On Wed, 2 Sep 2026 21:36:56 -0400, Paul wrote:

And today, I can find a review from someone you would recognize, who
put Windows Pro on such a machine and benchmarked it and then
produces a "quote-able number" for "how slow WIndows is". After
Anandtech made a splash all those years ago, with an admission their
first benchmarks were wrong, because they had used the wrong Windows
OS.

I wouldn?t blame them, I would blame Microsoft. That is the most
common (and affordable) OS option it offers that is a bit above the
?Home? edition, naturally that is what people in the real world are
most likely to use. So why shouldn?t it be the version referenced in benchmarks?

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, 9/2/2026 10:28 PM, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 2 Sep 2026 21:36:56 -0400, Paul wrote:

And today, I can find a review from someone you would recognize, who
put Windows Pro on such a machine and benchmarked it and then
produces a "quote-able number" for "how slow WIndows is". After
Anandtech made a splash all those years ago, with an admission their
first benchmarks were wrong, because they had used the wrong Windows
OS.

I wouldn?t blame them, I would blame Microsoft. That is the most
common (and affordable) OS option it offers that is a bit above the
?Home? edition, naturally that is what people in the real world are
most likely to use. So why shouldn?t it be the version referenced in benchmarks?

THE ORDER PAGE FOR THAT COMPUTER, HIGHLIGHTS "WINDOWS WORKSTATION" BY DEFAULT. ffs.

The SKU is right on the order page, and it is lit up (as the default).

There's a couple things about Windows.

1) There is a memory license. I had to deal with that back in Windows 7,
so I could use all the memory in the Test Machine. Current Windows versions
are quite generous on Memory License. Some of the older OSes, were not generous.
Maybe you could buy a 6TB dual socket server motherboard, filled with max RAM,
then use Win11 Pro, and not all your RAM would show up. You could, at the same
time, buy two AMD processors with the "very low core counts" and then congratulate
yourself on not needing Windows Workstation. These processors are not a "typical"
offering, so you might not see them on Newegg. The purpose of the low core count
ones, is they have a higher turbo clock (for those single threads you dream
of running on $100K machines).

2) Processor groups is a thing. A 96C 192T would have 3*64 groups.
This has something to do with how the scheduler works. If you're buying
big iron, you have to think about these things.

Paul

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:18:33 -0400, Paul wrote:

There's a couple things about Windows.

1) There is a memory license. I had to deal with that back in
Windows 7, so I could use all the memory in the Test Machine.
Current Windows versions are quite generous on Memory License.
Some of the older OSes, were not generous. Maybe you could buy a
6TB dual socket server motherboard, filled with max RAM, then use
Win11 Pro, and not all your RAM would show up. You could, at the
same time, buy two AMD processors with the "very low core counts"
and then congratulate yourself on not needing Windows
Workstation.

On Linux, it costs $0 to support entry-level processor/core configurations.
And then you have to pay an extra $0 for the next level up, and so on.

And that?s per-seat.

2) Processor groups is a thing. A 96C 192T would have 3*64 groups.
This has something to do with how the scheduler works. If you're
buying big iron, you have to think about these things.

Again, the Linux licensing goes in steps of $0 for each level. I think
a single node can have up to 2048 CPUs, so a million-CPU super will
need quite a few nodes, at $0 a pop.

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-09-03 07:03, Lawrence D?Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:18:33 -0400, Paul wrote:

There's a couple things about Windows.

1) There is a memory license. I had to deal with that back in
Windows 7, so I could use all the memory in the Test Machine.
Current Windows versions are quite generous on Memory License.
Some of the older OSes, were not generous. Maybe you could buy a
6TB dual socket server motherboard, filled with max RAM, then use
Win11 Pro, and not all your RAM would show up. You could, at the
same time, buy two AMD processors with the "very low core counts"
and then congratulate yourself on not needing Windows
Workstation.

On Linux, it costs $0 to support entry-level processor/core configurations. And then you have to pay an extra $0 for the next level up, and so on.

And that?s per-seat.

2) Processor groups is a thing. A 96C 192T would have 3*64 groups.
This has something to do with how the scheduler works. If you're
buying big iron, you have to think about these things.

Again, the Linux licensing goes in steps of $0 for each level. I think
a single node can have up to 2048 CPUs, so a million-CPU super will
need quite a few nodes, at $0 a pop.

Mmm. At those levels, it is feasible people use enterprise versions of
Linux, which no longer have a zero cost.

--
Cheers, Carlos.
ES??, EU??;

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.19
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)