Re:

Couple of questions about your last comment:

- the benchmark against the dual-P3's was as a web server?
- what was the config of the dual P3 machine?
- could the slow-down be attributed to something other than CPU performance?
IE lots of disk reads, with the P3 system having a better disk-system? Or
perhaps they have equivilent hard-drive configurations, but they are
disk-bound and thus the Athalon doesn't get to shine? Perhaps the Athalon
system is not fully maxed?

I've heard that there is a kernal bug with the Athalon (Microsoft has a
registry patch for it). Maybe only with nVidia graphics cards? Couldn't find
a reference.

LinuxHardware.org did a nice review of a Dual Athalon +1800 (compared to
various systems). Shows that (surprise surprise) dual processors are only
useful if you have software that can take advantage of multiple processors.
The url:
http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/15/1443234&mode=thread

David

>    As an interesting side note, after the tests, I used the parts for
> their intended purpose - to upgrade one of our web servers.  Afterward, I
> compared it to the performance of a couple of dual P3/866 web servers.  In
> this setting, the dual Athlons did not fare as well as I thought they
> would.  They handled about 35% more traffic than the P3's, but I had
> expected much more.  I think it's interesting how the system shined so
> well in one setting, but not nearly as well in another.