Differences between AMD and Intel CPUs [was: Re: Dragonfly andHyperthreading....]

[EM1897 at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/9/2005 6:22:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, David Xu <davidxu at xxxxxxxx> writes:

>EM1897 at xxxxxxx wrote:
>
>> If you paid that much for an SMP system running FreeBSD,
>> then you're flying blind for certain. You've overpaid 
>> because you don't know enough about hardware to know
>> what you're doing. Your xeon systems "sound like jets"
>> because you've bought something that sounds like a jet.
>> A P4 system with a single blower (which is what we use)
>> will likely outperform what you've bought for 1/5th the
>> cost. (my current 5.3R benchmarks show that FreeBSD
>> with 2 3.06Ghz xeons is actually slower than a single
>> P4 processor system. They've done a helleva job!).

I benchmark by passing packets through the box until it
starts dropping packets. So there is no "package" to fail.
5.3 runs at about 90% with 650Kpps with a single 3.06
xeon, and starts dropping packets at 300Kpps with dual
processors. It seems ridiculous, but its so much slower
than 4.x that its not worth much of my time.