[geeks] Intel Duo Mac Mini

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Wed, 1 Mar 2006, Joshua Boyd wrote:

>> I'm trying to build a new Home Theater machine, and I'm still trying
>> to decide between the Core Duo and the Turion 64.
>
> Would you be able to run a home theater machine in 64bits?
>
> I don't know anything about the Turion.  I bet the Core Duo is pretty
> nice since the P-M is pretty nice for an x86 machine.

If the performance drop (per core) between PentiumM and Core Duo is
similar to the performance drop (per core) between Pentium4 and
PentiumD, the Core Duo will suck for single-threaded tasks and anything
that abuses the L2 cache.

At $ork, we saw roughly a 40% overall drop in performance (so, adjusting
for clocks, about 30%) when we benchmarked a Pentium4 versus a PentiumD.
We could run two tasks at once, but at a less than 20% benefit in
work/time.

If your applications are memory-bound, you'll probably find even worse
performance, as, at least in the case of P4 vs PD, the two cores share a
path to memory that's approximately as wide as the late-model P4 had all
to itself.

However, if your problems are multithreaded, the second core is a little
better than HT.  It's not anything to brag about, but it's definitely
better.

I'd personally go with the Turion, as AMD64 is -such- a nicer
architecture (in 64-bit mode, anyway) than IA32, and IA32 has needed to
die a quick, painful death for about 10 years now.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke    )   "Pain and misery always hit the spot,
Elgin, TX           (     knowing you can't lose what you haven't got."
USA                  )                         --Depeche Mode, "Lilian"