Andrew Gillham says:
> Peter Bentley writes:
> > 
> > As cgd said, why would you care about raw CPU MHz speed for that?  You
> > wanna know which boxes crack RC5 fastest? Crack some keys on 'em and use
> > *that* as your relative performance benchmark.  It'll be a sight more
> > representative than raw CPU speed.  
> 
> Uhmm, there are two different requests in this thread.  One for some
> kind of "BogoMIPS" type rating, and one for the apparent clock speed
> of the CPU.  I don't care particularly for the BogoMIPS rating, but
> I definitely would like to know what kind of CPU is in the box.
>...
>The i386 port prints out the family
>of the CPU, and the text name, and that is it.  Why should I have to
>open the case, pull the CPU, remove the fan and heatsink, clean off the
>heatsink compound just to read the speed of the CPU?  Hell, why should
>I have to reboot my box to see what the BIOS thinks?  What's wrong with
>printing the info out?
>...

I agree.  Imagine a compute intensive business with some cannibalized
CPUs in a drawer and some idle machines sitting around.  Of course,
they run NetBSD.  The company has already taken the time to benchmark
various important apps they run with various CPU types/speeds.
They've controlled for other variables by fitting out their machines
similarly or identically in terms of RAM, bus, etc.  When the company
needs to replace machines on their network or a CPU in a particular
machine, it would be nice for them to get information about what kind
of CPUs are in their boxes or drawer without resorting to the measures
described above.

In general, I'm always suspicious of statements that a particular
piece of information can't possibly be important to you.

All the best,
James Wetterau