Subject: the best cpu

From: Massimo Ottonelli <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 10:57:46 -0400

Dear cclers,

  since I am starting to chance the workstation  of my laboratory, I
would like submit a very simple question ;  for the new computer is
better  to
  choice a RISC cpu or an ALPHA cpu? In relation to the performance for
quantum chemistry calculations (obviously  taken in account, if is
  possible, the same clock frequency and same "envarromental"
conditions, cache, memory, ecc...).

  Thanks in advance for your comment.

  Regards,
  Massimo Ottonelli

 P.S. I hope that you could excuse my bad English

---

From: Jochen Kuepper <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 18:33:04 +0200 (CEST)

>   choice a RISC cpu or an ALPHA cpu? In relation to the performance

The Alpha is a RISC architecture, at least by heritage.

 > conditions, cache, memory, ecc...).

You better look at the machines you can get for your money, and how
well they perform on your specific "problems".

Then you will see that e.g. the "same clock frequency" doesn´t make
sense, as some architectures are much better at lower frequencies, but
still more expensive ;-))

My personel preference have been Alpha CPUs for a while, because they
offered pretty good 64bit fp performance for the last years, but
you´ll have to consider the price/performance ratio you get today.
Athlon´s or Pentium-III´s are worth looking at.

Jochen
-- 
Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Institut für Physikalische Chemie I
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40225 Düsseldorf, Germany                phone ++49-211-8113681
http://www.Jochen-Kuepper.de               fax ++49-211-8115195