Re: Is it a bad sign...

On Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:29:58 -0400, Kenny <kentilton@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Is AMD any different than Intel, or shouls I save $150?

Yes. Intel currently has the edge in overall performance. AMD has
IMO a better multicore architecture, but they've not exploited it
fully yet. Historically, AMD has had better integer performance and
Intel has had better floating point performance, if that makes a
difference.


I know Vista is stupid, but is it slow? I'll be getting a lot of RAM.

Vista is ok if you disable all the junk that runs by default.


How cores? If it is just me doing Web2.0 programming, how many can I
use? Should I spring for the quad core deal?

You're better off with 2 real machines and a network ... client/server
(even with VMs) on the same machine won't allow you to exercise all
the failure modes.

WRT quad vs dual, that's up to you. More cores means more chances for
buggy multithread code to screw up so a quad might help a bit with
development. It probably won't help much with compile times ... most
compilers are single threaded.


What about 64-bit vs 32-bit? Any advantage to the former? I do not need
more than 4g ram.

You can't access 4GB with 32-bit chips unless you play games. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Other than that it's a trade off. Code expands about 30% using 64-bit
pointers and execution tends to be a slower overall due to memory
bandwidth. OTOH, 64-bit memory management is much better and fixnums
are larger so there is less need for bignums. With floating point you
may not see much difference depending on what 32-bit chip you're
coming from.

George
.

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