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"Conway S. Smith" <beolach@×××××××.net> posted |
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20071111053814.06ce20f3@××××××××××××××××××.net, excerpted below, on Sun, |
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11 Nov 2007 05:38:14 -0700: |
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> Well, I've been looking at the new Barcelona Opteron 2300 series, which |
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> have 4 cores each & can be used in dual socket motherboards, for a total |
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> of 8 cores in the system. The 2 or 4 cores in an Athlon X2 system |
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> really would be sufficient for my needs, but then my current box is |
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> still pretty much sufficient for my needs. This new box I'm planning is |
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> more about my wants, and I look at 8 cores & think "I want!" |
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For general workstation use, including Gentoo, 4 cores should be about |
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enough for now. Same with 4 gig of memory. I went with 8 gig memory, |
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but if I had it to do over I'd stick with 4 gig and get the dual-cores |
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sooner. |
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The more cores you get, the more things have to parallelize in ordered to |
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use them. It's coming, but really isn't there yet. There are too many |
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makefiles that haven't been designed with massive parallelization in mind. |
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Of course, there are applications where 8-core is useful. Just not for |
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general Gentoo desktop/workstation use, IMO. A pair of 30" Apple Cinema |
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(like 2900x1600 or some such, resolution) or comparable LCDs and a decent |
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GPU (or set of GPUs) to run them seems better use of that sort of money, |
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to me, and what I'm looking at for next upgrade after my eyes (lasik). |
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |
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-- |
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