OT, Athlon processer rating question, was: (Re: [ILUG] Advice much appreciated.)

[Robert Synnott]

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 11:58:58 +0100, John Orford
<John.Orford at student.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:
> Just noticed that a Athlon64 3200 costs €30 more than a AthlonXP 3200.
> 
> Surely AMD's rating system is pretty much consistent over K8 and K7s.
> 
> Maybe they don't factor in the performance boost that 64bitness gives the chip
> (altho 64bitness on paper shouldn't give a performance boost to most apps,
> I've read that it does).  It'd be strange if they rated performance in 32bit
> mode only, which would mean that they understate performance??
> 
> You probably pay for the kewlness of being able to brag about having an AMD64
> chip in your box...
> 

There's a fair few apps that will see a small benefit if running on a
64 bit operating system, and 64bit themselves. Beyond this, there were
some improvements made to the chips beyond 64bitness; think they may
have bigger caches or something.