Hi Erick! Thank you very much for your great description that makes my decision easier.
However, one last question.... On a modern AMD machine, would I have to enable "hyperthreading" support in the kernel as well, and should / must I double the cores at the "MAKEOPTS" flag ?! Tamer Am 13.04.2013 18:24, schrieb Pandu Poluan: > > On Apr 13, 2013 8:29 PM, "Tamer Higazi" <th9...@googlemail.com > <mailto:th9...@googlemail.com>> wrote: >> >> Hi Dale! >> >> >> Am 13.04.2013 13:54, schrieb Dale: >> > Pandu Poluan wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >> I myself prefer AMD CPUs to Intel ones. >> >> >> >> Intel has this habit of 'segmenting' their processor features. E.g., >> >> Intel VT-x (Intel's buggy implementation of AMD-V) is not available >> >> across the board. >> >> What is VT-x ???? >> > > you really should learn to use Google... > > In short: VT-x is Intel's version of AMD-V. > > What is AMD-V? It's a feature of AMD CPUs that *greatly* assist > virtualization. > > It's not just VT-x, there are a *lot* of features that Intel may or may > not provide on a certain model. > >> And also all the time, Intel promotes for their "Hiperthreading" >> support, as well Intel swears on their "QuickPath" system they have >> developed and should release the FSB which is stil being used at AMD, > > Incorrect. AMD uses HyperTransport for a loooong time. QuickPath is just > Intel's version of HyperTransport. > > As to Hyperthreading... it was technology from Pentium 4 actually, > originally called "NetBurst", it splits a core into two virtual cores, > leveraging Intel's long pipeline. There are benefits, but also drawbacks. > >> even when they mention that "MT (Megatransfer instead GHZ) for >> describing their frontside bus speed.... >> >> so, it is in this case not only the CPU's speed, also the Speed the data >> reaches the memory, and other components like the GPU of your graphics >> device, no?! >> > > Yes, and honestly, AMD was there first. IIRC, Intel still have some > problems with cache coherency on multiple processor systems. AMD has no > such problems; the HyperTransport technology used by AMD is perfectly > capable of servicing NUMA Architecture. > >> >> And what about Hyperthreading?! At the Gentoo make configuration guide, >> the intel corei7 are fully supported. >> > > The 'support' comes from gcc, and gcc fully supports AMD CPUs also. > >> There is being described, that if Intel corei 5 or 7 CPU's are used, I >> could double the amount of cpu's for compiling >> >> MAKEOPTS="-j8" (for a quadcore core i5 / 7) because of it's >> hyperthreading support. >> > > As I wrote above, Intel's Hyperthreading splits each core into two > virtual cores. Thus, if you know the number of physical cores *and* > you've turned on Hyperthreading in the BIOS, you can (and should) double > the number of jobs. > > That information is *not* due to Gentoo better supporting Intel, it's > there because of Intel's complexity. > > AMD CPUs from the get-go already support a higher core density than > Intel; they never need to split their cores into virtual cores. > >> >> If one needs to leverage VT-x for virtualization >> >> purposes, one must be double sure that the CPU one bought supports > VT-x. >> >> >> >> All latest AMD CPUs (except the laptop versions) support all AMD >> >> features. >> >> Where are the latest AMD CPU sets on Gentoo used at all ?! What about >> the Intel's one?! And do they make a huge difference in this case?! >> > > gcc -march=native will allow gcc to detect and leverage all features. > > I don't know which features are used where, except for AMD-V, which is > heavily leveraged by virtualization (virtualbox or Xen, in my situation). > >> >> If you can give me a deep technical answer, I would be very happy.... >> >> >> The money is not what counts. It's the system stability. My AMD cpu was >> veryyyyy loooong time ago an "AMD Athlon XP" which makde me a lots of >> headache. >> > > You're sooooooo out of date. > > Nowadays, AMD CPUs are at least as stable as Intel CPUs. > > Rgds, > -- >
