RE: [TCLUG:9472] bios

["Schoenhofen, Kelly" <KSchoenhofen@Carlson.com>]

Well, first of all, I need to push upon you all a premise.
I'm not a big fan of inserting multimedia extensions into the cpu that
(insert italics) already are supplied by existing video and/or sound cards
(end italics). Trends come and trends go, but having a centralized monster
cpu that handles "everything" has never been my cup of tea (did anyone say
Winmodem?). MMX never even came close to lighting my fire, as it were. I
believe in a mix of centralized vs. distributed computing components. Maybe
you don't, maybe you're looking for a cube-shaped motherboard, who knows,
who cares. 

Anyhow.

In the current Athlon vs Coppermine debate, when running anything sans
OpenGL/DirectX instructions, the Coppermine stomps the Athlon in all
benchmarks. As soon as you start having the cpu handle any multimedia
instructions, the Athlon speeds up and the Coppermine slows down.

I really do believe that the future of 3dvideo is going to be GPU based
video cards. Once more apps support the t&l concept (and not include their
own lighting scheme, for instance), you're going to see a difference of
night and day between the Athlon and Coppermine. The Athlon is heavily,
heavily supported by its robust multimedia extensions. Remove those props
and your killer CPU just got killed.

I want to speed up my framerate and/or video effects by putting in a newer
video card, not a newer CPU. I actually got into an arguement last night
(imagine that) with a buncha hoods that actually argued that they _want_
their framerate to be determined by the speed of their CPU. 
For me, the future is still with Intel based processors. 


-----Original Message-----
From: Troy Johnson [mailto:john1536@tc.umn.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 11:07 AM
To: tclug-list@mn-linux.org
Subject: Re: [TCLUG:9472] bios


Kelly,

> but tech for tech, the Coppermine wins all over the Athlon.

Excuse me for not taking you at your word, but I must ask the question:
according to who (besides yourself)? I have heard both sides and I am
not convinced.