Access logs open fast on Clawhammer then New Castle?

Cache (not mhz) makes the difference here or?

[JAB Creations]

I at least percieve an increase in time it takes my New Castle based system to open log files then my classhammer did.

New Castle is 2.2 GHz / 512K / dual channel.
Clawhammer is 2.0 GHz / 1024K / single channel.

Both systems ha(d/ve) 2x512 mb with virutual memory turned off (VM is crap).

Can anyone confirm this with hard numbers or at least could offer an explenation on the number crunching? :-)

[jdMorgan]

I don't even know what you're talking about with those clawcastle names, but I would like to point out that one machine has a slight CPU speed advantage in addition to a large (almost two-to-one) memory speed advantage. If the application's current limitation on perfromance is primarily memory speed, then the dual-channel machine has a big advantage...

Jim

[JAB Creations]

Both systems have 1GB ram, the 2.2 GHz cpu has HALF the CPU CACHE but 200 MHz on the stock clock.

What I'm talking about is if cache helps crunch large amounts of numbers quicker then megahertz alone.

[jdMorgan]

More cache is better when a small amount af data must be repetitively processed. If that data fits in the cache, then the CPU can get to it directly after it has been fetched from main memory or from disk. It does not have to go out on the bus and get the data from memory every time it needs to reference it, it can just use the local cached copy.

The factors which affect performance are many, but the top ones are:

CPU speed
CPU cache speed and size
Memory bus speed
Memory bus width (single channel, dual channel)
Memory size
Hard disk access and transfer speed

With a tiny program that does intense computation on a small amount of data (like SETI@home) the only factor that would really matter are the first two - the intense computation and the small data size will make the other factors largely irrelevant.

With something like a database program that accesses very large files, then all factors become important.

So the bigger/faster everything is, the better, but the factors that affect performance depend larger on the characteristics of the program(s) being executed.

If you are just opening a large flat stats file where the data is stored in the format you are seeing on the screen when it opens, and the program is not doing any processing on it (yet), then the hard drive speed would be a big factor.

Jim
[edit] Speling [/edit]