Author: Jeremiah Penery
Date: 22:26:33 03/08/03
Go up one level in this thread
On March 08, 2003 at 23:58:37, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On March 08, 2003 at 14:52:02, Jeremiah Penery wrote: > >>On March 08, 2003 at 01:37:18, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >>>Notice anything different? Pentium 3. Pentium 4. They _clearly_ identify >>>what is "inside" is a pentium-X. That's a bit different than just selling >> >>The AMD machines _clearly_ identified that they were, in fact, AMD machines too, >>so I'm not sure what you're getting at. > >And if you go back to that point in time and look at various computing >journals, magazines and so forth, you will clearly find ads that said >"Buy AMD. Its faster than a PII, and cheaper. Here are the benchmark >results that show this..." > >What should I (as a naive user) conclude from that? That it is faster >and cheaper _and_ incompatible? Then why didn't they say "it is faster >than a pentium II, faster than a hairdryer, and faster than a Nintendo >N64"??? The conclusion about "faster than a PII" certainly implies that >it is also _compatible_. Alpha is faster than Sparc. Did I just imply they were compatible too? >>>something that is compared to the pentium II in your own ads, but which is >>>not quite a pentium-II in fact... >> >>By selling them side-by-side, Dell is comparing them. But Pentium3 is not quite >>a Pentium4 in fact... > >And nobody assumes that. People assume P3=P4 (in terms of compatibility) just as much as they assume K6=P2. >But clearly if someone compares a chip to a PII, >the implication is that they are equivalent. Otherwise the comparison is >not very informative. I've seen P4 compared to 486, but that doesn't mean anyone should assume they're totally compatible. Just like you can compare an Alpha to a SPARC. But the P3-P4 comparison is much more relevant. They're placed side-by-side _all the time_, and very clearly is it implied that they're equal except that the P4 is clocked much higher. The average buyer is NOT going to know the difference, any more than they knew the difference between a P2 and a K6. >>>99% of crafty users don't have any idea how to compile the thing... >> >>And probably 99% of that group of people is using Windows, so they use the >>executable that runs on all processors. It's a non-issue for them. >> > >Not when we were supplying "plain executables" and executables compiled >specifically for the PII. That was my point. The release notes used to >explain the different versions (SMP, non-SMP, and specific architecture >assumptions.) IE Dann has executables optimized for all sorts of platforms. "Optimized for X" doesn't necessarily mean "won't run on Y or Z". SMP release runs fine on uniprocessor machines. But the P4 executable may well not work on a P2 OR a K6. I don't know, because I don't know whether it uses stuff like SSE or not. >It was the _users_ that assumed that PII = K6 since AMD magazine publicity >certainly implied it if not outright claimed it. They imply that P3=P4 too, in terms of compatibility, but they're not completely so. >>BTW, I'm still waiting for those SPARC/MIPS benchmark numbers, as well as the >>SPARC sales numbers. > >SPARC is a problem. I have tried 3 gcc versions and all produce bad code for >recent versions of Crafty, reasons = unknown. I have some very old SPARC >numbers but they are useless. I have tried installing the latest 3.2 gcc >version, and my reliable (for Intel) 2.95.2, and 2.95.5. If I can't get >good executables then I can't compare 'em. Didn't even try the SGI (I think >we have two 600mhz machines here, not sure if we have anything faster as I I think 600MHz is the fastest they come. At least that's as fast as I've been able to find any benchmarks for anywhere. >am not an SGI/MIPS "person". But something is bad on the sparc. It runs with >no optimization, but that's a useless comparison. It crashes with -O or >anything beyond (O3, etc.) Why don't you use Sun's compiler, which is really fast for SPARC anyway?
This page took 0.01 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.