Athlon vs Pentium III

[Jared Hodge]

Eric Hoyt wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm in the initial phase of putting together a 24 node cluster.  The
> specifics of what it will be used for aren't fully developed (ie what
> applications will be run), but its main purpose will be optical
> simulations.  One issue I am faced with is the choice in CPU.  I know the
> response to "What hardware should I choose?" is always application
> specific, so I'm just looking for general pointers and any issues people
> may have encountered that they would be willing to share.
> 
> Anyway, here is what it has been narrowed down to: I can put together a
> cluster of 24 Thunderbird 850s, or 12 dual PIIIs at 1GHz (24 total
> CPUs) for around the same amount.  Both setups have 256MB of memory per
> CPU.  What do you consider when making a decision like this? What
> scenarios favor Athlons, and what scenarios favor PIIIs?  Also, I have
> heard advice to go with classic Athlons instead of Thunderbirds, due to
> 512k off die vs 256k on die cache issues.  Again, what would make you lean
> one way or the other?
> 
> Again, I know that the ultimate decision will depend on what we'll be
> running, but any general tips or advice would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> Eric Hoyt
> 
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A good article I read on the subject of Pentiums vs. Athlon is at:
http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2001q1/pentium4/
This is actually comparing P4 and Athlons, but it has a great graph with
a good explanation on the 5th page (direct link):
http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2001q1/pentium4/index6.x
Which explains the memory performance of PIII and Athlon.  They do give
the Athlon quite a hefty Mhz lead, so the graph is a little skewed, but
it is an informative read anyway.  Also, I was going to go on and on
about the network bandwidth issues with having two processors per node
(since we've been considering this), but I guess I'll just say ditto on
what Dr. Brown said earlier.  Hope the links are useful though.
-- 
Jared Hodge
Institute for Advanced Technology
The University of Texas at Austin
3925 W. Braker Lane, Suite 400
Austin, Texas 78759

Phone: 512-232-4460
FAX: 512-471-9096
Email: Jared_Hodge at iat.utexas.edu