AMD vs Intel

Hi Everybody…

I have been disparaged by most of my friends and colleagues after I bought a laptop with AMD Athlon 64×2 processor. According to them AMD processors are no where near the Intel processors when it come to performance and price. So in this post I will just present a small comparison of both these processors just to make my friends think little different.

I was aware that after the launch of Intel’s Core 2 Duo, AMD has been struggling but still I preferred to go with AMD. Reason being, firstly, I want to see how AMD work, secondly it’s cheap.

Today, Intel has the crown in terms of both power and efficiency. AMD recently cut the prices for its top end processor, the Athlon 64×2 5200+, by a dramatic 50 per cent, hence making it affordable for the average customer. The landmark had drawn hard talk’s interest and today the AMD Athlon 64×2 will be pitted against its closest rival (at least in terms of price), the Intel core 2 duo E6400.

It would be unfair to not to attribute AMD for its competitive offerings in the form of Athlon 64 and Athlon 64×2 that forced Intel to start building the Core 2 Duo processor series. It was AMD’s revolutionary efforts for 64 bit operating systems, lower power consumption and better support for the multi-core processors that ushered into a new era that was being resisted heavily by Intel. In fact it can be said safely that if it were not AMD, the market would still be sitting at peaked out and inefficient dual core systems, consuming enough power to light up a house.

To compare both of these processors lets have a look at their performance using renowned benchmarks. (I personally have not benchmarked these processors, just presenting a summary of few existing results on the web that I have researched).

1. Memory benchmark

The SiSoft 2007 memory benchmark is the predefined standard upon which CPUs are measured for theoretical speed increments. Memory performance details like how wide the pipeline of information is present in between the system and the CPU.

SiSoft

Flow of information depends upon the bandwidth, hence removing any potential bottlenecks for the processor to perform tasks. During the test, both processors were equipped with PC 5400 DDR-2 RAM from Kingston and then examined thoroughly with and intensive memory test.

Due to the presence of Hyper Transport memory controller, inside the CPU itself, the Athlon 64 X2 5200+ makes its mark in this synthetic test leaving the Core 2 Duo behind in a trail of dust.

It can be be proved mathematically as follows:

Intel’s FSB = 64bits X 800MHz/8 = 6,400Mb/s.
AMD’s HTT= 32bits X 1000MHz X 2 (double- pumped)/8 = 8,0000Mb/s.

2. CPU Benchmark

CPU Test

Using SiSoft’s CPU benchmark, both the processors where again pitted against each other in a theoretical setup, presented by the benchmark suite.

The Intel core 2 duo edge slightly ahead of the AMD athlon 64×2 in this test but does not prove anything conclusive regarding the efficiency of processing in either of the present platform.

3. Prey

Prey

It is in the gaming benchmarks that the Intel E5400 gets ahead in comparison to the Athlon 64×2 5200+ processor. The test bed system was GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card running with two gigabyte of DDR2 RAM. The default resolution of 1024*768 was used as the lower resolution give more headway for the CPU to perform and the graphical processing unit does not present any bottleneck for the frames per second to roll out. First in line is the OpenGL powered Prey, a game based on Doom 3 engine.

They prey results did not show any significant difference between the two processors, which indicates the relatively close performance between the two brands.

4. Far Cry

Far Cry

In order to see the difference of performance between the two processors better, Far Cry a relatively older title was used. Core 2 Duo processor stood heads and shoulders above the Athlon 64 X2 5200+. The Far Cry physics engine is extremely processor intensive, and the Athlon 64×2 5200+ is definitely lagging behind by a good 20 frames per second, which can prove to quite worrying if the physics are dumped heavily on this processor.

5. Conclusion

Given the two synthetic and two real world benchmarks, there is not a lot which goes against the Athlon 54 X2 5200+. The Intel offering is definitely superior, but given the relatively close prices of each, the performance differences are really marginal and in the end boils down to one’s own taste for either brand. If one is AMD fan, then the AMD Athlon 64×2 5200+ will more than fit the requirement for a performance processor in comparison to the Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 processor.

Few References:

1. http://www.itp.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=493585&Itemid=1

2. http://www.gamingparents.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=173&Itemid=64

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athlon

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_2_duo

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Am I back to blogging…???

Hi everyone,

What are you thinking, Am i back to blogging….?

That is question that i am asking myself too…

I have just recovered my blog password and changed its theme…

Trying to make my mind about blogging again….

Trying to convince myself that blogging is worthy….

Thinking, if I can give a regular time to blog along with Movies, Games, Office, Sleeping….

Thinking to put all the contents again that I had lost during blog shifting…

Another “Person” tried to pump me to start blogging again and in return I will have “TREAT”….

So, wait for some time and see if I can come up with some post or NOT.

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Regards,

Pakistan Developer Conference (PDC) 2007

Hi everyone…

Pakistan Developer Conference 2007 is the event that provides a comprehensive technical overview as well as more insight on the latest (both recently released and upcoming) Microsoft development and platform technologies. During Pakistan Developer Conference 2007, there will be sessions that would demonstrate the latest features that were introduced in Windows Vista, Office 2007, Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, BizTalk Server 2006 and how all these technologies can be used to build reliable, secure, high performance applications that can connect people, information, processes and systems together. More than 3,000 technology professionals from across Pakistan are expected to join this event and get the opportunity to meet and interact with top technology experts in the industry and Microsoft team for the duration of the event.

For Details: http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/Pakistan/conference/default.aspx

I m joining pdc as before and looking for some immense knowledge and acquaintance about new and upcoming Microsoft Technologies. Hope to see many of you around there  

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Keep Smiling 🙂

Microsoft (ready for a new day)

Hi Everyone…!!! 

Today we (me, my fellows and teachers, in other words, My Insititute “COMSATS Insititute of Information Technology, Islamabad”) became the part of very big world wide launch of latest Microsoft products which includes Windows VISTA, Office 2007, Exchange Server, .NET Framework 3.0 etc.

Many orgranisations & institutes across the world are arranging this even called as “Microsoft Community Launch Event” to introduce &  highlight the features of newly lanuched Microsoft products in their circle. We arranged this event on 7th of June 2007. I invited three speakers, (Imran Khawar, Khalil ur Rehman, Kashif) to put some light on these products at my institute.

I was expecting about 70-80 participants but unexpectedly I gathered 104 all in all. Event started at about 4:00pm and completed on 6:00. At the end Original DVD’s of Windows VISTA Bussiness, Office 2007, Free Exam Voucher + other small gifts were distributed among randomly selected audience.

After That we enjoyed refreshment. Everything right from the begining went very fine and smooth. The Speakers were really happy to such group audience.

Finally Thanks to Speakers, Microsoft Pakistan, INETA, and yes all the participants.

Microsoft you ROCKS as always 🙂

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Keep Smiling 🙂

June 2007 … The Judgement Month :(

hi everyone….

June started. One the most important month of this year atleast for me, This month will decide that whether I am going to get my MS degree in august or not. I will get it if I managed to complete my thesis this month 😦

This June is also have lot of fun as i will enjoying 5 birthdays of my friends  this month….so lots of cake and pizza stuff. 😉

Anyhow lets see what June have for all of us….

take care

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Keep Smiling 🙂

Participation in ImagineCup 2007

ImageCup as you all know is world’s premier technical competition for students from Microsoft. This time two teams from my institute participated in that, though was unable to make it through to world wide final but atleast participated in local competition.

I want to congratulate the students of LUMS who were selected for finals which will held in South Korea, Soel and I also want to say hardluck to my fellows who tried their best to win but unfortunately ……. 😦 

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May 2007, Got My Blog Back

Hi everyone…

Just got my blog back, and restoring it from older one…though lot of my contents lost in the way….

The month will be simple for me…and will try to keep my blog updated from now on.

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Keep Smiling 🙂

SQL Server Questions

Hi Everyone…

Very common SQL Server Interview Question. A quick way to remember…..

1. What is normalization? – Well a relational database is basically composed of tables that contain related data. So the Process of organizing this data into tables is actually referred to as normalization.
2. What is a Stored Procedure? – Its nothing but a set of T-SQL statements combined to perform a single task of several tasks. Its basically like a Macro so when you invoke the Stored procedure, you actually run a set of statements.
3. Can you give an example of Stored Procedure? – sp_helpdb , sp_who2, sp_renamedb are a set of system defined stored procedures. We can also have user defined stored procedures which can be called in similar way.
4. What is a trigger? – Triggers are basically used to implement business rules. Triggers is also similar to stored procedures. The difference is that it can be activated when data is added or edited or deleted from a table in a database.
5. What is a view? – If we have several tables in a db and we want to view only specific columns from specific tables we can go for views. It would also suffice the needs of security some times allowing specfic users to see only specific columns based on the permission that we can configure on the view. Views also reduce the effort that is required for writing queries to access specific columns every time.
6. What is an Index? – When queries are run against a db, an index on that db basically helps in the way the data is sorted to process the query for faster and data retrievals are much faster when we have an index.
7. What are the types of indexes available with SQL Server? – There are basically two types of indexes that we use with the SQL Server. Clustered and the Non-Clustered.
8. What is the basic difference between clustered and a non-clustered index? – The difference is that, Clustered index is unique for any given table and we can have only one clustered index on a table. The leaf level of a clustered index is the actual data and the data is resorted in case of clustered index. Whereas in case of non-clustered index the leaf level is actually a pointer to the data in rows so we can have as many non-clustered indexes as we can on the db.
9. What are cursors? – Well cursors help us to do an operation on a set of data that we retreive by commands such as Select columns from table. For example : If we have duplicate records in a table we can remove it by declaring a cursor which would check the records during retreival one by one and remove rows which have duplicate values.
10. When do we use the UPDATE_STATISTICS command? – This command is basically used when we do a large processing of data. If we do a large amount of deletions any modification or Bulk Copy into the tables, we need to basically update the indexes to take these changes into account. UPDATE_STATISTICS updates the indexes on these tables accordingly.
11. Which TCP/IP port does SQL Server run on? – SQL Server runs on port 1433 but we can also change it for better security.
12. From where can you change the default port? – From the Network Utility TCP/IP properties –> Port number.both on client and the server.
13. Can you tell me the difference between DELETE & TRUNCATE commands? – Delete command removes the rows from a table based on the condition that we provide with a WHERE clause. Truncate will actually remove all the rows from a table and there will be no data in the table after we run the truncate command.
14. Can we use Truncate command on a table which is referenced by FOREIGN KEY? – No. We cannot use Truncate command on a table with Foreign Key because of referential integrity.
15. What is the use of DBCC commands? – DBCC stands for database consistency checker. We use these commands to check the consistency of the databases, i.e., maintenance, validation task and status checks.
16. Can you give me some DBCC command options?(Database consistency check) – DBCC CHECKDB – Ensures that tables in the db and the indexes are correctly linked.and DBCC CHECKALLOC – To check that all pages in a db are correctly allocated. DBCC SQLPERF – It gives report on current usage of transaction log in percentage. DBCC CHECKFILEGROUP – Checks all tables file group for any damage.
17. What command do we use to rename a db? – sp_renamedb ‘oldname’ , ‘newname’
18. Well sometimes sp_reanmedb may not work you know because if some one is using the db it will not accept this command so what do you think you can do in such cases? – In such cases we can first bring to db to single user using sp_dboptions and then we can rename that db and then we can rerun the sp_dboptions command to remove the single user mode.
19. What is the difference between a HAVING CLAUSE and a WHERE CLAUSE? – Having Clause is basically used only with the GROUP BY function in a query. WHERE Clause is applied to each row before they are part of the GROUP BY function in a query.
20. What do you mean by COLLATION? – Collation is basically the sort order. There are three types of sort order Dictionary case sensitive, Dictonary – case insensitive and Binary.
21. What is a Join in SQL Server? – Join actually puts data from two or more tables into a single result set.
22. Can you explain the types of Joins that we can have with Sql Server? – There are three types of joins: Inner Join, Outer Join, Cross Join
23. When do you use SQL Profiler? – SQL Profiler utility allows us to basically track connections to the SQL Server and also determine activities such as which SQL Scripts are running, failed jobs etc..
24. What is a Linked Server? – Linked Servers is a concept in SQL Server by which we can add other SQL Server to a Group and query both the SQL Server dbs using T-SQL Statements.
25. Can you link only other SQL Servers or any database servers such as Oracle? – We can link any server provided we have the OLE-DB provider from Microsoft to allow a link. For Oracle we have a OLE-DB provider for oracle that microsoft provides to add it as a linked server to the sql server group.
26. Which stored procedure will you be running to add a linked server? – sp_addlinkedserver, sp_addlinkedsrvlogin
27. What are the OS services that the SQL Server installation adds? – MS SQL SERVER SERVICE, SQL AGENT SERVICE, DTC (Distribution transac co-ordinator)
28. Can you explain the role of each service? – SQL SERVER – is for running the databases SQL AGENT – is for automation such as Jobs, DB Maintanance, Backups DTC – Is for linking and connecting to other SQL Servers
29. How do you troubleshoot SQL Server if its running very slow? – First check the processor and memory usage to see that processor is not above 80% utilization and memory not above 40-45% utilization then check the disk utilization using Performance Monitor, Secondly, use SQL Profiler to check for the users and current SQL activities and jobs running which might be a problem. Third would be to run UPDATE_STATISTICS command to update the indexes
30. Lets say due to N/W or Security issues client is not able to connect to server or vice versa. How do you troubleshoot? – First I will look to ensure that port settings are proper on server and client Network utility for connections. ODBC is properly configured at client end for connection ——Makepipe & readpipe are utilities to check for connection. Makepipe is run on Server and readpipe on client to check for any connection issues.
31. What are the authentication modes in SQL Server? – Windows mode and mixed mode (SQL & Windows).
32. Where do you think the users names and passwords will be stored in sql server? – They get stored in master db in the sysxlogins table.
33. What is log shipping? Can we do logshipping with SQL Server 7.0 – Logshipping is a new feature of SQL Server 2000. We should have two SQL Server – Enterprise Editions. From Enterprise Manager we can configure the logshipping. In logshipping the transactional log file from one server is automatically updated into the backup database on the other server. If one server fails, the other server will have the same db and we can use this as the DR (disaster recovery) plan.
34. Let us say the SQL Server crashed and you are rebuilding the databases including the master database what procedure to you follow? – For restoring the master db we have to stop the SQL Server first and then from command line we can type SQLSERVER –m which will basically bring it into the maintenance mode after which we can restore the master db.
35. Let us say master db itself has no backup. Now you have to rebuild the db so what kind of action do you take? – (I am not sure- but I think we have a command to do it).
36. What is BCP? When do we use it? – BulkCopy is a tool used to copy huge amount of data from tables and views. But it won’t copy the structures of the same.
37. What should we do to copy the tables, schema and views from one SQL Server to another? – We have to write some DTS packages for it.
38. What are the different types of joins and what dies each do?
39. What are the four main query statements?
40. What is a sub-query? When would you use one?
41. What is a NOLOCK?
42. What are three SQL keywords used to change or set someone’s permissions?
43. What is the difference between HAVING clause and the WHERE clause?
44. What is referential integrity? What are the advantages of it?
45. What is database normalization?
46. Which command using Query Analyzer will give you the version of SQL server and operating system?
47. Using query analyzer, name 3 ways you can get an accurate count of the number of records in a table?
48. What is the purpose of using COLLATE in a query?
49. What is a trigger?
50. What is one of the first things you would do to increase performance of a query? For example, a boss tells you that “a query that ran yesterday took 30 seconds, but today it takes 6 minutes”
51. What is an execution plan? When would you use it? How would you view the execution plan?
52. What is the STUFF function and how does it differ from the REPLACE function?
53. What does it mean to have quoted_identifier on? What are the implications of having it off?
54. What are the different types of replication? How are they used?
55. What is the difference between a local and a global variable?
56. What is the difference between a Local temporary table and a Global temporary table? How is each one used?
57. What are cursors? Name four types of cursors and when each one would be applied?
58. What is the purpose of UPDATE STATISTICS?
59. How do you use DBCC statements to monitor various aspects of a SQL server installation?
60. How do you load large data to the SQL server database?
61. How do you check the performance of a query and how do you optimize it?
62. How do SQL server 2000 and XML linked? Can XML be used to access data?
63. What is SQL server agent?
64. What is referential integrity and how is it achieved?
65. What is indexing?
66. What is normalization and what are the different forms of normalizations?
67. Difference between server.transfer and server.execute method?
68. What id de-normalization and when do you do it?
69. What is better – 2nd Normal form or 3rd normal form? Why?
70. Can we rewrite subqueries into simple select statements or with joins? Example?
71. What is a function? Give some example?
72. What is a stored procedure?
73. Difference between Function and Procedure-in general?
74. Difference between Function and Stored Procedure?
75. Can a stored procedure call another stored procedure. If yes what level and can it be controlled?
76. Can a stored procedure call itself(recursive). If yes what level and can it be controlled.?
77. How do you find the number of rows in a table?
78. Difference between Cluster and Non-cluster index?
79. What is a table called, if it does not have neither Cluster nor Non-cluster Index?
80. Explain DBMS, RDBMS?
81. Explain basic SQL queries with SELECT from where Order By, Group By-Having?
82. Explain the basic concepts of SQL server architecture?
83. Explain couple pf features of SQL server
84. Scalability, Availability, Integration with internet, etc.)?
85. Explain fundamentals of Data ware housing & OLAP?
86. Explain the new features of SQL server 2000?
87. How do we upgrade from SQL Server 6.5 to 7.0 and 7.0 to 2000?
88. What is data integrity? Explain constraints?
89. Explain some DBCC commands?
90. Explain sp_configure commands, set commands?
91. Explain what are db_options used for?
92. What is the basic functions for master, msdb, tempdb databases?
93. What is a job?
94. What are tasks?
95. What are primary keys and foreign keys?
96. How would you Update the rows which are divisible by 10, given a set of numbers in column?
97. If a stored procedure is taking a table data type, how it looks?
98. How m-m relationships are implemented?
99. How do you know which index a table is using?
100. How will oyu test the stored procedure taking two parameters namely first name and last name returning full name?
101. How do you find the error, how can you know the number of rows effected by last SQL statement?
102. How can you get @@error and @@rowcount at the same time?
103. What are sub-queries? Give example? In which case sub-queries are not feasible?
104. What are the type of joins? When do we use Outer and Self joins?
105. Which virtual table does a trigger use?
106. How do you measure the performance of a stored procedure?
107. Questions regarding Raiseerror?
108. Questions on identity?
109. If there is failure during updation of certain rows, what will be the state?

Source: http://www.techinterviews.com/?p=161

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Copy/Move Complete Directory Structure in PHP

Hi Everyone…

Following is the function which to copy the compete directory structure from source to destination. This function was used extensively by me in my final year project…

function GetContents (&$noOfFiles, &$noOfDir, $sourceDirectory)
{
         $delim = DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
         $tempCWD = $sourceDirectory;

         @chdir ($tempCWD);
         $Contents = Array();

         $dirPtr = dir (getcwd());
         while ($file = $dirPtr->read())
         {
             if ($file != "." && $file != ".." && is_dir($file) && $file{0} != "." && $file != "trash")
             {
                 $noOfDir++;
                 $Contents[] = $file;
             }
             else if ($file != "." && $file != ".." && is_file($file) && $file{0} != ".")
             {
                 $noOfFiles++;
                 $Contents[] = $file;
             }
         }

         return @$Contents;
}

Participation in VisioSpark 2005

Howdy!!!

I got the oppurtunity to participate in VisionSpark 2005 (an IT Gala). Me and Farooq Zaman were the participants in CS Quiz Category.

On first day, we smashed out participants of 16 universities from all over pakistan and passed out to 3 rd and final round.

On the second day, we started with low scoring in first category (though still on top) but by the grace of Allah went very find in rest of the categories.

 Finally we stood FIRST in this competition and clean sweeped almost 38 universities.

Thanks to Allah (who made us able to win this competition) and to My Parents and my Teachers for their support and encourgment…..

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Keep Smiling 🙂