 2 days to compile the kernel... reduced that to 'only' 1 day).
Simple rule of thumb - If the hard drive activity light is on 'a lot' and the machine is very unresponsive, you may need more RAM otherwise more CPU. More systematically, use top, vmstat and/or some of the stats from /proc to see CPU utilization, paging stats and so forth.
I'm running AMD 64 X2 3800 with Windows XP 64 2GB RAM and performance is phenomenal. I'm running Dual Geforce 6600 video cards with dual dvi to power 4 x dell 2005fpw and have no problems running Cybertrader pro as well as everything else at the same time.
I spent the extra $210 to go from 1 GB to 3 GB of RAM and it made a big difference. I turned off paging completely and there are registry changes you can make to speed up your machine, they make a big difference. This chip is definitely worth it.... SSB