Hi all!!

I have an athlon 64 3500 cpu in my home computer, 2 gigs of ram...i did a cat /proc/cpuinfo below this message. At work, I have an intel P4 3.4 GHz cpu, only 512MB ram, also cat'd below. Both are running PCLinuxOS .92 preview.

Now, I was always under the impression that my home cpu, amd64 3500, would DEFINITELY be faster than my work intel P4...is this not true? I did look at benchmarks, showing the AMD outperforming the intel chip in every way possible...Maybe I was wrong...can anyone verify this?

Now, the problem is, ive noticed that scripts and programs take longer to complete on my HOME computer than at work. I did to simple benchmarks on both, writing a fortran program and perl script to go thru a huge loop and if statement, just to see the time it took to complete. The same perl script was run on both, and the same fortran program was run on both...Work (P4) won!? whyyyy?

I though, maybe it's because I'm running a 32-bit distro on a 64-bit machine...does that make it so innefficient that it is actually SLOWER than on a slower 32-bit machine?

I'm not sure what's going on here...i tried the "unstable" amd64 optimized kernel with no luck...It's not a big deal i guess...but i love my athlon! It MUST WIN!!!

Thanks SO much everyone!

Also, is there any other info I can get while these are running that might answer the question or provide a reason for the slower AMD performance??

--------------------

HOME (AMD64 3500):
perl script 26.82s user 0.02s system 93% cpu 28.772 total
fortran program 32.14s user 0.01s system 96% cpu 33.250 total

WORK (intel P4 3.4GHz):
perl script 18.41s user 0.01s system 99% cpu 18.433 total
fortran 23.25s user 0.02s system 100% cpu 23.270 total


HOME:
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 31
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+
stepping : 0
cpu MHz : 2199.931
cache size : 512 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips : 4403.28

WORK:
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 3
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz
stepping : 4
cpu MHz : 3391.820
cache size : 1024 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 3
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe pni monitor ds_cpl cid xtpr
bogomips : 6733.82

You need some reliable method to compare the machines. I find that with folding@home (straight cpu power) the AMD numbers tend to be fairly close... But the intel and AMD machines do everything a bit differently, differet ram speeds, cache, cpu mhz and instructions per clock, that you will find that certain tasks can be performed better by one or the other... One might play HL2 better, the other might win at quake3 for example. Overall I would expect those machines to be fairly close in performance assuming they had similar drives and ram amount and were running similar services.