The number at the end indicates the price in $

Which of these will work faster on a linux machine that will be used mostly for testing distro's, compiling kernel, software...not for playing games ??
which one you recomend, providing the price is not higher then $100

If you want to test 64-bit distros, then that rules out any 32-bit only processors.

Personally, I have a P4 531 and like it just fine. I generally run it in 32-bit mode, but have some 64-bit distros installed that I mess around with.

When I built my box, I found it easier to choose the motherboard I wanted and then go back and find a chip to fit it. For me, I figured I wouldn't see a huge performance increase/decrease with the different chips since I'm not doing intense graphics or games. But finding a board w/ features and chipsets that are documented to run linux is a bit harder. Be sure to check out the HCL here at LQ.

motherboard is important, but what if we compare
Athlon 64 3200+ FSB 1000Mhz, 2,0Ghz, Socket AM2, Dual chanels DDR2, Tray 99
with
Pentium4 531 3.0GHz s.775 cache 1024b,64bit, FSB 800Mhz 98

which is a better choice? the price difference is minimal but what about the performance?

You might want to check this site out:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu.ht...=465&chart=177

And maybe this.

http://new.haveland.com/povbench/graph.php

Google will show many more links to compare but these should give you na idea.

Steve

AMD's 64 bit instruction sets have always been better than the Intel's. If you want to go 64 bit, The Athlon is the way to go. For medium end chips like the Athlon and P4, the Athlon would be the better choice, they generally have better performance. For that particular comparason you posted, the Athlon would win, though not by too much. If you can look into the 3700+ or 4000+, those use the San Diego core, which is excelent. And the Athlon X2 4000+ or 4400+ are good choices if you want to do multitasking.

Both AMD and Intel perform equally well under Linux. Personally, I think AMD has a bit of a price/performance advantage, but in terms of functionality, either is A-OK

too expansive...even $100 is much.
I was told that Intel will do better at compiling a kernel then AMD of the same price($100). Is that right?
for example:
On my old machine(AMD k6-2) I compiled a kernel in about 4 hours...a long time to wait.
But what if I am running sorcerer, gentoo or FreeBSD where almoust anything should be compiled...it will take hours anyway, but will the P4 531 do the job faster(maybe some hours less to lose time waiting)?

I would think either one would definitely be much less than 4 hours. I compiled a bloated kernel (i.e. kernel w/ stock debian config using make oldconfig on my 32-bit Etch install) in 35 minutes using my P4 531. I wouldn't be surprised if I could have cut it down to 15 minutes if I cut some bloat...

How old is your old machine? Even on my Celeron 400MHz (w/ 256MB RAM) I could compile a 2.6 kernel in under 2 hours (cutting the bloat, of course).

g...I was compiling the ubuntu way...compiling an unbloated/light 2.6.18.2 using the command fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-custom kernel_image kernel_headers
and I began compiling at about 15 o'clock.
the proc AMD k6-II is about 10 years old! and i have just 128mb of ram. Under slackware(VectorLinux), compiling the simple way, it took about the same time as did your machine - under 2 hours.

so the P4 531 did it in about 35min, what about AMD 3000-3200+ s754/939/AM2...how much time did it take?(question to the AMD users)

Check out the second post here:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-349691.html

I can't imagine you going wrong either way.

Steve

In the post/topic you mentioned...the P4 there is 2.4ghz and AMD 64 is 2.0ghz/4000+ so there's great difference based only on feelings and no facts.

I think I will go for the P4 531 and the motherboard Asus P5RD2-VM
The question harder to answer is when will i get that much money