Chambers schrieb:
> Still, it's my first quad core machine, and I'm excited about it :)

You have reason enough to be. Two months ago, I was still working with a 
P4, and was still so excited about the AMD Phenom 2 I had bought half a 
year ago (as a dedicated Linux/POV-Ray rendering machine :-P) that I was 
about to opt for another Phenom for Windows work, too (for a less 
frustrating modelling experience :-)). Fortunately the guy at the local 
store talked me into buying an i7 instead, but I'm convinced the Phenom 
would have done about as well for quite a few years, too, and I would 
have left me just as excited ;-)

If it wasn't for the modelling and raytracing, I could have lived 
happily with that P4 for another year or two: It's just about the 
computing power I needed for everything else, including software 
development. If it wasn't for games, I'd say a fast P4 (I had already 
upgraded it to the fastest I could get) is as much computing power as 
any sane person could possibly need.

... and we have way over 4 times that power on or under our desks - Gee!

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Saul Luizaga wrote:
  > but since my budget is smaller I think I'll have to saddle for an 
Phenom
> X3 2.33 Ghz, 4GB DDR2-1066, SEAGATE/MAXTOR 500GB 7200 RPM SATA II HDD.

I very nearly went for the x3, but since I was planning to upgrade it 
eventually anyway I figured there was no point in buying two processors 
for it.

I might as well get the one I wanted to begin with, and save the money 
by not buying the other :)

...Chambers

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TC schrieb:
> I find the results rather shocking - I would not have guessed that switching 
> from 32 to 64 bit would make such a difference.

Neither would I. I had expected the difference to be quite marginal, 
having thought that the only significant benefit of 64-bit was in making 
more memory available for a single application.

> Since you seem to be intimately involved in Pov Ray beta testing,

I actually consider myself more involved in development than in testing, 
but of course I need to test what I have implemented, so yes.

 > maybe you
> can answer the question if the benchmark makes extensive use of memory. 
> Maybe the difference between 3 and 6 GB would account for the difference 
> between 32/64 OS.

Definitely not - I just checked: While rendering the benchmark, POV-Ray 
is utilizing just about 30 MB more than when idle.

I've actually never ever managed to reach even the 2 GB limit on my old 
32-bit machine (well, it didn't have more installed anyway). On the 
64-bit Linux machine, the worst thing I ever observed was about 700 MB 
continuous load with a peak of 800 MB during parsing, IIRC (which was 
actually a problem, becaue I had only 4 GB installed at that time, and 
was running a full-throttle MegaPOV render - i.e. four separate 
instances of POV-Ray. The initial peak memory load kicked the whole 
system into "permanent swapping mode", with the MegaPOV instances 
busying themselves kicking each other (and of course everything else) 
out of physical memory instead of doing anything productive. Operating 
the system was of course no fun anymore until I had managed to pause one 
of the processes. Sustained memory load was low enough that I could 
ultimately resume the fourth process again, but startig them up 
simultaneously was too much.)

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Chambers wrote:
> Saul Luizaga wrote:
>  > but since my budget is smaller I think I'll have to saddle for an Phenom
>> X3 2.33 Ghz, 4GB DDR2-1066, SEAGATE/MAXTOR 500GB 7200 RPM SATA II HDD.
> 
> I very nearly went for the x3, but since I was planning to upgrade it 
> eventually anyway I figured there was no point in buying two processors 
> for it.
> 
> I might as well get the one I wanted to begin with, and save the money 
> by not buying the other :)
> 
> ....Chambers
Notice that my Phenom is not Phenom II, just Phenom.

Well if you need the money... but since we POV-Ray you might regret it 
later :)

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I have made a little research in www.amd.com and the improvements of 
Phenom II over Phenom are: Socket AM3, DDR3, +2/+4 MB L3 Cache. I think 
I'll make the jump and go for a Phenom II X3 2.8, 6MB L3, 4GB DDR3-1333. 
I can't go for the X4 since is only 2.6 and 4MB L3, each core in the X3 
will run more efficiently than the ones in the X4, and compensate for 
the +2 Ghz of the X4, me thinks.

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Another small improvement is +3.9 Ghz in memory bandwidth due to DDR3.

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>>> Has anyone ever run the benchmark on an abacus?
>>
>> No, but now I have the urge to create an electromechanical computer 
>> and run the benchmark on that.
> 
> Are you aware how many relays you'll need to even store the rendered 
> image? :P
> 
> Even a device able to compute a b/w image of a RSOCP would be enough of 
> a challenge I guess...

Who said anything about *store*? You could make it output the binary 
data to some kind of storage device.

I would suggest that if you want hardware floating-point support, you're 
still going to need an absurd number of relays though. ;-)

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>>> Has anyone ever run the benchmark on an abacus?
>>
>> No, but now I have the urge to create an electromechanical computer 
>> and run the benchmark on that.
>>
>>
> 
> Ah, the Babbage Computational Engine :)

I think you'll find that was mechanical, not electromechanical. :-P

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"clipka" <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote in message 
news:4a848a81$1@news.povray.org...

> I also heard tell there may also be differences between OS. I'm running XP 
> Pro x64, maybe Vista or Win7 do an even better job at making use of HT. 
> Don't know about this though.

      No, Vista Home is exactly the same time.  :)

      Win7 may be better though.

      ~Steve~

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clipka wrote:

> Are you aware how many relays you'll need to even store the rendered 
> image? :P

We have lots of empty space in the warehouse, right now. ;)

> Even a device able to compute a b/w image of a RSOCP would be enough of 
> a challenge I guess...

Definitely. It would be quite fun to build a simple processor like that, 
though

-- 
~Mike

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