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QuantiSpeed architecture includes a high performance cache with hardware data pre-fetch, a fully pipelined superscalar floating point engine, and an exclusive L2 Translation Look-aside Buffer (TLB). The processors also incorporate 3DNow! Professional technology, which features 52 new instructions.
Frankly, I wouldn't care much about the technical specifications above if they were just a bunch of marketing hype. But AMD's latest Athlons are extremely fast and well designed CPUs. So all that technology (and terminology) does make a difference. [an error occurred while processing this directive]
The BOXX R1 takes a little long to start up. This is common to most workstations but the way it happens scared me at first. The problem is that the screen just sits there, completely blank, for quite some time. I was starting to think that there was something wrong with the unit when finally the screen came alive. Once I knew that this is the way it works, it didn't bother me anymore.
I am amazed by how quickly everything works on this machine. Programs start extremely fast and files load in instants. Even surfing the Internet seems faster. But the real thrill starts when you run production applications. To a creative person there's nothing worse than having to interrupt a train of thought to wait for a computer to perform a function. This is definitely not the case with the BOXX R1. This workstation is so fast, in fact, that it encourages experimentation. You can afford to try different things when they only take a fraction of a time. Being more efficient and able to experiment with new ideas can certainly contribute to better final products.
I'll cover the performance of real-world applications in detail on part 2 of this review. But just to give you an idea of this system's performance, here are some SPECviewperf 6.1.2 numbers:
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