Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
From: Delaware, USA
Quote:
Andreas_Wolf wrote:
> if we really wanted an upgrade we would be looking at an e6500 cored system.
> While running at a lower clock speed, this would have a definite advantage,
> especially if SMP were enabled.
SMP would be fine with 4 e5500 cores in the P5040 and the T1042, and I have doubts that more cores can be frequently saturated with common desktop computing tasks. Besides, I think it's a given that the non-SIMD per-clock performance of the e6500 is less than 22% higher than that of the e5500 so won't make up for the clock rate decrease.
If we had hardware that used those processors then I would agree with you.
But the X5000 variant soon to be launched (in two weeks?) is P5020 based.
A dual core.
And the performance increase of the e6500 seems to provide exactly what is necessary to cover the decreased frequency.
Then there is the fact that e6500 cores are dual threaded and that the minimum number of cores is 4.
So, in a non-SIMD application we have parity, and with SMP we have four times the processing power than with a P5020.
That is still twice what the P5040 could manage.
And then there is the issue of Altivec....
But...this is about the X5000 and the P5020 and P5040 processors used on those boards.
My primary objection to those two cpus is price,
A T1042, T2081, or even a T2080 would all be cheaper solutions.
The T1042 is obviously slower than the P5040, but at about $200 less, it could provide a significant price reduction.
Without SIMD, the e6500 based cpus (at least at the low end) offer parity with the P5020/P5040 AND they have a price advantage over the cpus used in the X5000.
But it really would take SMP support to really make the 6500 based cpus perform optimally.
I guess its of limited utility discussing potential solutions when we are about to get real hardware.
But I was hoping that the performance of the X5000 would be a significant improvement over our current hardware, and while it may top our G4 based systems, the G5 is still probably the more powerful solution.
So...do I wait for a P5040 based X5000 or hope for PCIe G5 support (OR the better price/value of a T1042 based board)?
Because that would be the comparison I'd like to see, X5000 vs PCIe G5.
"Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
