Bogomips mini-Howto - Directory UMM

NexGen 386−enhanced CPUs, marked as Nx586, are listed as 386−like, since the fact that they are
performing like Pentium machines is not relevant to BogoMips.
AMD 5x86, also denoted as AMD 486DX5, are quadrupled 486/33 machines. They are fully in line with other
486 CPUs. The AMD K5 and the K6 are Pentium−like CPUs, with their own BogoMips multipliers.
3.8. Why to pay attention to BogoMips
Let me add that there are only two reasons for paying attention to the BogoMips rating that is presented on
booting Linux:
1.
BogoMips mini−Howto
To see whether it is in the proper range for the particular processor, its clock frequency, and the
potentially present cache. Many CPUs are prone to faulty setups of
♦ memory cache setting (write−back is wrong for BogoMips, often reported lower than 5;
write−through is ok)
♦ turbo−buttons (should be ON)
♦ BIOS−software emulated fake cache (change it for real cache)
♦ similar cache and clock related things, sometimes also BIOS−software related
2. To see whether your system is faster than mine. Of course this is completely wrong, unreliable,
ill−founded, and utterly useless, but all benchmarks suffer from this same problem. So why not use it?
This inherent stupidity has never before stopped people from using benchmarks, has it? :−)
Note that more serious uses for real benchmarking are addressed in the Linux Benchmarking Howto by Andre
D. Balsa.
3. The frequently asked questions about BogoMips 7