On 01/09/09 17:23, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 02:29:19PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
On 01/09/09 13:52, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 01:30:02PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
The only benefit which x86-64 has in 64-bit mode is extra registers.
But that only benefits computationally-intensive programs.
Those actually help just about anywwhere. As long as your compiler
knows how to use them. And it does. Not using registers: reading from
memory, and this is slower.
But if 99.9999% of CPU time is wasted, waiting for a human to press
keys, that doesn't matter.
aptitude install powertop
powertop
On most recent CPUs - the CPU goes to sleep and consumes much less power.
So? Even at 1GHz, that's still a lot of Waiting For Fingers.
Even if watching a movie, a good video driver will shuffle as much as
possible to the GPU, reducing the *effective* benefit.
That's regardless of the CPU you use.
There's still much transcoding involved. Does the video card transcode
audio?
I've never seen movie audio transcoding use 100% CPU.
Running a live CD, for instance, involves normally a compresed file
system. The above run of aptitude involved quite a few checksumming
operations.
You'll see a boost, noticeable, but not *significant*. It is, after
all, still IO bound. And *very* sensitive to RAM.
--
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA
"I am not surprised, for we live long and are celebrated poopers."
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