Dragonfly and Hyperthreading....

[EM1897 at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/8/2005 4:25:09 PM Eastern Standard Time, Matthew Dillon <dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>
>:In a message dated 3/8/05 4:47:28 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
>:mhellwig at xxxxxxxxx writes:
>:<cut - your'e probably right>
>:> point, Intel is still the best X86 Server platform except its CPU
>:> problem.
>::
>::Well thanks god their are not in the CPU biz ;-)
>:
>:>From a price/performance standpoint Intel still leads by a wide margin.
>:You can't touch a 3.2Ghz intel system at the same price point with
>:AMD. Intel's chipsets are better, they are better supported by every
>:OS vendor, and frankly you'd have to be a complete fool, at this point
>:in time, to use anything else. You can blabber on about SMP
>:architechture all you want, but the truth of the matter is that only
>:linux has a usable SMP OS, and I doubt many of you use
>:that. Paying twice as much for (perhaps) a wee-bit more performance
>:while substantially increasing the likelihood of instability or having
>:problems is just amateurish. Unless you have nothing else to do
>:with your time.
>
>    Well, I have the opposite opinion.  I tend to prefer AMD over Intel
>    and the main reason is the amount of power the systems eat and the
>    amount of heat they produce.  I'm sure everyone has their favorite
>    horror story about melting down cpus, but in the last year I've blown
>    up more Intel systems from heat then AMD (one Intel and zero AMDs,
>    which means nearly none of either), so I'm not inclined to buy the
>    meltdown argument.  Intels do not gracefully degrade as well as Intel
>    would have you believe!  And my AMD boxes are no more or less stable 
>    then my Intel boxes, so I don't buy the stability argument either.  
>    I would love to see AMD be more proactive with regards to opening up 
>    the chipset support, but that is pretty much my only complaint.
>
>    Equivalent AMD systems are certainly not twice as expensive as Intel.
>    The premium is typically less then $100, usually due to the MB and a
>    slight premium on the cpu, but that's it.

I'm sorry Matt, but you are just plain wrong. Assuming
PCI-X is a requirement, a 3.2Ghz P4 + MB is $360. and
to get equivalent performance you're looking at $700.
to $900 for a MB with an AMD processor and I'd argue that
you need more than that. If you need a 1U appliance, 
you're looking at $950. base vs $440. base. There is
simply no justification for it currently.