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To: Paul Engel who wrote (126154)	1/26/2001 10:25:04 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

Paul, "Kennedy's test also showed the 1.5-GHz Pentium 4 significantly outperforms the 1-GHz Pentium III, he said. Now since you are quoting, how abut the whole paragraph: So far the tests claim eye-opening results. For instance, they show that an Athlon processor in a system with double-data-rate SDRAMs delivers about 15 percent more performance than a Pentium 4 system with Direct Rambus, Kennedy said. They also show a desktop with two 733-MHz Pentium III chips is almost twice as fast as a PC using the latest 1.5-GHz Pentium 4, a finding that might surprise many in the industry where speed is king and dual-processor desktops never took off. Kennedy's test also showed the 1.5-GHz Pentium 4 significantly outperforms the 1-GHz Pentium III, he said. But anyway, the whole quote is a little fishy. Let's forget Athlon for a moment, and consider these 2 statements: - two 733-MHz Pentium III chips is almost twice as fast as a PC using the latest 1.5-GHz Pentium 4 - 1.5-GHz Pentium 4 significantly outperforms the 1-GHz Pentium III Doesn't sound very intuitive. The only explanation that I can come up with is that context switching between the number of simultaneous threads puts a severe stress on any single processor CPU. To me, the tests are probably a little more appropriate for evaluating how the PC would perform as a server, where it is possible and likely that you would have high utilization, and number of simultaneous threads running, and actively using up CPU cycles. In a workstation-like load, where you have mostly only one or very few active threads running, the advantage of the dual CPU is limited. A dual 733 system would be outperformed by all 3 single processor systems - 1 GHz P3, 1.5 GHz P4 and Athlon of unknown speed. Joe