In article <b99Sb.165342$4F2.19238738@twister.nyc.rr.com>,
sweet <sweet430@hotmail.com> wrote:

"Gary Heston" <gheston@hiwaay.net> wrote in message
news:101h1fe97iep043@corp.supernews.com...

  [ ... ]

Your new system has a clock rate 6.67 times faster with a crummier FPU;
if the FPU was equally efficient in the P4, your WUs would complete in
about 1:39. Faster CPUs result it low WU times; they all depend upon
how fast 4.5 trillion floating point operations can be completed.

So what CPU has the "just right" FPU to maximize WU production?

At the moment, it's a race between the P4 Xeon CPUs with HyperThreading
and the latest Athlon CPUs. A P4 Xeon with HT is basically two CPUs with
some shared components, so it can handle two WUs at once with a small
penalty (common problem with SMP systems). The Athlons don't have HT,
but are much lower cost parts, so you can probably have two stripped
Athlon systems for less than one P4-HT system.

The CPU isn't the only factor; the chipset used, memory architecture, and
motherboard design all affect how well the CPUs potential is realized. A
low-end motherboard with onboard video may run WUs 20% slower that a good
motherboard with an identical CPU installed.

Shouldn't (does) SETI be announcing this on their site?

They would have to update it constantly...


Gary

-- 
Gary Heston  gheston@hiwaay.net 

Contrary to popular opinion, _not_ everyone loves Raymond.