Re: Pentium 4

[Jason Majors <jason@whizzird.net>]

Go to tomshardware.com and look at his comparisons of P4s and K7s (in the CPU
guide). Tom seems to think that an athlon 1200MHz is better than a P4 1500MHz.
The P4 has a horrible FPU, so don't do any scientific calculations on it, unless
you optimize the code for SSE (which will make it pretty fast, but do you know
the P4's assembler language?).
If you dual boot for gaming, you'll want to avoid the P4.
I'd recommend against the P4 just because of Rambus. They're a company that
Bill Gates would admire the ethics of. They released technology into the SDRAM
standard, then starting suing companies that use it.
And when the next generation of P4 chips come out, your current mobo (and maybe
RAM) will be incompatible.
Unfortunately, I don't think recompiling will help accelerate your apps. Unless
there's a P4 optimized gcc out there. If there's not, there will be soon though.
At that point you'll get a good speed increase in some apps.

On Tue, Mar 27, 2001 at 09:46:30PM +0200, Alexander Isacson scribbled...
> I'm about to buy a new computer. I have been offered a really good deal
> on a P4
> system.
> But since the architecture is so different from previous pentiums I am a
> little
> hecitant.
> 
> Will I have to recompile all major components in order to get decent
> speed with
> the p4?
> Will there be special p4-debs?
> 
> Whats the best thing to do? Buy an AMD-CPU instead?
> I just thought I'd get an opinion from you guys before I spend all my
> money.
> 
> 
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