[KLUG Members] Re: Yo! -- K6 I/O = Pentium I/O != PPro-P4 I/O ~= Athlon I/O != Opteron I/O

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>>One tip is to change the window border theme to 'Crux', or something
>>other than blue-curve.  In my cubicle I still use a ~300MHz
>>AMD-Ah!-Floating-Point-Operations!-Run-For-The-Hills! box.
><off-topic>
>???  God, yet another uninformed bigot.  ;->
>The AMD floating point unit (FPU) in the K6 is actually _faster_ than the
>Intel Pentium FPU.  It's just not pipelined, which means it runs "Pentium
>Hacked^H^H^H^H^H^HOptimized" software (i.e. software that uses a workaround
>to address the "slower than 486" ALU integer loads) runs less than optimal on
>it. 

Which means it is slower running the software people use, which means it is
slower.  Benchmarks belong in the same catagory as claims made on informercials.

>E.g., if Quake was released in an "unhacked" version, written to the 386 ISA,
>it would run faster on K6 systems than even the Pentium Optimized one on a
>Pentium.

But there isn't one.  Hence AMD is slower.

>Of course most people don't know this, and ass-u-me the AMD K6 had a slow
>FPU (Intel has _always_ had the _worst_ FPU design, CISC or, especially, RISC).

I "know" this, as lots of people have told me.  And I don't much care.   It's
about DELIVERED performance.

>>It is just fine as about the only thing I do locally is some file
>>management and updating a few spreadsheets.  But after installing
>>RH8.0 GNOME windows C-r-a-w-l-e-d.
>How much memory?  I recommend 192MB for NT 5.x (aka 2000/XP) as well as
>Linux with Gnome/KDE.

512Mb

>>But as long as I didn't overlay or move any windows it was fine,
>Then that's definitely memory.

Blue Curve uses hundreds of megs more of RAM than Crux?!

>>so I though it might be calculating the gradients and curves in
>>the theme.  Once I switched the window border theme to Crux I was
>>back to my snappy GNOME 2 feel.  This probably doesn't effect
>>workstations with real (i.e. non-AMD) CPUs.
>Is this a joke list or something?  Intel _lost_ the x86 performance game
>_long_ ago.  Why?  Intel _though_ IA-64 would be on the desktop by now, so the
>stopped innovating the x86 back in 1992, with the Pentium Pro.

Huh, that must be why they still sell so many.  Ask people who have tried
Asterisk or other Codec related packages on AMD and watched the machine puke up
its guts.  Stick in an Intel CPU and everything is peachy.  If AMD claims to
sell x86 compatible CPUs they should make one.

>The only way they "maintain" it now is by pushing their "lossy math" SIMD
>instructions, selling people on "high GHz" as well as "Rambus" signaling
>technologies which are _not_ a 1:1 ratio to AMD or SDRAM, respectively.  AMD
>just laughs now, writes a little microcode for the new instructions, and
>leverages its  vastly superior FPU in the Athlon.

Laughs, and then files for bankruptcy.

>Furthermore, you are talking about _memory_ performance, _not_ CPU.  The K6
>was for the _Intel_Pentium_ platform, which is _not_ equivalent to the PPro-P4
>in memory throughput.  Don't forget that. 

I certainly never thought K6 = P4, or even PPro.  I WANT TO DRAW BORDERS AROUND
THE WINDOWS.

>Once AMD "took control" of the platform with Athlon, benefiting from the
>Digital Alpha bus, things changed.

Yes, I'll bet Intel is frightened.

>Or what part of the various announcements (like Cray's?!?!?!) did
>you _not_ understand?  ;-P

Understand?  I've never read an announcement from Cray.  I don't care about
Cray.  I don't own one, use one, and probably never will.

>But I'll spare the list of anything else.  I mean, what do I know?  I only
>worked in the semiconductor field with several, former Intel engineers.

And I originally was an angora goat rancher, then an auto-mechanic, then an
electrical technician.  Computer guys get better benefits, a clean (except my
desk) work environment, and climate control!  But I don't pay any attention to
(a)what the textile composite of my clothes is, (b)what kind/size of engine my
car has, or (c) what ICs my home stereo uses.  I want them to (a) hide my pasty
Finnish skin, (b) go forward when I press the accelerator, and (c) drown out
Celine Dion when my next door neighbors start spinnin' the divas.