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Building The Fastest Desktop Possible
hero_or_what writes "Tom's Hardware has built one the fastest PCs on the planet. Its basically an overclocked Athlon running at 1600MHZ!! The beast is described here. I wonder how long this monster would take to do a "make world"."
This is not redundant. It looks like someone's viewing in newest first, since they modded a later post as funny and this as redundant.
Redundant is so stupid anyway. I've been modded as redundant for comments posted at the same time (same time stamp) as someone else, but getting just later. It's silly. Fine hide the duplicate comments, but don't take karma away as a result.
Step back into time with me to 1997, when I last had the opportunity to play with SGI Origin 2000 systems.
You know how us geeks dream about playing on a Cray or otherwise super fast box? I pretty much got that out of my system playing with those boxes (and the 256 spindles I had available).
Way back then, an Origin 2000 with 8 lowly 195 Mhz R10000 CPU's did a full compile, load and dump of GNU emacs 19.34 in 9.5 seconds. Bandwidth baby, Bandwidth.
It is something you've really got to see..
Being able to build larger systems using the CrayLink interconnects was also super cool.
Back in my day (hah, I'm 33) we built emacs and X11R2 on Sun 3/60's.. Talk about long lunches..
When considering your latest pre-IPO startup opportunity, SGI is a great example to remember.
I've worked with everything in the UNIX server and workstation space, and for the most part their hardware, software and support blew everyone else away. Yet they basically failed in the marketplace..
BK
Actually, Moore's "Law" is more 1.5y => 2x speed
Maybe you should recalculate.
A Danish hardware page was first. They have a Kryotech 1,6 Athlon. And they postet the article 17/2. http://www.hardinfo.dk/artikler/default-a.asp?ID=1 96
Just imagine what a beowolf cluster of these would do.
Babes in bikinis dripping over *anything* will sell *anything*. Hell, they have these geeky little IT shows at the Cleveland IX center and I remember a certain company hiring chiKs just for the day to dress up in spandex pants and tight t-shirts to sell t1s. I remember people from our company thinking that there was no way these girls worked for nowonline and we finally got one to admit she worked at Ace Hardware and nowonline just paid her like $50 for the day. Sex sells anything and everything.
It's not the creation of Earth, but rather the command to compile XFree86... ;>
I have that much! Why not a gig? Seriously. Is there some limit I don't know about beyond which more ram is unused?
yadda
Perhaps you should use an interpreted language, if that's how you debug your code. If you want to avoid the recompile in these situations then use your brain for those extra 2 to 5 minutes and try to solve the problem properly, rather than experimenting.
/. and k5 whilst "waiting" for it to compile is a waste of your own resources. Again, why not spend it looking at code, letting it sink in, reading documentation? You seem to be spending too much time context-switching here, perhaps even specifically so that you can bum around when you should be thinking instead.
Also, reading
This isn't at all intended as a flame. I obviously read news sites and the like "in between" patches of work as well, but I admit to myself the damage it does to my work-rate and level of concentration. I don't blame it on the slow speed of my CPU, just my laziness!
It's old IBM-speak. Speed of processing and feeding the card readers.
Now pardon me if I'm somewhat blase' on this. But it's a refrigerated CPU. Anybody with the cash could have done this well before now. So I don't see what the big deal is.
Is it entertaining? Sure.
But is it as entertaining or informative as if someone had introduced one that was simply water-cooled? Or better yet, air-cooled? HECK NO.
There's absoloutely NO skill involved in buying a Kryotech or Vapochill and dropping it in your system. It's not an interesting system. It's just "another Kryotech/Vapochill system".
Heck, I'd have been more interested if someone had hand-built the refrigeration system. I look in on these things to see cool hardware hacks. Not expensive, store-bought bells and whistles.
I'm very sorry if this sounds elitist. But I really don't find commercial soloutions like this all that entertaining. I like a person's system to have more "character".
But that's just me, the hardware freak.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If you're an 31337 overclocking ultrageek, why would you deign to run windows for some snarky boss?? Oh, wait....well, I guess there's always WINE... ;o)
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
they clearly state on the front page that it's beyond the reach of most readers. just like a porsche, etc.
This was done for the same reason that most hackers do stuff... to see if it can be done. It's all about fun. The work machine should just chill and do stuff i want it to... agreed. for them this means, crank out more MIPS than any other PC.
even with that aside, processors are designed around margins based on reliability, and presumably lifetime, while balancing performance.
just like the guy who puts an eaton blower in his 72 rabbit to get 400 horsepower, some people are more interested in performance than reliability.
that said... ;-)
ATHLONS suck!
With a 351 Cleveland, tricarbs, v gate, rock cruncher, ported polished, 3/4 race cam. I threw a con rod on the NYS Thruway around new Baltimore going 140+ mph.
I had a 1965 Porche Carrera 2 - 2000cc Fuhrman tinker toy DOHC, 8 plugs, replaced the Webbers with a Hilborn mechanical fuel injector. Damn close to a single digit weight to power ratio. Holy hell to tune up.
I redlined an Audi A4 on the A23 in France on the flats with 3 other people in the car. It couldn't push any more air out of the way beyond 190 kph.
I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would want one of these things.
You have no creativity.
I have used both Evolution and KMail with complete success on mailandnews.com. Try one of these out.
The router machine on my desk has 16MB RAM, and no swap. The filesystem is on /dev/ramfs. It has several MB free.
The PC under my desk has 256MB. With WYSIWYG word processing, web browsing, email reading, text editing, and web servging applications running, it still has 150MB free.
256MB is *not* too "little" for "most applications", just like cars without V10s are not always "underpowered". But then, my personal car and my personal computer certainly don't reflect that minimalist approach. ;)
It's all fast food, fast cars, fast living, and it's not good for us
There were fast cars long before anyone threw their piece of crap Commodore64 in the trash because of its infuriatingly slow tape drive. Overclockers did not invent hot rodding, although the reverse could potentially be true... :) I know that *I* was trying to make my lawnmower go faster before I tried to make my computer faster...
Home network + not large home = router on desk instead of in kitchen or behind toilet
At work, it's under my desk so I can work with it without having to get up and walk down to the wiring closet or open an ssh session. :)
Because waiting the tape drive was causing me stress! Much more than those fast 5,1/4 disk!!
Why? It wasn't for the time it took, it was the POOR RELIABILITY of the things.
Half the time, it didn't work..
IMHO you suffer from "rosy glass nostalgia", when we were young everything was SO much better!
Yeah right!
I remember that, My TRS-80 COCO's tape drive was as fast as the Commodore64 disk drive, and the coco's disk drive was blazingly fast compared to the commodores... But then the C64 was limited to basic... you couldn't run os/9 like the coco, and you couldn't get the graphics the coco offered. The cocoII came out finally, but the toy computer craze had passed... the IBM was here with expandability, and something bizzare in rthe computer world.... a standard hardware interface designation. (GasP!)
Ahhh those lovely days of the 300bps handset modem.......
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
>For the average user using Win98, spending money on a single processor system is the way to go.
Uh, since Win9x doesn't do SMP *at all*, this kind of goes without saying, doesn't it?
(btw, nice sig, "Last Resort" is about my favorite Eagles song...)
-LjM
Correction. Moore's Law (paraphrased) states that processor speed will double every 18 months. So...
:)
518400/2^(6000/1.5) = 3.932 * 10^1199 seconds.
Pretty substantial difference....sort of.
Wake up! There are Axp 21264 processors out there you know.
:-)
Do you have shares in them ?
Yes, but do they run Diablo ?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Like come on, who REALLY needs an Athalon running that fast?
I remember someone saying "Who needs more than 640K?"
Whilst I have my doubts about how long the CPU will hold up when overclocked, no matter how fast you make a machine go, someone will want a faster one.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Well...only a program that can take advantage of the dual CPU's is going to run any faster than it would on a single cpu 933 mhz machine though. The athlon was one cpu at 1600 Mhz. It gets alot done per Mhz, and it has ALOT of them. Anything will run like hell on there.
Gotta love the smooth multitasking on a dual though.
LMAO. That's another /. hall-of-famer, for sure.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Nah, just have a railgun and a bot. Lamers with bots are really starting to clog the servers these days. And they're nowhere near as subtle as they were in the old days, the simply sit on the railgun and shoot in all directions without turning or anything.
That's why id keeps releasing new binaries, to try to keep a handle on this. They keep coming back faster every time.
Actually, a thousand 8086s would be a total of 4.7 gigahertz.....
I have to wonder why they have not gone to bigger L2 caches. Even my old sparcserver has a 1MB L2 cache. (It actually keeps up fairly well for a box that came out in 95)
Is this due to cost factors? It seems to me that by having a larger L2 cache you can get a nice performance boost without needing any high-tech advancements. But then again I'm not a real hardware kinda guy, so maybe I'm being a bit simple here.
Too bad the Tom's Hardware web site isn't running on it... looks like it's Slashdotted...:)
Unix is _unreasonably_ stable.
doctorfaustus wrote:
The Tao of Pooh sufferes from a logical fallacy, overgeneralization.
Ah-ha, but you forgot the corrolary, Grasshopper...
Elsewhere, you're too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won't have to work so hard.
All these time-saving devices cost money... how many hours did you have to work to afford that washing machine, that telephone, that computer? Not to mention the cost of utilities and maintennance...
----
Dave
MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
- Dave
What website are you posting to?
It may not occur to you, but some people have PCs of their own. The keep them at home; you know, not work?
Besides, who wants to run Windows?
</sarcasm>
My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
But how can you run Winstone2000 on a mac? (-=
You Like Science?
You Like Science?
You Like bottomquark.
>she worked at Ace Hardware
:)
Yup, good looking women in overalls could sell me just about anything
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Well, (1600/1400)*5Mkeys/s = ~5.5Mkeys/s
With the same proc, the scores scale very linearly with MHz (since the client fits in the cache).
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Dual proc boards are great if you're running apps that are multithreaded. Otherwise, you're only going to be able to take advantage of one of those processors. You also have to take into account what kind of SMP support the OS has. Some OS's scale very well with multiple procs (Solaris, AIX) and some just do ok (Linux, NT).
Abe
Algorithms whose runtime grows exponentially aren't really the best justification for faster hardware, as even huge jumps in processor performance yield only marginal improvements in what is practical to compute. Consider an algorithm involving some computation that takes 1 s to do an iteration. An algorithm of time complexity O(2^n) takes over 6.5 months to complete a calculation for n=44. If you reduce your computing time per iteration from 1 s to 1 ns (a 3-order-of-magnitude reduction), you only get to increase n to 54 before you're talking about half a year again to do a computation.
(Besides, if you had some application that needed to use the Fibonacci sequence, you would find it iteratively, not recursively. Instead of O(2^n), your runtime is O(n). Not only is it much faster, but future increases in hardware performance translate to bigger, more worthwhile gains in the performance of your product.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I don't know for games, but because I handle a very large image database (no, not porn !) I need ACDSee to be able to draw thumbnail fast. And even with a 1,2 Ghz CPU it could still go faster, especially when there's 50 thumbnail to create on the fly of pictures that are 3 megapixel each :)
1) true but the Pentium 200 shipped very quickly afterward, and was favorably compared to the Pentium Pro both in performance and price
2) the Pentium Pro was faster on 32 bit code, unfortunately the only widely available OS at that time was mostly 16 bit code (Windows), and even 32 bit coded video-games were still faster on the Pentium. NT was still confidential, and well, unix benchmark was worthless to 99.9% of potential buyers. And few people knew what Linux was.
3) nope the PPro stayed at 0.35 micron die, which was really not small enough given that it had a big L2 cache on die. Intel simply dropped the Pentium Pro altogether and used the core on the Pentium II (easier and cheaper to manufacture since the L2 cache was not on die anymore). The Pentium II core also had some optimisation to run 16 bit code a little better...
Windows crashes all the time when you're not overclocking so what have you got to lose? :)
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
And if the NT kernel fails, I'm sure gnome and KDE are up to the task
I'm pretty sure that neither gnome nor kde are up to the task of replacing the kernel of any operating system.
>Somehow I don't think that babes in bikinis
>dripping over the latest PC system will sell
>magazines(I could be wrong)
You're new around here, aren't you?
It does work.
While they're not dripping over the computers, they're still missing some clothes.
Tomorrow Magazin
drop the bikinis, and it may..
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Or if you run multiple apps concurrently, like compiling the kernel while applying some heavy filters in the Gimp, or even when using make -j.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
The thing I can't understand about all this is the fact that I saw, several weeks ago now, a dual Athlon pushing 1.5 Ghz+. It topped 8BIPS, which is easily twice what good 'ole Tom's "powerbox" can do. In fact, the benchmark may have actually been on Tom's site. Can't remember, but anyhow this certainly isn't a dream box. And cryogenic-like cooling costs don't exactly appeal to me.(especially with rising electric bills) Tom is going downhill.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
I love technology. I have no need for another.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
> and people don't realize the fun of waiting.
Maybe YOU enjoy waiting 20 mins a day for your game to rebuild, but I sure don't! Multiply that out by a few hundreded re-compiles over a year, and that is a lot of "loss productivity". I can't fix bugs because I'm waiting for the dam system to compile, especially when VC++'s linker "freezes" Win2K up. *argh*
imagine a beo... oh, who cares any more :-9
I think this was just a slipup, but...
and lower incidence of stress-related industry
Perhaps that was supposed to be "injury" and not "industry"? I think industry makes an interesting bit of sense, too. =) Overall, I agree with your view. That was just one interesting freudian slip...
"A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street." - Doug Linder
I don't quite understand all of these comments about faster boot times and benchmarks that are purely 3D graphics.
Aren't boot times slowed down by poor task managment, caching, and swapping issues? Does having a really fast processor help this by much? I remember I did a test boot on a very old Macintosh of mine where I was able to a slim down system into RAM and boot from that. It took 7 seconds from pushing the power button to using my applications. That was an old system, but an old processor to. But in general, long boot times don't seem to be tied to CPU speed so much as drive speed and multitask management.
Also if you look at the benchmarks, it mostly 3D graphics tests. I don't understand the point of running these tests because it's 90% dependent on the graphics card or CPU. The only test that really yielded useful numbers were the Dryhstone MIPs and Whetstone MFLOPs benchmarks.
Why aren't these number the one's people care about? Why run 3D graphics tests? How about running raytracing tests, or decryption algorithms? That's what I would like to see. Somethign that's actually CPU dependent.
Game speeds are cool. But if you want faster frames rates, buy a better graphics card. Don't overclock your CPU.
A beowolf cluster of these!
No, but seriously, how about a dual processor version of the same computer, now that would be the fastest desktop PC in the world! Wow!
This idiocy was exactly what I was referring to in my recent Slasdot comment Algorithms More Important. Processor cycle rate wars are on the same par as Slashdot "first posts" -- pointless childish battles fought independently of the real battles, real work, real discourse, and real progress.
I agree with what you're saying, but capitalism and the economy have become so evolved that with pretty much everything:
Time == Money
As a direct result of saving x amount of time, I will save x amount of money.
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Moderator's essentials
Unfortunately opting out of that "slippery slide down the road towards work/slavery" is almost impossible in our society, unless you go and live in the woods and become self-sufficient - which is not easy, especially when you're used to your creature comforts (like surfing /., for example).
The only way that this could ever happen on a large scale is if there was a MAJOR worldwide revolution.
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Moderator's essentials
You must be french with all that WE stuff going on there.
My, how witty.
-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.
We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years.
We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.
We've conquered outer space, but not inner space.
We've done larger things, but not better things.
We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.
We've split the atom, but not our prejudice.
We plan more, but accomplish less.
We've learned to rush, but not to wait.
We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships.
These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.
These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes.
These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet, to kill.
It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.
---For more insightful reading material like this, visit my homepage.
-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
So I suppose the washing machine doesn't save time?
I thought so too at one time, but now I'm not so sure. Before washing machines, many households didn't do all the washing and chores by themselves, they hired help. But when machines came out that supposedly "saved time and money" people started taking on more tasks for themselves than they used to. After all, it only involved a little more work(loading and unloading the machine) and they wouldn't have to pay someone so they "saved money". But this doesn't factor in times needed for upkeep of the machine, purchasing supplies to actually use the machine, etc. everything started piling up until they had even less time than before.
I know this isn't an entirely balanced argument, but I'm just trying to get the point across.
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
And thousands of geeks drooling over the bare hardware... and I'm not talking about the girls). ;-)
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
If you haven't been waiting for things to happen on your current system, then you clearly haven't been downloading the right things. There's ample time for fowers and birdsong when you're trying to grab a service pack for NT... :)
QAExpress: Solid bug tracking for you. Graphs and reports for your PHB.
Isn't it funny how we continue to ooh and ahh about fast systems? In a year, this speed will be pretty fast; in two, it will be mediocre; in three, you won't be able to sell it for $200.
How many of you have been through this same experience: you buy the fastest thing on the market, and two weeks later there's something faster and cheaper?
QAExpress: Solid bug tracking for you. Graphs and reports for your PHB.
I think a Transmeta chip could rival that. ;-D
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
So 4700 MHz gets pared down to an effective 14.7 MHz in today's market.
Welcome to heck, says the man with the spoon!
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
When you're raising kids or do some gardening, time gets back its original value and meaning. Remember that story about the hitchhiking indian who asked to be dropped off after a few miles so that his soul was able to follow him?
I remember people complaining about Word Processor X version N being sooo slow; the manufacturer then placed the 'AboutBox.Show' call at the top of the code in Version N+1 and everybody was happy. (It still took ages to open the main 'window', though)
Why bother that your system takes 3 Minutes to boot when you are typing at a measly 0.3 characters per second?
Remember that grass doesn't grow faster when you're pulling it.
Use The Source, Luke!
Use The Source, Luke!
I guess he's gonna be my record for kernel speed compiling now. =(
I am !amused.
Only the simple things are instantaneous, anything worthwhile, in and out of the sphere of computing, takes time.
The project that I'm working on at the moment takes f'ing twenty minutes to do a full build, so bring on my 10Ghz 32 processor workstation!!!
Now you're trying to tell me, to use a new, simpler example, that the investment in time (energy, money, or what ever terms you want to put it in), to build a wagon, is equivalent to, or more than, the time (energy, money or whatever terms you want to put the investment factor in) saved by the use of the wagon?
Bull! The Tao of Poo overgeneralizes, as do every one of you.
DAILY ROTATION
Practically speaking, if timesaving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But, strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago
So I suppose the washing machine doesn't save time? How about the telephone? The computer, word processor, spreadsheet? The Tao of Pooh sufferes from a logical fallacy, overgeneralization.
DAILY ROTATION
Don't be so sure, check out these "chix". Only because of these fine women is Linux a sexy product to be grokked by geeks everywhere. :)
(for the link paranoid: http://linuxchix.glowingmonkey.org/)
Free Online Woodworking Resources Directory
Would you stick an overclocked cpu into a NOC? /. since /. is usually about bleeding-edge technology anyway..
No shit Sherlock. This is why it is "News for NERDS" If you wan't to look at stuff for your NOC you should not be reading
Matter of fact would you stick AMD products in a NOC?
YES. To be honest, I really like the stability of AMD. Beats the crap out of anything with RAMBUS technology inside!
This might be a toy for the rich boys and girls
Dude, you really have problems if you are concerned about this. Last I checked, AMD processesors are cheap(er). Granted, if you are a hobbyist and feel like putting on a Peltier system, then who cares?? Myself, I am by no means 'rich', but I do have an overclocked system with a golden-orb (oooh, 20 whole dollars!) clocked up from 700 to 900Mhz. I have not had a crash that was not attributed to software in over 6 months (when I put the system together)
It looks like you are trying just too hard to be a troll today...sorry!
Mine's been up for over a year now, no crashes that were not software-caused. Oh, and mine before that was o/c'd for 3 years now..still running at my parent's home now...
And on the seventh day, it executed NOOP maxint number of times.
--
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
Dual Processor, overclocked to 1.6Ghz, 4 Gig RAM, 20GB RAID....
And 2,000 of them in a Beowolf Cluster....
Drool...
Put it on a T3 and I will be the Quake III God!!!!!!
http://www.matthewmiller.net
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
make world shouldn't take very long at all... make World might take a wee bit longer...
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
Hmmm.. Are you sure your machine is *actually* doing stuff faster, do does it just *feel* faster?
I suspect that a lot of applications you are running are only single-threaded so they can only use one CPU. The difference is that the other CPU is free for all the event and interrupt handling.
So when you are doing something that 100% maximises out one CPU, the other is still free for all the GUI and house-keeping stuff, so your machine doesn't feel as sluggish.
This puts me in mind of the old Amiga machines where all the GUI handling was handled in a seperate high-priority thread (I think it was priority 10, not sure). No matter how heavy a load your machine was under the GUI was always garenteed a certain timeslice if it had stuff to do. No matter how loaded your machine was it always remained responsive so people precieved it as faster than the 7.14Mhz most of them were (A500's etc.).
I think you could be experiencing something similar.
Course, I could be wrong - perhaps you run lots of multi-threaded apps?
Am I just stupid or did the DEC Alpha never happen?
:wq! DOH!
Roy Miller
--Roy
I agree. In fact, I agree so strongly that I'd like to improve the quality of life for one lucky slashdot reader, by trading him his Athlon Jillion Mhz with NVidia GEForce for my 266Mhz Pentium II. I am currently running KDE2, so the pleasure of waiting would still remain in my life.
Or alternatively: screw that... No one likes looking at a splash screen for five minutes.
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
make world is how you execute anything under world and all its dependensies in a makefile.
"Practically speaking, if timesaving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But, strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago. It's really great fun to go someplace where there are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have *lots of time*. Elsewhere, you're too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won't have to work so hard."
-The Tao of Pooh
I wouldn't mind everyone insisting on speed and immediate satisfaction if it wasn't for the fact that they end up stressing out those of us who realize how worthless it all is in the end.
Happy people make bad consumers.
:-) On the seventh day, he overclocked...
main(i){(10-putchar(((25208>>3*(i+=3))&7)+(i ?i-4?100:65:10)))?main(i-4):i;}
AMD's SMP is nice, but it has one crucial flaw that makes MoBo's for it emmensly expensive. Each AMD CPU has to have a direct link to the RAM, which means that you end up with ALOT more traces then you normaly would on an SMP CPU. While the direct link to the RAM is great for speed, it makes 4, 8, and 16 way Athlon solutions practicaly impossable from a pricing point of view. This is quite sad since AMD CPU's are so damn cheap, that I hope that someone comes out with a simple dummy MoBo for AMD CPU's that is nothing more then a CPU Socket and some sort of connector to plug into a real Main Board that houses all the real stuff, like the AGP port and PCI bus. With 1gig Durons going for around $70 now (overclocking is alot of fun, heh, ::grins:: ) there is no reason in the world as to why a true 8way setup should cost more then $1400 or so. I'm thinking $70 for the CPU, and $30 for the MoBO attachment (hell, it could use high quality Cat5 cable to get a decent throughput that could more then easily supply it with the data it needs). 8 cpu's later that is a mere $800 for Boards and Chips, with another $160 thrown on top for that for cooling.
$960, doing good so far.
$200 for the case (it would have to be custom made of course, defintly not your standard ATX form factor) brings the total up to $1160.
add another $100 for the power supply (big mofo) and another $40 for case cooling, and you have yourself a price tag of $1300
Then you just need the main MoBO, which could probebly cost around $300, which is a little much, and brings you to a grant total of $1600 for 8gigahertz of power.
Add yourself HD's and a Vid Card, and you have yourself a $2000 machine that beats the holy shit out of ANY other product out there within it's price range, and even at twice its price!
The cheap price of AMD's CPU's could be their best advantage, but only if they use it correctly.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I'd buy.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Finally, a box that will run the NT Kernal for more than 24 hours. Give them time, and Microsoft will be able to bring that machine to it's knees.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Running games is not the only use for a computer.
Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
To reiterate:
Not everyone puts <SARCASM> tags in their HTML -- it's not a required part of the standard.
John
John
Soon, soon my friend. in light of tom's acomplishment this dual T-Bird (760MP chipset) sisoft sandra benchmark may not be too far from reality. I for one am saving my pennies.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Yes, 1600 MHz is very impressive, but I have do disagree with your statement:
> I'd rather have 2 800MHz chips than a 1.6GHz any day of the week.
It sounds good on paper to have two processors (twice as fast right?), but having twice the processors doesn't make your system twice as fast. To make matters worse, you need to have the right software to get full use of both processors. I've noticed that when I change numbers in one of my simulation spreadsheets (8 meg M$ Excel file), It takes a good 10 seconds for all the numbers to crunch. Typically, one processor will max out, while the other runs at about 15% off idle. Frankly, I'd rather have both processors maxed out and get some work done.
Having a dual 533 box is cool and all, but all things being equal,
I'd prefer to have a single 1600 than a dual 800 system.
Dont' get me wrong though, I'd rather have a pair of those AMD 1200's on one board than just one!
(divide by four I guess)
(divide by 10 I guess)
you sound like a Pentium Classic doing math...
Pshaw. You like watching flowers grow? I want stuff faster than that. I want to be able to record the flowers growing on my webcam, have it sped up, shown to me on my super-fast laptop in a pop up window so I can see the live stock reports at the same time, all while going 300mph on a high speed train from LA to New York.
Why? It's exciting. It's adrenaline. It's fun. It's what I live for. I'll die 10 years before you do, but I'll get 30% more done. More of what? Well, it's all pretty much irrelivant in the universal picture. But, I love it, so why should I feel guilty for wanting to have the biggest/most powerful/fastest? I didn't like having to wait for my C64's tape drive when I had one, why would I enjoy it now?
Granted that's not your thing. No problem. Have your growing flowers, your 300 baud modem, your four hour productions of Hamlet. But don't be so presumptious to assume that what makes you happy applies to everyone else.
Sure, if the world was full of identicle people then blanket statments like 'Because things are fast people don't appreciate life' would hold merit. But (at least until this whole human cloning thing is figured out) that's not the case.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm sure there are a lot of people who need to mellow out and no one can keep up the high paced life without a rest once in awhile -- BUT I bet you can find a bunch of A-type personality people who would be much happier if they could just get out of the damn trailer park and become professional skydivers or stock brokers or 1600Mhz computer owners.....
hmm... overclocked to 1.6 GHz... wow, that means it's about as fast as a 733MHz G4 running the latest daily build of OS X... hoo haw!
I get excited about custom cases... the problem is I seem to have a different opinion of what makes a "custom case". I'm looking for one-of-a-kind designs, interesting shapes and design. I don't care for the uberlame "lets saw a couple holes in the side of my case, bolt on some fans and then take some pictures of it."
Get out the fibreglass and make something already! Where are all my artist casemaking brethren out there????
- Toby
Do you use Jikes? It's about 5-10 times faster than plain javac ... try it
I hear these things can do infinite loops in 2.3 seconds!
My only question is why they didn't use multiple proccessors! Oh yeah, Windows 9x/ME doesnt support them.
I'm surprised you did'nt add, "And Intel Rulz!" on your post.
If you had read anything about the diffrences between the AMD and Intel chips you would unerstand that Mhz. is not the end all be all of a PC's speed.
Go check out that site and come back and post when you have an understanding of how things work rather than regurgitating Intels marketing hype.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Couldn't agree more, I mean just take nuclear weapons.
There is no faster way to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of people, animals and vegetation.
And you get your money worth because the results last for years.
:p
My point is, some things DO benefit from slowing down.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
It's far more interesting to watch.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
It certainly does.
I forsee AMD greatly increasing its share of the processor market this year.
You work for the AMD marketing department, don't you?
Haha.
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
I can't agree more. I mean, do I really need a 800Mhz system to play Unreal Tournement? No, but I have one anyway. ;)
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
So I'm assuming that this is the fastest single processor desktop ever made, becuase I made a 1,866 MHz machine a few weeks back, Dual PIII 933 MHz, surely this machine can out-perform the 1,600 MHz machine, since at the very least, it has twice the registers and twice the cache. Just a thought.
I used to hate computers, but then a server went down on me.
If I was building the machine of my dreams it would have to be a dual proc machine, and I certainly not let Windows ME anywhere near it.
The price of Dual processor machines has become quite cheap lately, and even if your the gamming type Win2K makes a good gamming OS, and Linux for doing any actual work.
Granted Tom is trying to build a machine that gets the highest possible Unreal/Quake numbers, and most games don't take advantage SMP at all (Quake 3 being the exception).
I wonder how long until having 2 processors becomes the new geek sheek in all the computer magazines.
Wake up! There are Axp 21264 processors out there you know.
FP
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Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Well said.
As we speak I am coding something which will hopefully make a mathematical discovery by spring that it would have been impossible to make 15 years ago.
All I need is one of two things
a) more fast PCs b) faster PCs.
My discovery will be overshadowed in a year or two I'd guess, but I'm programming for _now_.
FatPhil
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Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
I live in Southern Ontario, Canada.
How close are you...?
Here's an idea. Want to prove your overclocked system is stable? Set up that box as your primary webserver... and see how long it lasts :)
God had a vic-20, and it was obsolete before he got it home.
I remember when I was in school, programming my Commodore 64, and the joy was in just how primitive it all was. Just typing in those BASIC commands, waiting while that tape drive chugged away - that was half the fun of it.
You consider that fun? As I would rather be doing something with a system rather than waiting on a system.
Nowadays, everything's instantaneous, and people don't realize the fun of waiting. This is a problem with our culture I think. Everything has to be so fast.
Personally I think the fun part of playing a game on my system is actually playing the game, not waiting for it to load. I guess I'm kinda wierd.
It's all fast food, fast cars, fast living, and it's not good for us.
Perhaps you should move to Tulsa, OK and drive a Renault for a few years. Then you might apprereciate a car the actually accelerated when you put your foot down on the gas, rather then accelerated when you pushed down on the gas and turned off the AC.
All of that may not be good for us But personally I thrive on the intensity.
It is no coincidence that in countries where they take things slowly that they have lower rates of heart disease, and lower incidence of stress-related industry.
Perhaps, but what does that have to do with fast computers, or fast cars?
Sure it's nice to have fast things every now and then, but I worry that people will forget the experience of waiting - the thrill of anticipation as that new game installs, the pause while the computer boots up, etc. It would be great to just go to a nice restaurant with nice slow service, and then to come back and use that Commodore 64 again.
Uhhh yeah...sure...You can keep your C64, I'll take a GHz Athlon anyday.
All this speed means that people don't appreciate what they've got - they don't appreciate the joys of living - the call of birdsong, the flowers coming up in the spring - because they're too busy. And busy doing what? Busy doing things too damn quickly. Of course I'm not saying that progress is bad, but just that this is symptomatic of the ever faster pace of life; the way we don't speak to each other, the fact we take minutes for meals, and seconds for just talking. We should take the time out to enjoy life every now and then
To a limited extend, but the slow C64 shoud give you a better appreciation for the systems awailable today. Let people appreciate their 30+Gig HDs and rember how much it sucked having to load a game from a 5 1/4 floppy. Let people appreciate having space and clock cycles to burn, as opposed to trying to cram as much stuff as possible in to small space. Kinda like trying to move using a Maita instead of a moving van.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
I am waiting for the day that someone starts making a real platform for AMD's chips. Someone mentioned above ServerWorks. They make an excellent chipset, which allows for double the width of current SDR RAM using normal DIMMS. Why cant someone like this (uh hum, ServerWorks) design a chipset that doubles the width of the memory bus, but also uses DDR RAM? So, we could get a normally clocked Athlon, running with a 128-bit wide memory bus clocked at 266Mhz (133Mhz x 2). This would effectively give one 4x the bandwidth of current 133Mhz FSB motherboards. Personally, I would love to see Apple port OS-X over to x86 architecture, and specially build their systems like this (cuz they could), and this would lead to one bada$$ system, which would NOT be running windoze. I dont need the speed, but its nice to have it just in case
While I agree that it's not reasonable to make external cache at 1.5GHz, it's not due to manufacturing issues. It's because of the RF produced and signal degrigation when connecting it to the CPU. The original Athlon proved that one can't get go that far beyond 200MHz. This can also be shown by how the P4 uses a 200MHz motherboard (400MHz effective.) Oh I'm sure there are other tricks to bring up the speed but moving the cache onto the die was the only reasonable solution.
I'm 99% sure that the L2 cache on the Sparc chips have been on-die or on-module for years now. That's one of the reasons that the chips are so darned expensive.
Interesting. I would assume they use large external caches. The CPUs didn't go that fast (MHz not effective speed) so having an internal cache shouldn't have been that important. But hey, I'll take your word on it. ;)
They didn't do well in the consumer market, so they came out with the Pentium II's that had on-module (but 1/2, then 1/3, then 1/4 speed) L2 cache. When they needed to really get back and compete in the workstation/server market, they came up with the Xeon, which was a Pentium II or III with a full-speed on-module cache ranging from 512K to 2MB.
The way I remember it the thing the Xeon really had going for it over the PII/PIII was beter SMP support. This is why you would almost never see a single CPU Xeon system. Even todays' PIIIs have crappy SMP support compared to the Xeon, SPARC, G4, Power series... did I miss any? Probably. It also looks like AMD might include some kick ass SMP support into their new chips. Oh ya, add the Alpha to that list.
Willy
You're quite right about not enlarging the internal L2 cache. It serves no purpose to make it much bigger. Just look at what Apple has done with their latest G4e computers - 733MHz G4e with 256k internal cache plus 1MB external cache. The cool thing is you can access that 1MB cache directly if you have a program that requires fast access to a small chunk of memory. Just think of how fast that 1.6GHz Athalon would be with an extra 1MB cache to keep those pipelines full..
Making a standard 256k internal cache chip then letting different hardware vendors include an external cache makes for a flexable solution while still minimizing the number of different parts needed to manufacture/design.
Willy
I have one of these and it's also my hot water heater!
What's a sig?
I had to laugh at this one - I post something misinformed, someone corrects me, I respond acknowledging that he's right and provide some more information -after which *two* moderators come along and give "Informative"s to the incorrect post!
Then there was the KDE installer article where the guy the story was about got hit with an "Offtopic"...
Hate to argue with such a good post, but your wrong on alot of your ideas.
Mainly, CPU's rising to unsafe temps will cause the system to become unstable, thus resulting in a crash. Hence why people burn in their CPUs to test the stability.
Also, as for chips being made as fast as possible, thats also false. When chips are fabbed, they aren't fabbed in lots of 500mhz and lots of 550mhz, they are all fabbed together and tested afterward before locking the multiplier, thats how overclocking got started, you know.
Intel also doesn't prevent overclocking, they just lock the multiplier, which means you have to up the frontside bus instead. The only time I've seen any hardware that detects overclocking and prevent it is on a mobo with an Intel chipset, and nobody is using new CPUs on the BX or the whole i8xx series of chipsets, mainly because of the limitations.
This story is wrong anyway, there was a documented overclock this high a couple weeks ago, Tom just gets coverage because its a well known website.
No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater.
*cough*
192 days and counting.
ptew.
Receive Heaven's Punishment!
Math functions.
Yep, plain old 'ordinary' math.
For example, the Fibannaci (sp?) series alone requires over 3000 billion calculations, using the recursive method, to find Fib(100). And that's one of the easier functions.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
What exactly is the benefit of a slow, painful death?
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
Spending five seconds with google turned up this.
It doesn't involve overclocked CPU's, but it shows the relative speeds of Athlon vs Pentium vs Mac G4 CPU's
http://www.barefeats.com/pentium.html
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
Ah just shut the fu
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--hongpong.com
Taking the idea further, it would be nice if we put more research into engineering better n-processor systems instead of simply focusing on faster single-processor speeds. A 1600Mhz computer is all well and good, but think of what you can do with a 4-processor system with each processor running at 1Ghz...
Or better yet, a thousand 8086-class processors working together to produce virtually the same effect! =) (OK, maybe too much of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.)
Granted, there's always a point of diminishing returns with n-processor systems; that is, the speed of n processors at m megahertz would never really match the speed of a single nxm megahertz processor unless the particular application is "embarrasingly parallel" (one subtask does not need to know the details/results of other subtasks in order to complete itself).
Surprisingly enough, world simulation is one of those problems that approach an embarrasingly parallel solution. =)
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
Make world is how you build the XServer, you luser!
I LOVE being modded down!
My other car is first.
My personal favorite at the moment is WindowMaker + ROX-Filer
Good functionality, no extra crap, and very nice looking and intuitive to use.
The greatest thing about the Commodore 64 was that you didn't have to wait for it to boot. Man, the thing came up instantaneously. THOSE were the times.
This box only has 258 MB of RAM? That seems like a serious bottleneck for most applications. Heck, I have that in my desktop right now at work.
I'd love to see this computer but you guys killed the site!
Would you stick an overclocked cpu into a NOC? nope. Matter of fact would you stick AMD products in a NOC? nope. This might be a toy for the rich boys and girls, but otherwise, useless in business where reliability is number one. Case in point: Serverworks Chipset for intel p3's. Spank anything that is available for the AMD, they even spank the memory throughput of the DDR chipsets for AMD, using SDRAM.
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
True.. but the larger games with large maps and high quality grafx tend to be of the more CPU intensive tasks out there. Twas just the first example that popped into my head:P
- Scott
You know what drives me mad? That people think you need a faster processor and more memory to make things endurable.
Sure, for games and 3D graphics-intensive stuff, a really fast processor is great, but what do most people do with their computers. I've asked around. The answers I've got were:
Who the hell needs a faster processor for those things? For programming, especially, I think a slower processor is better. It makes you think twice before compiling and it forces you write efficient programs.
Now if you want your existing computer to get things done faster, I suggest a faster hard drive (how come nobody builds a solid-state drive out of battery-backed RAM chips?) or get rid of that proprietary software and run something that actually works.
Unfortunately, we find other tasks to occupy our time. End result? We're a helluva lot more productive than we were "even a few years ago." And therein lies the rub, we save time on each task, but as we save time in aggregate, we tend to take on more and more, which, of course, leaves us with less time.
Not to mention that you can't really even become self-sufficient, since you have to buy the property to live own. With property comes property taxes, which require money to pay.
Unfortunately this machine will be obsolete tomorrow (if not sooner).
Got me going on a post-holiday boring work morning!
Oh, I don't know. It'd be nice to be able to say "I only buy those magazines for the articles." and have people actually believe you.
_______________________________________________
come on people, we all know that AMD is faster then the Pentium chips, the only questoin is, how long until it burns out. We all know its going to happen, sooner or later it will die just like every other over clocked AMD processor out there.
Well, to be more exact, 518400/2^(6000/1.5) = 3.93262319987748905184465682942e-1199. Watch that minus sign or you'll confuse somebody. I need one of those computers, mine had trouble coming up with this number even.
Drummer beat & piper blow,Harper strike & soldier go,Free the flame & sear the grasses,Till the dawning Red
Speeds all good...But shouldn't you set a limit on how fast you're mounting your hard disk???
You'll lose your virginity someday buddy! Thee longer you wait the better it'll be...honest.
Applications recompiled for the new instruction set scream. They whip even the llama's ass.
Can't find SSE2 binaries, you say? You should be using Linux and compiling everything yourself, anyway...
---- Just another spud server.
Sure, two processors are better than one...but only if you can take advantage of it.
And, for a lot of needs I can think of, that 1.6 ghz athalon, with over 4000 MIPS and 2000 MFLOPS, would make life faster.
Now, two of those....
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
Actually, I'm 99% sure that the L2 cache on the Sparc chips have been on-die or on-module for years now. That's one of the reasons that the chips are so darned expensive.
This has been done for quite a while now in the Workstation/Server market. It wasn't untill several years ago with the Pentium Pro did Intel finally realize what it could do with a full-speed on-module L2 cache. But those chips mainly went into workstation and server products, so the higher price was justified. They didn't do well in the consumer market, so they came out with the Pentium II's that had on-module (but 1/2, then 1/3, then 1/4 speed) L2 cache. When they needed to really get back and compete in the workstation/server market, they came up with the Xeon, which was a Pentium II or III with a full-speed on-module cache ranging from 512K to 2MB.
It doesn't matter where the cache is located, on-die, on-module, or on the system board is fine, so long as it runs at the same speed as the CPU. External full-speed L2 cache was easy in the old days when CPU's ran up to 66 MHz. Now with 1.5 GHz CPU's, there really isn't reasonably priced cache memory available that runs at that speed. So to keep costs low on consumer models, they put the L2 cache into the CPU die. It decreases the yields only slightly so long as the on-die L2 isn't too big, but it's still cheaper than the alternative.
The P4 1.5Ghz(1500MHZ for you idiots out there) CPU is out....
The philosophical implications of this are pretty cool. What if the universe is being rebuilt moment by moment, instead of a going through truly analog and continuous change? At what point does a fine enough discrete system become indistinguishable from a continuous one?
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
I mean, an error of 0.1 with your exponent will create a bigger error than a .1 difference in your coefficient, or whatever you call it... think about the difference between 10^0 and 10^0.1, and I think you'll see its bigger than 1/39th, which is the difference between 3.9 and 4.0
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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IANASRP- I am not a self-referential phrase
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email: proprietary becomes free, org to com
Imageine a Beowulf cluster of these.
There, now it's been said.
Now who's overgeneralizing?
Yes and no. It saves time, but it uses energy, which must be paid for with time spent at work. Not to mention the cost of the appliance itself, hookups, maintenance, periodical replacement, etc.
Also, before the days of washing machines, people would wear their clothes several times before washing them. Today, most of us wash our clothes, sheets, towels, etc. after just one use. The time that would have been saved has been eaten away by the very culture of cleanliness that washing machines helped to create.
All things considered, we probably spend as much time (incl. money-time) doing laundry as ever. We could have saved time, but instead we decided to do more laundry.
(This isn't entirely off-topic, as it begs an analogy with desktop PC users and the way their habits change over time.)
Good question, especially when you ponder the inevitable energy death of the universe.
I'm only half-joking.
No, surfing is the other use, at home anyway.
That's why I switched to the PC at home four years ago. I can surf equally well on a PC or a Mac, but the PC had a ton more games, not to mention better 3D cards (again, for the games.) Office suite? Microsoft is the standard on both machines, so again that's a push for the very occasional need to work at home.
Nope, games availability is the reason for a PC at home (heck, half the few games available for the Mac are PC ports, complete with PC-style game interface.)
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
This is exactly they type of person that drives 40 in the left lane of the Interstate, writes a check in the express lane of the grocery store, and fumbles for 10 minutes in their purse looking for their bankcard at the drive-thru. The same type of person that stops and shrugs in the rear view mirror when you honk at them for not going when the light turns green. The problem is not that you people like to take things slow, it's that you are employed. As such, your employers and coworkers must now bear the brunt of your laziness. It's a vicious circle. I wouldn't be so stressed all the time if i didn't have to pick up other people's slack constantly. I ONLY hurry because you people do not. Oh, and by the way, I have a 386 I'd be willing to trade for your athlon. It'll run Slack 3.x!
It's already begun.
Window kits and light kits are being sold by one of this confab's few advertisers.
You can always put a hot, silicone-overclocked babe on your screen with far too few mouse clicks. (If I need to post a URL for that...)
How you accessorize your hog is up to you.
--Blair
"Any color you want, as long as it's paisley."
Until I can hide processor units in a cupboard elsewhere in my house, I'm very aware of the noise PCs make, more so the fast ones (yes, I am aware of the g4 cube).
/dev/null > /dev/brain
So has anyone actually seen a solution where I can have the input & output (i.e. keyboard, video & sound et al) at one end of the house, and the noisy crap at the other? Wireless stuff seems to be stuff around low-end network speeds.
cat
I agree with what you're saying. Coding is funner when it happens slowly, in a weird kinda way. But I'm not a programmer -- I'm a writer. I think, if I didn't have a computer and had to write my novels by hand, I would be something else. Even a typewriter would be goddam aweful. I thank god every day that my computer is fast enough to run page scrolling on a 200 page document in Word 2000 and play Winamp without skipping at the same time ;)
But that's symptomatic of the problem. You need to opt out of that slippery slide down the road towards work/slavery.
Everybody who says something that teases the audience should include a link to the wonder... :)
-- Cure for Cancer instead of SETI! (only w32 yet - mail and beg)
I think the 'make world' he is referring to is the BSD 'make world'. Quite the benchmark if you ask me.
If I thought any of that processing power was going to waste, I'd just ask him to run SETI@Home in the background. (That's what I'm doing with my 800 MHz, since I'm away from it most of the time.) :)
The coolest voice ever.
The worlds fastest desktop PC has just been made obsolete within days of its introduction. This is not big news. It probably happens every week
Tom Pabst IS concerned about stability. Have you seen what he's using to cool this thing? It basically amounts to a refrigeration unit. I'd say your desktop PC is more likely to overheat than this thing. I don't overclock, but I know it IS possible to do so and still have "stability", or as close as you can get to it with windows. Besides, all CPUs generally come off the same die, so once they get the process dialed in, even 800 Mhz Athlons are probably capable of running at 1Ghz + with little to no extra cooling. . .
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
Can't get a response from Tom's site. Perhaps he's gonna have to rush that server into service a bit sooner than he thought :)
People who complain that things are too fast and that things should slow down are really annoying!! I mean how could getting things done faster be bad? The computer is really good at doing the repetitive things we suck at really fast. This is a good thing. Nostalgia is the root of all evil if you ask me.
Damnit you obviously got a good computer, just waiting 40 seconds for my windows box to boot is forever, running any programs takes a good 30 seconds to load if i'm lucky, and i got myself a 900 mhz duron et al, runnign linux it still takes time to load, so unless your running, win 31 on a beast i can't see how you have don't have the time to wait.
Everyday i work i have to sit though annoying progress bars that take half an hour to fill up, installing Frontpage 2000 takes about an hour!
On my computer at home it takes 5 minutes to download an MB of data from the Net, I have to wait plenty, I want to swap computers with you now.
I'm not a Troll i prefer to be called a Goblin.
What a Joke this is! 1600mhz Athlon. Hmm. Fastest desktop.
You mean it's faster than a SunBlade1000 Desktop with a 64 Bit UltraSparcIII?
You mean it's faster than a IBM Power4 Desktop with the 64 bit version of the PowerPC(multiple processor versions of which are beaten out by the single processor configuration of the SunBlade)
You mean it's faster than a Mac G4 with a 128 Bit Vector Processing Engine? (DVD encoding in 4 hours, nice)
It's funny you're all worrying about if your machines will crash if they get any faster. Not everyone runs Windows. I do, I run Windows 2000 on an Althon machine, and laugh every time the Sun workstation sitting next to it totally beats it out on simple tasks. It's funny that they both cost the same.
Let me share my view of the Intel Platform:
1. It's terribly slow and broken.
2. It's terribly popular
3. People are arrogant about the hardware, and dont like Windows. They boast high mhz ratings that really mean absolutly nothing.
4. People who dont like windows use Linux, because they are too stubborn, arrogant, or misinformed to buy a real UNIX machine. It's like someone on a race track with a honda civic and a racing stripe, next to an Audi Rally car.
5. People who use Linux say it's UNIX because they think that's cool. They can easily run a real UNIX variant such as Solaris/Intel on their machines that can actually run Linux, and Solaris/Intel software. People think Linux is the most solid operating system in the world. It's actually the most quirky piece of crap I've ever run into.
6. Everyone thinks 64 bit is something incredibly new. It isnt. I dont mean graphics cards to play quake on, people. I mean honest to goodness 64 bit processing. Intel didnt invent the 64 bit processor with IA-64. It's like you gave a GEO Metro a hubcap and watch the owner race around thinking "I am da bomb"
7. Windows is actually a pretty decent home user operating system. The notion that you can run a business with Microsoft SQL server is hilarous. Good luck. Perhaps Microsoft can run a campaign to sell their software as "Server software for the undereducated"
I have Macs, PCs, Suns, etc. in my house. I use them all. Windows isnt bad, it's actually got some good points to it--but it has to contend with the sh*t hardware underneath it all. Linux has appeared as a fungal growth. I encourage all Linux users to use Solaris and LxRun, you'll get so much more out of it, and have the ability to run cool (free for personal use) commercal software products made for the Solaris/Intel platform. Linux, and X-Window variants that run on it are terribly non-standard. It's just like Windows server software, which is terribly non standard. You're not part of the answer at all, you're part of the same problem.
Linux users get Solaris/Intel
People who think their Intel machines are fast and cost efficent, get a clue
Those looking to buy a server, dont touch Intel unless it's a server appliance
And for god sakes, kill that damn penguin!
I love dual CPUs. My dual 400 p2 runs much smoother than my single 800. It's not faster persay, but smoother. I do a lot of rendering, and that is where I really see the performance difference, or when running Photoshop & 3d Studio at the same time.
Heh, I'd just like to see what its Bovine RC5 keyrate is. I mean, an Athlon 1440 can get about 5 Mkeys/sec, so I can only imagine what this beast gets..
Alex Bischoff
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Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Well you are off by a few years there, its 5761 years not 6000 years. And I'm not sure that this exactly follows more's law.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
The rather ironic thing is that by Jewish thought Hashem created the world, with a word, the first programing language.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
The fast computer isn't nesseccarily the problem.
It is something of a lifestyle thing. People seem to think that getting things done faster mean that they'll have more free time. That's not really true. They'll just find more things to do in the same time frame. The 'faster' thing seems to get into our psychology and we start demanding things come sooner and sooner.
I know people like to do or handle multiple things at once (call on the phone while driving while shaving / doing makup) but I wonder how much this affects long term emotional stability.
Do you?
That's the point.
Comparisons like this are very hard to make, of course, because any benchmark that runs on the older machine can run entirely in L1 or L2 cache on the newer one, representing an entirely unrealistic workload for the new machine.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I never claimed that 2 800's are as fast as one 1.6GHz. I understand the limitations of SMP, but for MY main uses (which I outlined in my original posting) the dual processors are more appreciated.
However, for your run-of-the-mill Win9x gamer, the 1.6GHz is certainly a better option. This isn't my needs..
Maybe 20% less time than it takes most desktops?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I could do with one too.
/. and k5 whilst waiting for stuff to compile, thus wasting more time than is necessary (as it takes time to notice that my stuff is ready and waiting for me, and time to "just finish the bit I'm reading now"). I also wouldn't be sat there waiting for it to be ready, thinking "if only I had a faster machine, this wouldn't take so long" (I have a P3 450)
I write code, for fun and profit. Compiling code takes time; not huge amounts of it (I currently do all my coding in Java), but enough. (Previously, in C++, our in-house libraries could take an hour or more...)
With my current (work) machine, it can take anything between 2 and 5 minutes between making a change to the source, and getting so see whether or not that fixed the problem. That's time spent compiling the code (a few seconds), starting the server (a minute or so in debug mode), parsing and compiling the page(s) (a minute or so for an average jsp), etc. (I currently do jsp/servlet work, for web sites deployed on Linux boxes running Apache and Resin)
Much past 5:30pm, that's just too long (especially on a Saturday or Sunday...).
With a faster machine, the whole process would take less time (well, duh), and I'd be happier. I'd also be less inclined to read
No, the average user doesn't need that much speed; gamers, coders, 3d modellers/artists, people running number-crunching simulations, etc, do.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
You REALLY haven't tried Visual Studio DotNet Beta1 yet ? Have you?
NT reboot times are not really dependent on processor speed. They'll always take a while due to disk access times, services which wait on other services to start, intentional wait periods thrown in by developers to keep their bad software from killing itself, etc.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Who would continue using a tape drive on the 64 once the 1541 (5-1/4") drive came out? The Commodore PET was the last computer with which anyone should have been forced to live with a tape drive. Heck, once the 1571 was built into the C=128 - now that was loading in speed and style.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Well... let's see here:
The MSI K7-Master has 4 133MHz DDR slots (or 266 if you want to say that)... and the memory used was Micron PC-2100 CL 2.5 DDR... but of course, that was mentioned on page three and four of the article, which you can't be bothered to read.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Yeah, enlarging the L2 increases can increase the die size and decrease yield, both of which help lead to increased pricing. Since AMD likes to be able to battle on cost, this probably won't happen soon. What would be interesting is once the SMP chipset comes out if they would offer several options for cache size, trying to hit the entry server market... I would guess not, but who knows.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Did you happen to read the article? Tom used a Vapochill to keep the system at temperatures way below normal. Heat is definitely not a problem for this system.
wolf31o2 Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team
L1 and L2 cache are "small" on the current P4 because the P4 core was designed for 0,13 micron tech. Intel usually does its core with the next die-size in mind, which means version 1.0 of every new Intel CPU is running on an inaddequate die-size. The Pentium Pro also had this problem, when it came out people found it barely faster than a 200 Mhz Pentium. As we have seen with the Pentium III E 1 Ghz, the core can do much much better than a Pentium. It just needs to get a an adequate die-size.
When 0,13 micron fabs are ready Intel will put out a new version of the Pentium 4 with optimized core, large caches, higher speeds and it will also be much cheaper to manufacture. The format will also change (different socket and motherboards).
Why the 760 motherboard? And with a 133MHz bus? Why not the new Asus K7M 761, with its DDR 266MHz bus? I have a feeling this project was started in about November.
I don't think the point is that everybody and their grandma should be running a 1.6 GHz machine. Think of motorsports: companies invest a significant amount of money to make their car go around the track as fast as possible. They don't do this because they want to put an 800 horsepower turbo V8 in my Civic. But that racing technology certainly carries over to even practical cars.
I say overclock the hell out of those CPUs. And then give me one that runs faster and is more stable.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
I don't want this to be a flame, but it feels like one in my head already.
Why anything then? Why has man ever accomplished anything? Because accomplishment feels good, it helps us to advance. Go west, go farther, climb higher, have knowledge of the distant stars, see the smallest things imaginable........and yes, make your computer go faster. It's a pretty basic drive.
I'm sure you pine for the days of BASIC and your C-64, but the rest of us are trying to accomplish wonderful things and fulfill grand visions. It certainly was simpler and easier back then, and I would be the first to agree that the complexity of life, society, and technology may not be doing us a lot of good, but don't ask why.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
I do not agree with this. I thought exactly the same thing a year and a half ago and built a Dual PII 400mhz system on a Gigabit 6bxd motherboard. When running Linux the system *rocks* compared to similarly priced single processor system at the time.
:-)
However, it sucks as a game machine. Unless you run Win2000, then all windows games are just on a single processor. While 400mhz is fairly fast for my needs on a gaming system, having it dual processor enabled would make flight simulator, Quake or Reader Rabbit's Kindergarten way faster.
For the average user using Win98, spending money on a single processor system is the way to go. For the average geek running Win2000 or Linux, then I agree that a dual setup is ideal. I really like mine, but it is not for everyone.
p.s. I have been spending more time in Windows since I can't find an email client that supports SMTP Auth with mailandnews.com. Otherwise Linux would be almost exclusive.
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
fun to wait eh?
:)
*yoink* no more broadband for you
instead we've decided to replace it with a trusty good ole 300bps modem which should provide you with years if not decades of fun on the net
It allowed Intel to release a high-clock CPU, and 'show off' the P4. Unfortunately, it kinda backfired, because people who run clocks that fast tend to care (and know) about actual performance VS numbers. The end resuult was a slow machine that gave the P4 a bad name.
I think that the P4 architecture actually has some hope --- if/when they ever release a full implementation.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I expect we'll all be able to buy systems at least this by next year.
http://www.pcfactory.co.kr/1600overclock.htm
These guys took a 1.2G chip to 1.6G and, frankly, the box alone makes the project cool beyond anything you're going to buy. Sure a Peltier (156Watt) isn't exactly standard kit in an OEM PC but 12x133MHz has gotta fizz.
0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
Who needs this for games? Why games?!?
.NET
You're going to need this to run Windows XP + Office XP
that and a T3. Fear
"the Power Box is a real system, running quietly and reliably without making any headaches" - Tom's Hardware
If Tom found that the box was not running stable, he would have lowered the clock speed until he found a speed that worked perfectly. That's what he does, and that's what he's trying to do here.. push the available technology to its limits and see just how fast fast can get.
"the real reason we have a computer on our desktops - to perform productive work for our bosses"
First of all, speak for yourself, not everyone else.. there are plenty of other uses for computers besides producing for an employer. Secondly, how can you claim that a faster computer will not aid in productivity? The world is FULL of applications just waiting for faster computers to become available. Real time video processing, ray tracing, language interpretation, gene analysis.. etc.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Not too long ago the Linux community was about getting the most out of hardware. In the days of the Pentium 233, folks were able to make 486/66 systems jump sing and dance with Linux. By the time the Pentium II rolled around, a Pentium 200 was more than enough for an awesome desktop. Even today, most linux distros will work great on a 486/100, but it appears that is changing. The Linux world has slowly been turning into yet-another-windows forced churn, just like Apple in recent years. Code optimization has given way to throwing more hardware at the problem. People that once poked fun at the latest, fastest wiz-bang hardware for being overkill are now chomping at the bit to get that 1.5 GHz P4 or 1.6 GHz Athlon. Some are waiting a few more months for 2 GHz systems before they upgrade. Regardless of the hardware, it's the mentality that's changing. Gone are the days of pride, tight code, and making things work. Today the community just waits for faster hardware to solve their problems.
I think you are losing sight of why most people got into computers... I don't overclock my machine so my boss can benifit from it. I do it cause I want that little bit of extra power for me... My games, my apps. If my boss want better proformance out of my machine at work he can buy me somethign better than the P2 400 I'm running.
MG
Randomly distributing Karma whenever possible.
to perform productive work for our bosses
You need to re-evaluate your priorities. My "Boss" can go fuck himself. Life is short - I exchange 8 hours of my day for money to eat, clothe and shelter myself. Nothing more. My Heart, Soul and Conscience do not belong to my 'Boss'.
There's no such thing as a free lunch dudes.
Bullshit - come to my home; Ill serve you a wonderfull free meal (your all invited). Ive got more than enough for everyone. No strings attached. We can talk about Linux, Life, Art and the Universe. Why so cynical?
Do we really need this kind of processing ability? Like come on, who REALLY needs an Athalon running that fast?
I do. One of my hobbies is 3-D graphics. Now, admittedly, I use one of the lower end software packages, mostly because it does what I want, but even it has taken 5 days to render a 1000 x 1000 scene.
Of course, most of that was due to my (over)use of objects with their material set to diamond... But the multiple (10+) light sources refracted and reflected nicely!
(Note to self, stop imbedding light sources inside diamond objects.)
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
...with the big fuzzy dice hanging down in front of your "chop-top" monitor.
Imagine a 21" monitor that's 6"x20"...a must for a Lowrider PC amigo.
Ruger
Too bad ol' Tommy boy there didn't spend as much time building his server as he spent on his little 1600mhz gameboy! Seems he's been /.'d
How slow can you go...
Just some thoughts:
... maybe earlier
... (Just look at the Windows 2000 service pack (100MB!! even on DSL that gives you enough time to "smell the roses!")
The "dark ages of personal computing:"
IIRC, around mid-80's
8 mhz 8 bit CPU max.
640K RAM
300 bps modem.
10MB Harddisk (if you were priveleged to have a harddrive)
video: CGA (Color Graphics Adaptor) Max. Resolution 640x200@2 colors, or, color resolution of 320x200@4 colors. 3D acceleration? Forget it.
Cost of a system like this? 3-5K
Today's "Average modern PC"
In 2001
1GHz (1000 mhz) CPU (32 bit)
40 GB harddrive (40,000 MB)
256MB RAM
Modem: 1MBIT DSL connection (Who still uses a modem??)
Video: 1600x1200@32,000 colors, 3D acceleration in hardware. Lots of polygons, really fast.
Price? About 2K
Comparison?
We've increased CPU speed 100-fold,
Memory capacity more than 400 fold.
Disk capacity 4000 fold.
And Graphic capabilities are astounding compared to the systems of yesteryear.
When you look at it this way, Just remember: CPU power has been the slowest to increase.
So we get more space, faster and cheaper. With numbers like this, you still have to wait
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The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
I remember when I was in school, programming my Commodore 64, and the joy was in just how primitive it all was. Just typing in those BASIC commands, waiting while that tape drive chugged away - that was half the fun of it.
Nowadays, everything's instantaneous, and people don't realize the fun of waiting. This is a problem with our culture I think. Everything has to be so fast.
It's all fast food, fast cars, fast living, and it's not good for us.
It is no coincidence that in countries where they take things slowly that they have lower rates of heart disease, and lower incidence of stress-related industry.
Sure it's nice to have fast things every now and then, but I worry that people will forget the experience of waiting - the thrill of anticipation as that new game installs, the pause while the computer boots up, etc. It would be great to just go to a nice restaurant with nice slow service, and then to come back and use that Commodore 64 again.
All this speed means that people don't appreciate what they've got - they don't appreciate the joys of living - the call of birdsong, the flowers coming up in the spring - because they're too busy. And busy doing what? Busy doing things too damn quickly. Of course I'm not saying that progress is bad, but just that this is symptomatic of the ever faster pace of life; the way we don't speak to each other, the fact we take minutes for meals, and seconds for just talking. We should take the time out to enjoy life every now and then.
Or you could stick with that old comp and keep watching This Thing over and over.
-I fear the easter bunny.
6 days, plus 1 day of rest. :)
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I wonder how long this monster would take to do a "make world"."
Unless he got ultra-fast hard drives and boatloads of RAM with it, probably not a great deal faster than an 800 MHz box. Goes double for make world because it has sooooo many files to compile.
Besides, if I'm not doing games, I'd rather have two boxes that were running within tolerance than one with a voided warranty on the verge of melting.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Its all very well having a 1600GHz Athlon on your desk, but what use it it if Windows crashes every five minutes because you are overheating ? Is it just me or does anyone else agree that we should really confine ourselves to running our CPUs at the speed they were designed for rather than some arbitary speed we choose ?
There's no such thing as a free lunch dudes.
AMD, however, still stick to the tradition of engineer led design. The Athlon, simply the most powerful processor on the market, should be much more scalable to higher clock speeds than the PIII, and will continiue to outperform the P4 until Intel get their act together and release it with the large cache it was supposed to have.
I forsee AMD greatly increasing its share of the processor market this year.
However, AMD's future still depends on the Sledgehammer. That processor might just give it a long term edge over Intel, for the first time.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
Seriously, 1.6GHz sounds VERY impressive, but I'll take more CPU's and better components over a faster CPU any day.
I've had my Dual 466 Celeron for over a year and a half now, and it's absolutely fantastic, and rock-solid stable. Sure, I've upgraded the RAM over that time from 128MB to 512, but through it all I've felt no need to upgrade the processor(s)
The motherboard recently went south on me and I had to replace it. I got looking around and noticed that Asus now has a dual PIII board for ~$230CDN. I ended up just RMAing this board, but I know when I do eventually need to upgrade there's no WAY I'll be going back to a single processor board.
If you're running Linux, FreeBSD or Win2k (or even BeOS) an SMP system makes a world of difference under heavy load. Recompiling? Encoding MP3's? Running VMWare? These operations are sped up very noticeably.
For people looking for a new machine: Save your precious dollars on the fastest processor. Fill up on RAM, get a good video card, and get an SMP board. I'd rather have 2 800MHz chips than a 1.6GHz any day of the week.
AMD: I'd rather get an SMP chipset out of you than Yet Another "Fastest" Processor. I'd much rather own a Duron or Athalon than a crappy Celeron or PIII, but I'd take an SMP Celeron over a single Duron..
I wanna see a Lowrider computer magazine.
I mean, chromed RAID arrays, hydraulic monitor positioning,
overstuffed, ergonomic workstations, boxes covered with shaggy purple fur, golden G4 cubes buffed to a mirror-like finish...
THAT's where it's at.
--K
$make world.c
Hmmm.... immeaurable by the naked eye. Let's see if it runs.
$./world
"Hello, World."
Yippee! Don't need no 1600MHz Athlon to make my world!
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I wonder how long this monster would take to do a "make world".
Six days?
- Mike
How 'bout some comparisons between some non-x86 processors?
I've never seen anything about how fast a fired-up Alpha can go.
Or how fast the 1.6 GHz Athlon compares to the 733 MHz G4 (Except from Apple, of course)
I use an X86 processor too... but there's better stuff out there.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Somehow I don't think that babes in bikinis dripping over the latest PC system will sell magazines(I could be wrong).
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart