> From: John R Pierce
> current P4's have 2MB cache and SSE3, hence you're comparing an older
> midrange desktop CPU with a current server CPU (opteron 270
> w/ 1MB cache)
I don't think Prime95 uses any SSE3 instructions, does it? So it would
seem the big difference would be the cache size between my 3 GHz P4
benchmarks and the single core of a 3 GHz Pentium D. I don't know what
effect the cache size has, other than bigger is obviously better to some
degree.
My point was basically that a similarly-priced Intel chip will indeed be
significantly faster than an AMD64 chip for the case of Prime95. But as
the AMD chip is likely to be significantly faster for many other
applications (as evidenced by SPEC benchmarks and my own experience). I
wouldn't make a buying decision based soley on Prime95 performance, but
that's just me.
Recently, my advice to people is that they buy AMD64 for desktops and
servers, and Pentium M-based systems for laptops. That advice is really
based only on price/performance and power consumption. That opinion may
well change if the upcoming Conroe architecture from Intel is as solid
as the pre-production benchmarks look.
Regards,
Ryan
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