[WinMac] Re: Re: cheap and fast NT server

Daniel L. Schwartz(expresso[at]snip.net)
Tue, 05 Oct 1999 12:48:50 -0400

        Mike,

        Actually, the dual PPro Intel PR440FX isn't quite as well suited for this
duty, because of the FPU performance. I actually did consider the PR440FX,
but it's more suited for straight file & print serving. If my own memory
isn't failing me, Spec95FP for the 200 mHz PPro is about 6, while the
Athlon is about 30... See the difference?

        Also, the ATAPI ports on the PR440FX don't seem to support UDMA. This
means that the CPU utilization will almost peg out when the hard drive is
accessed - This will force him to use the built-in SCSI, or use one of the
3 or 4 PCI slots for a Promise UDMA card. [Note that some of the PR440FX
boards come with only 3 PCI slots - The 4th shared PCI socket is not
soldered in.]

        Being familiar with Mike Kulyk's RIP software, I know it also takes
advantage of the PII & PIII (MMX & SIMD) instruction extensions for
improved speed (just like the MMXCore Photoshop plug-in does with Photoshop
5), and I factored that in as well.

        Athlon prices aren't too high, as long as you don't sit on the bleeding
edge of speed. Fron The Chip Merchant, today's prices:

PC CPUs 1760 AMD-Athlon-500 OEM $230.00
PC CPUs 1762 AMD-Athlon-550 OEM $330.00
PC CPUs 1763 AMD-Athlon-550 Box $334.00
PC CPUs 1764 AMD-Athlon-600 OEM $502.00
PC CPUs 1765 AMD-Athlon-600 Box $518.00

        Notice the 120% price increase for a 20% speed increase?

        Those Athlon's are starting to look pretty good now...

        Cheers!
        Dan

At 10:36 AM 10/5/99 -0500, Mike B. wrote:
>>
>>
>> I'm not a big fan of overclocking, since it can bring up all kinds of
>>mysterious, non-reproducible crashes. Overclocking is OK for gamers, but
>>not for enterprise use. Instead, take a look at the Athlon (K7) CPU
>>architecture: The floating point performance is outstanding.
>
>Um- he said cheap. (athatlon???)
>
>Your dual ppro idea last week was more appropriate. I even bought one
>of the boards for my linux box :-)
>
>-mab

* Windows-MacOS Cooperation List *

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Tue Oct 05 1999 - 10:13:16 PDT