Damon wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] [General] Recomended Dual CPU system' on Thu, Sep 16 at 05:38:
Hans du Plooy wrote: [...] has an AMD processor. If I had the money now, I would buy the HP with AMD 64 processor. Isn't 64 good as 2x32? Although feeble humor attempt, can someone with more knowledge say whether or not the AMD 64 is simililar in performance to having two AMD 32 processors?
No. 2 million cycles per second are 2 million cycles whether the address space is 32 bits or 64 bits. The processors are a little quicker due to improved architecture, and the fat pipe speeds some things up, but it's nowhere near 2x. You don't get double the interrupts or double the CPU time like with dual processors - though 2 processors doesn't result in quite a 2x gain in normal operation, either. It's easy to find quad Opteron boards, though, and I thought I'd heard something about an 8 way board. I don't know of anyone running more than 2 Athlons, though I thought Athlons supported more... --Danny, leaving more in-depth explanations to google :)