VanLUG Email Archive
Vincent Janelle (malokai@gildea.net)
Sun, 23 May 1999 22:41:12 -0700 (PDT)
SIMD, which is a new processor mode, which requires kernel level hooks to
switch. MMX was just a few extrainstructions with a command that basically
takes over the FPU(which had quite a few performance penalties too), and
could be done in userland, since there was nothing special about it. It
was still the 32bit Intel x86 protected mode.
This comment was made when the P3 was about $500+ more I think Brian =)
If you're looking for that much performance a Xeon would probably be a
better choice, or even better, a non-x86 machine. The $50 more gives
like.. what.. 5% more at the same-50mhz more processor speed?
------------
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show
you how it's done. -Scott Adams
--http://random.gimp.org --mailto:random@gimp.org --UIN 23939474
On Sun, 23 May 1999, Brian Edmonds wrote:
> Vincent Janelle <malokai@gildea.net> writes:
> > Using a P3 on a linux box would be quite useless.
>
> This is a pretty broad statement. Particularly since P3s at the same
> clock rate as P2s are currently only about $50 more. The Linux kernel
> and compiler may not yet support the MMX2 instruction set, but they
> probably will over time. If I were buying a 450MHz x86 CPU today, I can
> think of no reason not to pick a P3 over a P2 every time.
>
> Brian.
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Sun 23 May 1999 - 22:44:52 PDT