Idiots with Web Sites

Stupid review of the day is up now at Game PC. They set out to discover whether Xeons - which are Pentium 4s with a couple of extra pins - can compete with Pentium 4s - which are Pentium 4s without the extra pins. They start by noting that Xeon based systems are more expensive because Xeons cost more, and follow this astute observation by pointing out that dual-Xeon systems cost more again because now you have to buy two Xeons.

Never would have guessed.

They then proceed with the usual pointless benchmarks. Look, if five systems which differ only in the processor get the same score - plus or minus half a percent - then I'd lay odds that the limiting factor is somewhere else. Like - oh, say, the video card. (The benchmarks are games. But that's a given, I suppose, given the name of the web site.)

Pixy's tip: Get an Athlon system - a 2500 or a 2800. Save yourself a thousand bucks, easy, which you can then send to me.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:24 PM

Comments

1 Well, Xeons also have exceedingly sickeningly large L2 and L3 caches, along with those extra pins

Posted by: Chris C. at July 30, 2003 01:36 AM (Y6Cy9)

2 Only the Xeon MPs - the regular dual-processor Xeons really are just P4s. Same cache and everything. The Xeon MPs for four-way and larger systems have heaps of cache, but you need heaps of cash to buy them. Ow! Ow!

According to the article there's a new dual-processor Xeon chip with a 1M L3 cache, but I haven't seen anything about that elsewhere. Admittedly, I haven't looked either

Posted by: Pixy Misa at July 30, 2003 01:40 AM (a1gWn)

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