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Why is the clarity of a review an off-topic rant?

The Intel is obviously CPU-bound in the gaming benchmarks. Anyone with half an interest in games would see that one, right off the bat.

That is wrong. The Intel system is graphics bound, not CPU bound. In a clock-for-clock comparison Pentium M performs very similar to Athlon 64 in gaming performance when a high end video card is used as Tech Report, Anandtech, Sudhian and others have shown.

The problem with Intel's gaming performance in this review falls squarely on the low performance of Intel's integrated graphics. It is a problem of Intel's making. Intel will not let vendors use the Centrino name unless an Intel chipset is used. Being frozen out of the Centrino notebook market discourages others like ATI from creating better integrated graphics solutions for Pentium M.

yeah but we're not talking about a powersaving feature, we're talking about having 4ghz vs 0.5ghz. That's a huge difference. Now if you're just checking email with both the systems then your wasting, but if you're encoding DivX movies you need the extra mhz.

besides, someone had a good point:
"your desktop power supply does not run at capacity all the time, it needs that to get it through surges in demand"

The only difference between a VIA system and a p4 system is the processor. The hd, video, etc are all sucking the same amount of power, and that p4 isn't going to be sucking maximum power 24/7, when you're just checking email you're not going to be at 90% utilization. Sure it'll use more wattage than a Via, but it's unlikely it'll be 200w vs 90w all the time like in my example, I'd bet the power consumption would be closer to about even given everything being the same except for a Via CPU vs a P4. Does anyone exactly how much more a P4 sucks down at idle vs a Via CPU? I'm betting it's not over 50w, probably not even that dramatic.

check this out: EPIA Power Simulator tells you the power consumption of EPIA boards with different accessories. At idle with a high-end video card, CDROM drive and 3.5" hd a EPIA 5000 got nearly 90w. They also have a p4 you can play with proving larger power consumption, but I found this interesting: over at Anandtech they did a review showing that a AMD64 3500+ 90nm core only sucks down 86w at idle. 86w! That's a full system too. The Tech Report did a similar test and got 113w from a similar cpu. That's still damn good.

So if what these sites are saying is correct these boards really don't save any power when the PCs are idle compared to 3+ ghz AMD64 90nm core processors, and very little compared to P4s. Good to know.

What support and updates do you still get today for the OS that came with the G3 circa 1997-99? Will it end before or after MS discontinues support for Windows 98 next year?

I know, just kidding. Apple's already killed 10.1, and has also tried to kill support for 10.2 barely more than a year after its release. Thanks for missing the whole point, though.

Who was it that forced people to upgrade the OS? Oh yeah, it was Microsoft. Yeah, right.

DFI and AOpen both make boards. See http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/dfi-855gm e-mgf/index.x?pg=1 and http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1728546 ,00.asp for reviews of each.

Techreport's test is from feburary 20th, and shows somewhat the same - AMD64 is king of gaming, and doing one thing at a time - Intel is good at encoding etc, and thanks to HT, doing more than one thing at a time - I would prefer AMD for now (I got a Prescott 550 3.4GHz - I wish I had an AMD).
Ain't it great with competition?! :D

iTunes is OK, but the Mac Mini doesn't have nTune.

How are you going to set your "RAS to CAS access - T (RCD)" on that Mac Mini?

Flexibility, indeed.

iTunes is OK, but the Mac Mini doesn't have nTune.

How are you going to set your "RAS to CAS access - T (RCD)" on that Mac Mini?

Flexibility, indeed.

Exposed CMOS reset button on rear of the enclosure.

The best IO interface design is that of the legendary AT form factor, but with an ATX psu. Am I the only one that admires no less than eight ISA or ISA+VLB expanion interfaces? Or how it was attaching a IO interface to a cluster of pins and YOU decide whether face of the enclosure to present it to the world.

I admit, the cause for all the cheezy case mods is because everything invented and purged onto nerds and clerks is revolting on both technical and decorating merits, and the case-modders want to add to the confusion by buying the fassion-crap and cutting off the wrong areas just to stick a lightbuld into the case to brag about a $50 fan or electricity gremlins warded off by all-seeing eyes.

Actually what's more interesting than the SpeedStep thing, is the fact that the 600 series uses 25W less power than the 500 series on full load ( that's something when you consider that there is 1M more memory on the new chip).
Up til now Intel's 90nm process was a huge failure because of the heating problems and forced Intel to abandon their plans to hike speeds above 3.8GHz

Athlon 64s all have PowerNow technology and have been able to do this from the start to cut power consumption drastically.

Considering that all the sites are now talking about Intel finally catching up by having a similar feature enabled by default, I'd say that it wasn't available before now.

Anyway, power consumption tests on these new Intel processors on other reviews (Tech Report) show that this technology is only useful when you aren't doing any work at all on the processor, when you do stuff, the Intel 6xx processor jumps to 50W-70W higher than an Athlon64 90nm under the same load. So if you are folding or SETIing or whatever, 24 hours a day, and your electricity is 10 cents a unit, you are talking up to $62 more a year in electricity bills.

If you keep a system for three years, a P4 will cost $180 more to run than an A64, and that is certainly something that should be factored into the purchase price for people who like their systems to keep on doing stuff. If you leave it idle overnight, then the cost difference will be a lot less of course, or if your overnight electricity is a lot cheaper then folding at night only is a good choice.

Turn on HTML formatting next time, brother.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/pentium4-600/ index.x?pg=1

... of this new CPU is how little power it uses compared to older Prescotts:

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-263-11. htm

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/pentium4- 600/index.x?pg=16

Load temperatures are the same levels as idle temps on the old prescotts!

I'm good at them, and I still couldn't get much out of those besides a headache. Here's a bunch of better ones, just to show that they don't suck universally.

the Geforce 4200 was far faster than the 5200. The 5200 was criminally bad. It has 4 pixel pipeliens which could do 1 texture/pass, whereas the 4200 was 4/2. you cannot play anything modern on a 5200. fsck, i my 4200 died a couple months ago & i need a video card.

I've been a die hard nvidia fan since the geforce series, but the first thing I do when mentioning nvidia is spend 30 minutes badmouthing the 5200. nVidia should be ASHAMED for such a piece of junk.

Dont get a 5200. the 4400's are cheap and dead center between the 4200 and 4600. else step up and get a 6200. If you really want a 5200, get a 440 MX, its almost the same thing.

techreport table o' video cards.

Here's the link to the site I used: PSU Wattage Calculator [jscustompcs.com]

The problem with that calculator is that it ignores the role of the 12V rail in "modern" systems (i.e. P4's, Athlon 64's). Instead it provides a gross (and inflated) wattage figure that takes no account of where the demand is. Not surprising given that the site is interested in selling you a bigger PSU.

Compare the number it pumps out to this graph of an Athlon64 4000+ based system with a variety of video cards.

Sure., the latest of which seems to be this one.

Sure., the latest of which seems to be this one.

Is here, for now.

Looks like a nicely-thought-out little case. But what would I do if my tower wasn't sitting here acting as a fashionable end table?

Yeah, I found that confusing and made me take the rest of the article with a grain of salt.

Tom's Hardware and the Tech Report both had better reviews in my oppinion.

It's not your house - it's all the stuff IN your house. Worst offenders are generic PCs; specifically their case design (RFI/EMI-wise) is absolutely clueless (e.g., see http://www.ac6v.com/comprfi.htm/ for theory and fixes). Second place is firmly held by very, very crappy power supplies that let all the noise OUT of the PC on the power buss (ie. into your wiring). Sam's very useful Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of Small Switchmode Power Supplies) will get you started with theory and what [often] goes wrong (disclosure: I'm his sidekick). But:

Pet Peeve: as soon as Name-Your-$14-PC-PS-Manufacturer gets their UL sticker (meaning they can start selling in the US!) the ENTIRE L-C filter from the input of the power supply PCB is shorted out with a series of jumpers. Right, the 120VAC wires go through the save-thy-ass fuse right into the rectifier! No caps, no chokes, nuthin'! (Ok, so what do you expect from a $15 460W PS?) This allows all the noise on the power lines to enter the PC (and fry it - use a surge protector!) *AND* it allows all the noise IN the PC to escape back out and corrupt others (ie. your receiver, TV, etc.) (See: http://cms-emc.web.cern.ch/cms-emc/pdffiles/PhDfil es/PS&filters.pdf section 3.2 Switching mode power supplies for a nice overview). Oh, yeah, and I'm *SURE* all of you have your grounded cable actually grounded, right?

I got a 250W ATX knock-off case for $29 that came with a PS included. Turned the PC on, *ALL* AM stations vanished! Right... I opened it up and shure enough, a jumper from fuse to rectifier. All caps to ground were missing as well (from various points in the circuit). A few moments with a soldering iron (jelly-bean components, salvaged from dead *quality* PSes) and you can't tell the PC is on by listening to AM dial. Day and night difference!

Don't feel bad if you never though of it, this guy obviously never did either... and he should have. http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/psus/index.x? pg=1

But, how do you later chop up the files? I'm glad you asked: I use a hacked version of text-only (yeah!) soundgrab. You can get my latest version from http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/filipg/soundgrab/

My signal comes from a battery-powered (ie. avoids issues with 'corrupted power' ;) digital sony walkman, via a 20-odd foot coax cable to my PC. The further away your receiver is from the source of noice, the better off you are![*] Linux records it from a SoundBlaster Live! with rawrec to a wav file. I have a series of templates (.sg files) for different shows and just fudge them a bit then export to MP3. Piece of cake! I've done a bunch of Dave's shows that way (~700MB worth) for inclusion in a weakness of mine (don't worry, they get some equally-illegit music ;).

Cheers

[*] "The solution to pollution is dilution" - Evil chemistry maxim applied to the wonderul and friendly world of RFI ;-)

Here are some more sites covering it... all about the same content, really:
viperlair.com
hardocp.com
techreport.com
thetechzone.com
tweaktown.com
thetechzone.com
hothardware.com
hexus.net
pcper.com
legionhardware.com
thetechlounge.com
bigbruin.com

The Tech Report has a more thorough review of the chipset, complete with independent benchmarks.

Sorry but 10K rpm SCSI drives (not to mention 15K) pound even Raptors extrememly hard in the performance arena. Look it up. No, here you go:

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/maxtor-diamon dmax10/index.x?pg=4

On my blog I have posted this:

In my first Build Challenge I set forth a challenge to build a x86 PC to compete with the Mac mini. I didn't get any great systems listed but we did have a good laugh about how sexy Macs are.

I've posted on other sites including The Tech Report and most of the responses tried to compare full sized x86 PC to the mini. I've said how this is crazy. I just want to compare the mini with SFF x86 systems.

That begs the question just what is a SFF system? I can't find a good definition on the web so I'll set my own.

SFF acronym for Small Form Factor: Computer system that is smaller than 925 cubic inches.

SFF system range greatly in size from the Shuttle SB59P at 915 cubic inches to the Cappuccino EZ3 at 63 cubic inches. The Mac mini is on the smaller side at 84.5 cubic inches. The price range also varies greatly as do performance and style. Lets leave out performance since it isn't really an issue for most people in our post megahertz era.

To narrow the challenge follow these criteria:
Size: Must be under 925 cubic inches
Price: Must be under $1200
Style: Must not be ugly

I guess we could argue that last one but I'll accept anything that at least tries to be attractive. Also it has to be ordered built and tested with Windows. Most people don't want to build their own systems and since you can't with the Mac mini it wouldn't be fair to compare it to bare bones systems. Also the systems should match the mini's configuration: 256MB RAM/40GB Hard Drive/Combo Drive.

No single SFF x86 PC meets the mini on all the factors so I'll compare it to three:

Cappuccino EZ3
Size: 63 cubic inches
Price: $823
Style: 5 out 10

Even smaller than the mini. But more expensive and close to ugly.

Shuttle L 5600h
Size: 680 cubic inches
Price: $515
Style: 7 out of 10

Much bigger than the mini. But larger hard drive by default.

Hush Mini ITX
Size: 452 cubic inches
Price: $1159
Style: 9 out of 10

Great looks. But still bigger and way more expensive.

Compare these to the:

Mac mini
Size: 84.5 cubic inches
Price $499
Styles 9 out of 10

And I hope you can see why the Mac mini is the best system overall and the only one that is more than the sum of it's parts. Now for some the fact that it doesn't run Windows means they would never choose it. For others the fact that these systems run Windows means they would never choose them. Let's not have any flame wars over the OS. And I'm leaving out the bundled software that comes with the mini as a factor in the price. But it is a nice plus that you get iLife, iWorks, and Appleworks.

Please post any systems that are better than the three I've listed that meet my criteria.

What I'd like to see is a product like this drive cage (fits four 1" drives in three standard 5.25" bays), except built with 2.5" laptop size drives in mind.

Just eyeballing the space, it looks like you could fit about 8 laptop drives in two 5.25" bays. Seagate already has 37 and 73 GB SCSI models available, so all that's missing is the convenient RAID enclosure for a workstation.

Hardly. All else being equal, if you double the rotational speed, you double the bulk transfer rate. Also, rotational delay is the major factor in the drive's average seek times.

Bulk transfer rate is more important in most applications

I would contend that seek time is more important for most applications (transaction servers, database access, web servers, booting PCs etc) than transfer rate (used mostly by media-intensive industries).

If it spins twice as fast but has half the density, it has the same bulk transfer rate.

Why half the density? Why not the same density but 50% higher spin (and transfer) rate?

6) interest in SCSI is outdated. SATA with one (competent) controller per disk has better characeristics.

Not according to this article, and others. It's improving, SATA NCQ/TCQ is a big help, but its only advantage is price, still. 10K and 15K SCSI drives have real advantages in both transfer rate and seek times.

Oh come on, how much do those few LEDs consume? Anyway, the PS might be 450w but this doesn't mean the computer consumes that much, maybe about 150 idle and 250 under load. And how exectly more hard drive space results in higher power reqs?
I still think putting flashing LEDs on RAM is stupid, but don't really care what other people do with their computers so I don't bitch about it.

Here are some other reviews:
TechReport
AnandTech
HotHardware

Some of these make a little more sense because they benchmark the 6200TC against some of its direct competitors in the low end instead of against a mid range card.

I think Gamers Depot's conclusion is a bit off too. What's notable isn't that it is slower than enthusiast cards. Of course it is. What's surprising is how well it still runs the very newest games, despite the drawbacks associated with that pricing range.

There is a theory (urban myth) that the extra power used during a boot outweighs any savings. If someone can disprove that then I will persuade more work mates to follow my action.

You don't need a chart, just a quick calculation. According to this a Pentium 4 desktop machine draws around 150 watts just sitting idle. 150 watts times 10 hours idle time equals 1500 watt-hours wasted per day. In order for a two minute boot process to waste 1500 watt-hours, the machine would have to draw 90,000 watts during bootup. (1500W*h * 60min/hr / 2min). Assuming your office in the US (or anywhere else where mains voltage is 120 Volts rms), that would be about a 750 amp current draw (90,000W / 120V) to turn on one computer. Most normal circuits (like you would plug a computer into) are protected by breakers that trip at about 20 amps. The wires in your office walls would melt before you could boot a computer if you tried to pull that much current through them.

Turn the computers off. Whoever pays the electric bill will thank you.

Great job on getting this one out early!
Oh wait, TechReport.com had this story about 12 hours ago.
http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/7708

it may be a non starter judging by this article http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/6809

"I've spoken with several sources here on the show floor from motherboard and enclosure makers who have all said the same thing: the BTX form factor is a non-starter on AMD systems. The problem seems to be the relative CPU and DIMM placement; the standard requires placement of DIMM sockets too far from the processor. With the Athlon 64's integrated memory controller, following the BTX spec becomes very difficult. Of course, BTX is Intel's spec, but it is also a proposed industry standard. Motherboard and enclosure makers are worrying out loud about the inventory control and design problems that may be caused by the extended coexistence of the ATX and BTX standards."

Eh... I think that the P-M, slightly overvolted, and cranked up to 2.8GHz (perfectly stable, with only a northbridge HSF) can beat an A64 4000+ at Doom 3.

Also: a discussion on Techreport.com on how to change the RDC listening/sending port, and a bunch of other RDC related info/links: here

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?article id=592&cid=1
http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q4/athlon64-fx55 /index.x?pg=1
http://www.bit-tech.net/review/364/
http://www.short-media.com/review.php?r=266
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1 666
http://www.tbreak.com/reviews/article.php?id=331
http://www.amdreview.com/reviews.php?rev=fx-55-400 0
http://www.techwarelabs.com/reviews/processors/amd 4000_fx55/
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Njc1
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/athlo n64-fx55.html
http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=614

In this picture you can see that they are still using SCSI-style connectors. I thought the plan was to move to Serial-Attached-Scsi that used the SATA connector while still being SCSI. That way you could potential plug a SATA drive in the same slot as a SCSI was previous if your chipset supported it etc. It remember reading some Flash presentation on it. It was somewhere on the SCSI Trade Association website. They got a whole section on SAS on the site. So is it just theoretical? Anyone use it? Know anyone who does? Will it be out soon?

I don't really see it. One Google result showed the difference in power consumption between an idle and loaded 3.4GHz P4 to be about 80W. I pay about $0.09 for a KWh of electricity. That works out to about $5.62 extra per month per computer - assuming that the CPU would otherwise be completely idle for the entire month. This is for a particularly power-hungry CPU, and most would be cheaper to operate.

Note that the same system (from the source above) would already cost $10.60 per month per machine to run at the price I'm paying, no you're not exactly getting to use it for free anyhow. This has nothing to do with the discussion; it's just a side observation.

Abit has x700 cards already. What I'm jazzed about today though is Vias PCIe chipset for AMD.

x700 + A64 939 + HL2 Collectors edition = Lovin!

Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] has nothing to worry about from IBM.

IBM's GXP Deathstar hard drives [slashdot.org], as/. regulars are well [slashdot.org] aware of [slashdot.org], are exactly that. Death comes to your data on these drives eventually [techreport.com]. Too bad for a large number of customers [techreport.com], it came sooner rather than later.

When the news first broke [techreport.com] on these drives, some [techreport.com] tech sites [storagereview.com] came out [viahardware.com] with the news, and others [tomshardware.com] kept fairly silent. Silence isn't a crime. But continuing to use Deathstars in review gear should be. Why? Because some readers, myself included, used reviews and testing gear examples from Tom's Hardware to build our first computers. Take advice and recommendations from the experts, and you get a better computer, right?

As the current/. story points out, why bite the hand that feeds you advance facts on hardware under ndas, and direct contact with company engineers?

Consumer Reports [consumerreports.org] buys everything [consumerreports.org] they test. With the money that Tom's Hardware has made from advertising on its site (from reader views), they should be doing the same.

Don't take my word for it. Check the dates of when the Deathstar stories first appeared. Then check the hardware reviews on Tom's Hardware. Not just hard drive reviews. Check reviews of other hardware related or dependent upon hard drive speed to get some benchmarks or results. Then see what hard drives are used in the benchmarks, and in the review gear.

While some of their readers went down in flames, others were announcing that the there was a problem, and they continued on as if nothing was wrong. They may have acknowledged the problem in a small story or two iirc (maybe not even that), but they continued using the hard drives in their review gear, without a footnote or warning about them.

Why? emx

Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] has nothing to worry about from IBM.

IBM's GXP Deathstar hard drives [slashdot.org], as/. regulars are well [slashdot.org] aware of [slashdot.org], are exactly that. Death comes to your data on these drives eventually [techreport.com]. Too bad for a large number of customers [techreport.com], it came sooner rather than later.

When the news first broke [techreport.com] on these drives, some [techreport.com] tech sites [storagereview.com] came out [viahardware.com] with the news, and others [tomshardware.com] kept fairly silent. Silence isn't a crime. But continuing to use Deathstars in review gear should be. Why? Because some readers, myself included, used reviews and testing gear examples from Tom's Hardware to build our first computers. Take advice and recommendations from the experts, and you get a better computer, right?

As the current/. story points out, why bite the hand that feeds you advance facts on hardware under ndas, and direct contact with company engineers?

Consumer Reports [consumerreports.org] buys everything [consumerreports.org] they test. With the money that Tom's Hardware has made from advertising on its site (from reader views), they should be doing the same.

Don't take my word for it. Check the dates of when the Deathstar stories first appeared. Then check the hardware reviews on Tom's Hardware. Not just hard drive reviews. Check reviews of other hardware related or dependent upon hard drive speed to get some benchmarks or results. Then see what hard drives are used in the benchmarks, and in the review gear.

While some of their readers went down in flames, others were announcing that the there was a problem, and they continued on as if nothing was wrong. They may have acknowledged the problem in a small story or two iirc (maybe not even that), but they continued using the hard drives in their review gear, without a footnote or warning about them.

Why? emx

Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] has nothing to worry about from IBM.

IBM's GXP Deathstar hard drives [slashdot.org], as/. regulars are well [slashdot.org] aware of [slashdot.org], are exactly that. Death comes to your data on these drives eventually [techreport.com]. Too bad for a large number of customers [techreport.com], it came sooner rather than later.

When the news first broke [techreport.com] on these drives, some [techreport.com] tech sites [storagereview.com] came out [viahardware.com] with the news, and others [tomshardware.com] kept fairly silent. Silence isn't a crime. But continuing to use Deathstars in review gear should be. Why? Because some readers, myself included, used reviews and testing gear examples from Tom's Hardware to build our first computers. Take advice and recommendations from the experts, and you get a better computer, right?

As the current/. story points out, why bite the hand that feeds you advance facts on hardware under ndas, and direct contact with company engineers?

Consumer Reports [consumerreports.org] buys everything [consumerreports.org] they test. With the money that Tom's Hardware has made from advertising on its site (from reader views), they should be doing the same.

Don't take my word for it. Check the dates of when the Deathstar stories first appeared. Then check the hardware reviews on Tom's Hardware. Not just hard drive reviews. Check reviews of other hardware related or dependent upon hard drive speed to get some benchmarks or results. Then see what hard drives are used in the benchmarks, and in the review gear.

While some of their readers went down in flames, others were announcing that the there was a problem, and they continued on as if nothing was wrong. They may have acknowledged the problem in a small story or two iirc (maybe not even that), but they continued using the hard drives in their review gear, without a footnote or warning about them.

Why? emx

Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] has nothing to worry about from IBM.

IBM's GXP Deathstar hard drives [slashdot.org], as/. regulars are well [slashdot.org] aware of [slashdot.org], are exactly that. Death comes to your data on these drives eventually [techreport.com]. Too bad for a large number of customers [techreport.com], it came sooner rather than later.

When the news first broke [techreport.com] on these drives, some [techreport.com] tech sites [storagereview.com] came out [viahardware.com] with the news, and others [tomshardware.com] kept fairly silent. Silence isn't a crime. But continuing to use Deathstars in review gear should be. Why? Because some readers, myself included, used reviews and testing gear examples from Tom's Hardware to build our first computers. Take advice and recommendations from the experts, and you get a better computer, right?

As the current/. story points out, why bite the hand that feeds you advance facts on hardware under ndas, and direct contact with company engineers?

Consumer Reports [consumerreports.org] buys everything [consumerreports.org] they test. With the money that Tom's Hardware has made from advertising on its site (from reader views), they should be doing the same.

Don't take my word for it. Check the dates of when the Deathstar stories first appeared. Then check the hardware reviews on Tom's Hardware. Not just hard drive reviews. Check reviews of other hardware related or dependent upon hard drive speed to get some benchmarks or results. Then see what hard drives are used in the benchmarks, and in the review gear.

While some of their readers went down in flames, others were announcing that the there was a problem, and they continued on as if nothing was wrong. They may have acknowledged the problem in a small story or two iirc (maybe not even that), but they continued using the hard drives in their review gear, without a footnote or warning about them.

Why? emx

Indeed.
For example, have a look at this. ;)

the point is, a 939 pin athlon 64 wouldn't be compatible with these : http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q2/dually-optero ns/index.x?pg=1

seroiusly, maybe a dual opteron rig... do not forget that the Athlon 64 FX is functionally identical to the Opteron, the only difference being that the new Athlon fx's are 939 pin and the Opteron is 940 ( http://techreport.com/reviews/2003q4/opteron-x48/i ndex.x?pg=1 ) . here in Italy you can still find the 940 pin variety.

.......unless, obviously, they start trying this: http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/sphinx/. My father is an MD, which in italian roughly translates into " his handwriting is a Brownian function", and I know he'd love a good speech recognition program. what hampered its development until now is that it is a resource hog (http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q3/athlon64-350 0/index.x?pg=7

Also, can you get ATX mobos for them?

Yes [hardwareanalysis.com]

That link points to a micro-ATX board. It has only 3 PCI slots and no AGP. A quick Google search didn't reveal any ATX boards for the Pentium M.

In the case of Mobile Athlons, they appear to be compatible with normal Athlon motherboards. See this link for example.

We have 8 of these boxes at my office. They are very nice for workstations.

However, we need to clear something up about this so-called "RAID array".

From the page:
"4 ports Serial ATA 150 via ICH6R south bridge with RAID 0,1 support"

This box uses the Intel ICH6R chip and is software RAID. The box ships with drivers for Windows, but does not offer any drivers or support using ICH6R under Linux.

There are patches to the 2.6 kernel which let you use ICH5R, but why use an unsupported test module when you can just use the Linux MD kernel module instead. MD is well documented, stable and supported by the Linux community.

Here is a great writeup on the state of "Software RAID" and Serial ATA on linux.

... CITZ-A#10000233239232, sure does love the new torso implant he got from 'Uncle Bobs Computer and Health' after his accident with the Portable Micro-Nuke DIY Kit he found in his grandfathers garage ...

Or manufactured by IBM.