Slashdot Mirror

Yeah by the title of the article, I was imagining something like this:
http://www.gamepc.com/shop/systemfamily.asp?family=gpcp4

... but, you know... a little sleeker.

Tiny touchscreens? Meh indeed.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=x53 55&page=3&cookie_test=1 says 450 watts peak power consumption, for a system with two quad-core processors and a crazy nVidia graphics card.

That's with 2.66GHz quad-cores, and it's possible that the 3GHz ones use up to 25 watts more each, but 500 watts is still a pretty pathetic space heater.

A test with 3GHz dual-cores of a server-like machine (http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2892&p=10 ) used 325 watts peak; the nVidia graphics chips do not seem to be as active at shutting down unused parts of the chip as Intel's processors are, and I think that explains most of the difference.

You already have one. Take a look at a dual Opteron motherboard. See those toroids and capacitors and big heatsinks near the CPU socket? You're looking at a DC-DC converter, rated for about 80 amps at 1.4 volts. In fact, two of them, one for each CPU chip. They're running off the +12V supply.

PCI slots need +5V or +3.3V. But a 1U server usually doesn't have PCI slots, at least not with anything in them. Despite this, 1U servers and their motherboards normally come with a power supply with outputs for +5V DC, +12V DC, -5V DC, -12V DC, and +3.3V DC. The +12VDC supply is doing almost all the work, powering the CPU and the disk drives. The other outputs are mostly idling. So one can see why Google, which is basically a big collection of 1U servers, is annoyed about having all those useless power supplies in their server farm.

I don't know what you've been smoking but for the same price of a top-rated Mac Pro at 3GHz, you can get a 3.73GHz from Dell, so why don't you please stop spreading FUD and have a nice cup of shut the fuck up.

I know this can be a little confusing to computer novices. The 3.73GHz Xeon is slower and uses more power than the 3.0GHz Xeon, even though they use the same socket. However, you shouldn't be talking shit, especially about a subject you know little about.

I don't know what you've been smoking but for the same price of a top-rated Mac Pro at 3GHz, you can get a 3.73GHz from Dell, so why don't you please stop spreading FUD and have a nice cup of shut the fuck up.

I know this can be a little confusing to computer novices. The 3.73GHz Xeon is slower and uses more power than the 3.0GHz Xeon, even though they use the same socket. However, you shouldn't be talking shit, especially about a subject you know little about.

Actually single-core Opteron processors running at 3 GHz do exist (Opteron 256 and 856). I think what you meant is that there is no dual-core Opteron running at 3 GHz, and this is true since the fastest dual-core Opteron processors stops at 2.6 GHz (Opteron 185, 285 and 885). This is why I said that only the high-end Xeon processors make sense (Xeon 5140, 5150 and 5160). Such processors are at least as fast as the fastest dual-core Opteron in any non memory-intensive workload. However, as soon as memory latency becomes a critical factor a 2.6 GHz dual-core Opteron becomes at least as fast as a 3.0 GHz dual-core Xeon, as shown in this Apache benchmark where Opteron outperfoms Xeon by 15-25% at the same clock frequency (and 3.0 GHz is only 15% faster than 2.6 GHz).

So in the end, Woodcrest or Opteron, which one is better ? It all depends whether the workload is memory intensive or not. No matter how fast Woodcrest runs, its memory latency will always be around 100ns while it is about 50ns for Opteron. Of course Intel tries to hide this latency by using huge 4 MB caches, but as seen in the Apache benchmark, sometimes even 4 MB is not enough. It also means that 4 MB Xeons are more expensive to produce than 1 MB Opterons, becauche L2 cache takes more than half of the die space. This is why Intel is forced to use a 65nm manufacturing process, to try to gain back this "lost" silicon wafer space.

Regarding your second question, a dual dual-core Opteron 285 (4 cores) with 8 GB of RAM with a high-end mobo would costs about $3200 (1062*2+8*70+500). Add a $400 chassis and 2 x $150 harddisks and you end up with a total of $3900 (compared to your $5K). So yes, Opteron is definitively cheaper. What are the exact tech specs of your system ?

Just to recap things, the Xeon 5100-series, aka "Woodcrest", is the very first released processor family that is based on the new 8th generation, Intel Core Microarchitecture, technically inspired from the 6th generation (PPro, PII, PIII), instead of the 7th generation (P4). As a side note, Intel has been using the "Core Solo" and "Core Duo" denominations for some processors but this is just a marketing usage of the term "Core", because such processors are NOT based on the Intel Core Microarchitecture. Anyway, Woodcrest is the first to represent this all-new Intel Core Microarchitecture that is supposed to save Intel from the very competitive K8 design (Opteron, Athlon64...).

So, Woodcrest seems indeed to be a very good processor, as shown in this preview (the less-biased, more technically accurate I have been able to find up to this day). Intel claims that Woodcrest is "80% more performant at 35% less power" compared to the original dual-core Xeon processor, and most benchmarks seem to confirm this claim. It may seem technically impressive, but in fact considering the very poor design of the original dual-core Xeon processor, such an improvement HAD to be expected and was almost a prerequisite for Intel to even start thinking about taking back Opteron's market share.

Here is a quick fact list I have assembled from my own research and from the review linked above:

At equal clock frequencies, Woodcrest is about 5-15% more powerful than Opteron on traditional workloads (common x86 and arithmetic instructions), and much more powerful (30% and more) than Opteron on multimedia workloads (mostly SSE, SSE2, maybe FPU I am not sure).

At equal clock frequencies, Opteron is still much more powerful (30% and more) than Woodcrest on memory-intensive workloads due to its integrated memory controller (leading to better latency) and ccHT links in SMP cases (where memory throughput increases with the number of ccHT links).

At equal clock frequencies, Woodcrest consumes less power than Opteron, but Woodcrest's memory (FB-DIMM) requires more power than Opteron's memory (DDR400). So overall, a Woodcrest-based system consumes about as much power as an Opteron-based system (as shown in page 3 of the review).

At equal clock frequencies, Woodcrest is cheaper than Opteron, but Woodcrest motherboards (socket 771) are more expensive than Opteron motherboards (socket 939 and 940) and FB-DIMM memory is twice the price of DDR400. These pricing differences are so large that Opteron is still preferable to Woodcrest in most cases: Opteron is cheaper for any single or dual-cpu server config with 4 GB or more of memory, Opteron is cheaper for any entry-level server config (about $1500 and below) whatever the amount of memory is, Woodcrest seems to only make sense when the high-end processors (Xeon 5140, 5150 and 5160) are used with NO MORE than 4 GB of memory (else Opteron's cheaper memory has a price advantage).

Of course, in the high-end server market (4, 8 or more processors), Opteron is still the clear technical leader because Intel STILL hasn't switched to a CPU interconnect similar to HT and STILL isn't using an integrated memory controller.

In conclusion, I would say that when comparing only the processors, Woodcrest is superior to Opteron in many aspects (such as instruction throughput), and Opteron beats Woodcrest in other aspects (such as memory accesses). But when comparing a whole Woodcrest-based system versus an Opteron-based system, other factors come into play (such as price and scalibility), which make Opteron superior to Woodcrest in a lot of cases.

Here is the Half-Life 2 benchmark: http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article. php/3261_3484631__7 FX-55 is about 20% faster, also here: http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=fx5 7&page=6&cookie_test=1 you can find that FX-57 is about 10% faster than FX-55, which gives at least 30% lead ahead of P4 965 EE.

Dual Dual-Core Opterons vs Xeon (Paxville)

You are hallucinating.

1. Business purchasers are consumers. Deal with it. IBM has millions of TPM systems deployed with software that actually makes use of the TPM module. Using your definition, educational institutions and the publishing industry are also not "mainstream consumers." Frankly, you're also ignoring the large numbers of individuals that buy IBM laptops because they're high quality and nigh indestructible.

2. The number of Windows based systems with installed TPM modules dwarfs anything that Apple has shipped in the last few months, even if you exclude IBM. Dell sells them. Fujitsu sells them (E8000, S7000, P1500, ST50XX. B6000, T4000). (Here's a whole list of manufacturers that have shipped TPM modules in Windows based machines.

3. Really, knock off the drugs. Intel invented USB. Intel pushed USB. Intel rammed USB down every whitebox manufacturer's throat well before Apple introduced its USB keyboards and mouse with those candy colored iMacs in January 2002. I have Microsoft USB keyboards that are older than that. Roundup of USB optical mice from August 2000.

Now that I've addressed the specific points therein, I'd appreciate external references to things that give sales numbers, introduction dates, and other points that prove that Apple got either of those technologies on the market before Windows PC suppliers. Otherwise, have a nice day, and seek counseling.

Here is an interesting article about comparing the Athlon & Pentium's Power consumption at 90nm.

This is an incredible breakthrough, transistors are the most important invention of the 20th century!

The Hexus article is just a summary of their results along with several inaccuracies.

If you're I/O bound by your threads in any way, you can hit problems (all threads touch the MCH, then there's a 266MiB/sec bus link to the I/O processors to cross, then the data hits disks or network hardware). If you're memory subsystem bound in any way, especially on a majority of compute threads, performance is likely gone.

Here is a link to the intel datasheets for the chipsets which shows 3 x8 PCIe interfaces for the 7520 and 1 for the 7320. http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/E7520_E7320 /

All that being said, the CPU itself is a dog.

Xenons? Pfft.
---
(\(\
(-.-) Give me back my damn feet!
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

What you posted here is an excerpt from the fourth page.

Page #2 is hacked as well... move on to page 3. Of course that might get hacked too...

Read: http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=pax ville&page=1

*gasp* Someone has their panties in a bunch over this.

-Sam

The second page is safe

Oh my god indeed! Anyone else here notice that gamepc has been hacked, displaying our old friend goatse?

Safe link (start at page 2)

The ATI Radeon 9600 is also available fanless (in the SE and vanilla range it ships fanless; some reports of success replacing the Pro's fan with a Zalman heatsink); I have a vanilla 9600 and it runs Half Life 2 and Far Cry quite happily on my 2GHz Athlon 2400XP with an impressive feature-set (not maximum, but stuff like grass turned on) at 1024 res. It just has an old-style heatsink.

GamePC had a feature on fanless graphics cards about 18 months ago.

Actually, that convertor is for using the Pentium M with older Socket 478 motherboards using the Intel 865PE and 875P chipsets. It also only works with certain Asus motherboards. The latest motherboard tech would be PCI Express motherboards running Intel's 955X series of chipsets using socket LGA775.
If you just want a Pentium M in a desktop, you can purchase a desktop Pentium M motherboard. There aren't many options right now and they are really expensive. Check out this Pentium M motherboard review.

Gamers will find this one interesting. Covered in November 11 2004. Now that's gettin old!

GamePC.com did a review of it back in march

Benchmarks show it having exceptional gaming and rendering performance. The overclocked Pentium M even beats out the Pentium 4EE and AthlonFX-55, with the stock version still holding its own very well

It's somewhat lackluster in multimedia content creation, though, as it does not yet support SSE3

in both energy and processing efficiency

Clock for clock, the P-M is faster and uses less power.

RTFA, That AMD based ASUS is no joke, it's one of the best laptops out there no exceptions. I'd take a laptop made by ASUS, over any other company out there. They are hands down one of the best consumer oriented electronics companies around. I prefer AMD processors in my computers. Plain and simple I'm an underdog kind of guy. Every PC, and laptop I own uses an AMD processor, and 2 of the three PC's have ASUS motherboards to match. But truth be told in the mobile market Intel has a far superior chip. Your not going to see widespread acceptance of AMD in the mobile market, until they make a chip that's better than the Pentium M(PM). AMD's Turion is OK, but has a long way to go in terms of battery performance. The fact that the ASUS notebook did so well on the battery benchmark is a testament to ASUS's engineering more so than AMD's underlying technology. It's no coincidence that the top performers in battery performance were all from Intel. If you want to see how good a chip the PM is look at the Doom 3 numbers here:

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=a64 x2&page=10/

A PM @ 2.13GHz performs exactly the same as a A64 @ 2.4GHz, And it consumes a lot less power. PM's on the mobile side are just better chips. If you're doing media creation the scales tip towards AMD, but for business apps, and typical home consumer use it's the PM's battery life that makes it so popular.

-manno

Unfortunately mice are one of the most overlooked computer peripherals, while in reality should be one of the first places where your hard earned cash should be invested in.

Older AGP connectors had no latch at all. But, for example, an MSI m/board that I have here has this latch, I just checked.

The chipset you specify doesn't support 2 x16 PCI-E slots, and opening it up to other chipsets, there are none that offer capability for 2 x16 slots

So add more:

From Game PC:

"Tyan's Thunder K8WE utilizes a combination of three individual chips onboard to allow for so much onboard connectivity, the nVidia nForce4 Pro 2200 primary chip, the nForce4 Pro 2050 secondary chip, and the AMD 8131 PCI-X controller hub.
The nForce4 Professional 2200 is the "primary" chip of the nForce4 chipset, as this chip supports 16 lanes of PCI Express connectivity, Gigabit LAN, and four SATA-II/300 ports, along with all the extras which go along with the nForce4 design (USB, PCI, IDE, etc). Alone, the nForce4 Pro 2200 is similar in design to the nVidia's own nForce4 Ultra for the AMD Athlon64 platform.

The nForce4 Pro 2200 can be paired with an additional chip to supplement its abilities, which is the nForce4 Pro 2050. The nForce4 Pro 2050 is very similar in design to the 2200, but is neutered to help keep costs down. The nForce4 Pro 2050 can supply an additional 16 lanes of PCI Express bandwidth, an additional four SATA-II/300 ports, and an additional Gigabit Ethernet port. The 2050 however, cannot support USB 2.0, PCI, or IDE devices. When the 2050 chip is added to a motherboard, you basically double your PCI Express bandwidth, SATA RAID port capabilities, and GigE port capabilities compared to a single chip nForce4 Pro 2200 setup. "

1. the cheaper ones have the memory controlled by one processor and the other processor gets to the memory via the first one over hypertransfer e.g Tyan Tomcat, Tyan Tiger
2. the more expensive ones that give each processor its own memory (NUMA), eg Tyan Thunder

With the expensive mobo things are not so simple. In theory the dual mobo should be better but this depends on how NUMA aware is the OS. AFAIK only the latest XP has this and some Linux kernels. If the OS is not NUMA aware the performance of the NUMA setup is not significantly better than the one with shared memory access. More information here

OTOH I would expect the dual cores to fit inside a dual processor motherboard and thus offer even more power.

See the power consumption chart on this page. Buy the right CPUs and heat is much less of a problem. (Yes, I know, PowerPC is better in this regard, but if you want to run x86...)

Specifically, it shows two things (note, the clock throttling wasn't working on the Opteron processors mind):

1. They output a lot more heat.
2. Under 64-bit mode, Intel generally runs slower. AMD run quicker. Guess who did a good 64-bit implementation?

The P-M is a pretty good chip, a 2.0Ghz Dothan is more than a match against a 2.0Ghz Athlon-64, while using less power. The only problem is that they are still very overpriced.

That benchmark suffers from the common tendancy of FireWire advocates to measure only large sustained throughput. A number of benchmarks, like this one show USB 2.0 at a signifigant advantage when doing smaller reads.

Both have their advantages, and their place. The differences are likely inconsequential for the common use case - i.e. load up a bunch of crap, add and change incrementally from there on in - and packaging the cable for the nigh ubiquitous technology in the box makes a lot of sense from a cost reduction standpoint.

LAME performance for the 3000+

I think you should:

1. Pick a CD at random
2. Rip it into one large WAV file
3. Encode it using LAME on both platforms.
4. Repeat with iTunes on both platforms.
5. Provide the results.

In both cases we'll compare identical encoders, and not LAME x86 vs. iTunes G4. This is to prevent problems stemming from LAME being the highest-quality MP3 encoder, and iTunes being a POS.

Btw, clock-per-clock the Athlon64 is better than the G5. And the Pentium 4 is much better at divx encoding than the AthlonXP.

Well, it all depends on what you're using it for, right? From the same benchmark, the floating point performance still isn't all that good - in ScienceMark an Athlon64 at 2.2GHz still beats a Dothan OC-ed to 2.3GHz. OK, you're going to say Dothan is not about FP, but you have:

1. a (marginally) higher clock on the Dothan
2. 4 times more cache on the Dothan (2M vs. 512k)
3. A64 running in 32bit mode, which means 8 SSE2 registers instead of 16 (which would have given its top performance if optimized for that)
4. OC possibilities (apparently the 90nm A64 is a hell of an OC-er too, as people have had it jacked up to 2.4-2.6GHz on stock cooling)

Still, nobody is going to deny that Dothan has a heck of a strong performance on average. For many things it could well be the best tool for the job, if only Intel would drop the price and maybe someone else (nVidia? ATi?) would make a cheaper desktop chipset for it.

Exactly. The only news here is Intel essentially admitting their mistake with the marketing driven P4. For those who are surprised by these results see previous stories on the subject. See this Doom3 and Far Cry benchmark from the link in the first slashdot article and this extremetech article and this French benchmark. And these are not the only sources. The fact is that on a modern platform the Pentium M is quite competitive with not only a P4 at nearly twice the clock speed, but also with Athlon64 chips at nearly half the power of even a 90 nm Winchester Athlon64 with a max TDP of either 21 or 29 Watts for the older and newer chips respectively.

That's not to say that it is competitive in every domain, but for gaming it is tough to beat. And, yes, many modern games do scale with CPU power.

Here is a link to a benchmark that show that intel might be right.

This benchmark shows that a Pentium M 2.3 (Yes it is overclocked) is as fast as a AMD Athlon64 FX-53 (2.4 GHz) in many games

It's a shame all the benchmarks disagree. Have a look at Benchmark

This benchmark also shows that a Pentium M 2.3 (Yes it is overclocked) is as fast as a AMD Athlon64 FX-53 (2.4 GHz)

In their ad they said something like "AMD processors are the only processors which actively stop/prevent viruses".

But since as far as I can tell the AMD NX thing was not the first implementation of an hardware execution-guard technology and the new Xeons support the exact same NX bit that AMD developed, then even this claim wouldn't be true would it?

on desktop.

pretty fast if they want to compete. Reviews such as this one> clearly shows how the Pentium-M currently competes against the A64 and top of the line P4's using an "ok" desktop motherboard from AOpen

I haven't seen any boards with more than two x4+ slots yet, are there any? If only there was some way to split the x16 slot, since according to this article not even an ATI X800 really stresses a x4 slot.

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/print_content.asp?id=do thandesktop

This is the kind of thing I meant: Dothan on the desktop

While there always has been some demand for Pentium-M motherboards for the desktop, there was not enough of an urge to turn this demand into more than niche appeal.
Today though, we finally get to see how the Pentium-M platform can compete with the big boys, thanks to AOpen's new Pentium-M desktop motherboard.

In what way is the Pentium M "dumbed down?" Quite frankly, I'm firmly of the opinion that it's the best processor that Intel has produced to date, and I'm not alone in that view point.

The Pentium M is based on the old P6 core, with things like SSE added it to bring it up to current standards, and power saving circuitry of its own added in to suit the mobile role. The one major complaint about the chip is the fact that it's somewhat bottlenecked by a 400MHz FSB, but there's speculation that that's partly related to it currently being a mobile part. Even so, a relatively low clocked Pentium M compares very favorably to a much higher clocked P4.

Basically, the Pentium M is a move back to a P3 type design philosophy, away from the 30-stage pipeline madness Intel's gotten themselves into with Prescott. I fail to see how going with a more intelligent design is going with a dumbed down processor.

napes - RTFA - the whole point of this is that MS is releasing this as standalone "OS" in a retail box. This FA http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=xpm ce2005&page=1 even shows you what comes in the box.

Opterons beat Xeons at media encoding.

Most sales are in the low-end anyway (very few people buy the fastest CPUs). Where Intel really scores is corporate "office" PCs (usually Celerons or very low-end P4s), because it has long-term contracts with big companies. If you look at systems bought or built by "enthusiasts" (gaming PCs / workstations / servers), the Opteron has been sweeping the floor with Intel for quite some time now.

I'm surprised that Mythtv hasn't been mentioned here as an alternative to the DRM'd crap more than once.

What more can you ask for? linux/wireless/radio/dvd/mediaplayer-dvd-mp3 -ogg-lame-wma/weather/news/web/mysql/ripping dvd/photoalbum/DVR -pause-rewind-record/PIP/Schdeduled recording/front-end/back-end/all-in-one/

What's not to drool over?? Beats the pants off any commercial product, plus you get to build it yourself!

Many, many sites to help you get started , !

All without someone watching over what you're doing with what you've purchased......

after posting some hardware sugs, i forgot about the driver issue:most of the newest 64bit driver work from the
major manufacturers appear to be for Windows(ech). ( Here's a review that came out today.)

The latest Linux drivers from nvidia aren't too old; their last nForce3 update was in Dec 2003 and the gpu drivers in Jan 2004

Tyan have a page of drivers, as does Highpoint, and Adaptec

Look into the suse amd64 message boards - they seem to be having some success...

i didn't see it mentioned here by anyone else, but as reported on a couple of (sites for one)
there's a neat new box coming out from IWILL that crams two(2) Opterons in a SFF case.
Unfortunately, if you need something now, this one will be coming too late for you unless you're a
developer/partner/etc:

"IWILL ZMAX based on nVIDIA nForce3 Pro 250Gb chipset will sample in July.
Volume production is planned in September, with a suggested price of $499.
IWILL plans to get attention in workstation market. ZMAXdp will include proprietary
form factor motherboard, 300W power supply, up to 2x3.5" HDD bay, and 1xAGP;
PCI and SI can offer various configurations for workstation market demand."

it sounds like it could be a nice little box...

other pre-built systems include:

Pre-built
Caliber

there are others, but I've lost my wish-list ;-)
You could also build one yourself, but I'd look for the nForce3 pro 250 or 250Gb, the NF3-150 didn't
exactly get extraordinary reviews.
Good Luck!

I own one (CML-174B) and A/B/C comparisons with CRT and other LCD are like night/day. It is on par w/ CRT in terms of ghosting and colors, not quite as bright. It *destroys* all other LCDs I have seen in terms of pixel response. Read a real, in depth technical review of this >1 year old display. The submitter of the article must have been living under a rock for the last year.

I'm looking forward to the new release of QNX. More drivers, a modern browser, and other good stuff is coming. Windows CE customers are getting fed up with Microsoft and switching to QNX. (I've heard some amusing stories about Microsoft vs. Detroit: "No, you don't get to display the Microsoft logo every time the car starts".) It's not a general purpose desktop OS yet, but for embedded applications, it's way ahead of everything else. (Windows CE is too flakey, VxWorks is too low-level, RTLinux isn't protected mode, and the user-level "real time" Linux variants aren't hard real time.)