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Small Form Factor Dual Opteron
Psionicist writes "IWILL has announced a new barebone, the IWILL ZMAXdp. Based on the nVIDIA nForce3 Pro 250Gb chipset, the computer offers dual Opteron support in a SFF format. "Volume production is planned in September, with a suggested price of $499. IWILL plans to get attention in workstation market. ZMAXdp will include proprietary form factor motherboard, 300W power supply, up to 2x3.5" HDD bay, and 1xAGP; PCI and SI can offer various configurations for workstation market demand." according to IWILL's homepage. I will take one, please."
I'm extremely curious how they figured out how to manage the heat generated by TWO processors while leaving room in that tiny box for anything else.
Regardless, my boxers are wet. Must have one.
First post? I would imagine this as being a mild succcess only because I think it would have a spacing issue with two rather large heatsinks instead of just one. Air flow always seems to be a problem with ssfs. Just a thought.
This would be one sweet gaming box. I wonder if the new nvidia cards will fit. Anyone know of any other chipsets coming out that are similar?
There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those that understand binary and those that do not.
I guess I can understand wanting to create something like this and even a few geeks wanting one but I really don't see the need for workstations. Maybe it's the cure for tiny cubicles though.
vampirical
Well, the specifications of the Board and proccessor capabilities (which are very nice), may fit the Longhorn minimum standards reported on Slashdot a while back. Maybe we will be able to hit their recommended standards in three or four more years.
Nice now I can fit more of these motherboards in my jacket and then run like crazy out of Fry's
How is this Small form Factor DUAL Operton?
----------From the Article---------
NVIDIA nForce3 Pro 250Gb Adopted by Leading Workstation System - ZMAX Single-Chip Solution Revolutionary single-chip solution designed for the AMD Opteron enables higher-quality, and delivers maximum performance with the lowest latency
If I were going to have something like that on my desk, I'd want 2-3G of memory in it, and an extremely fast 3D video card that would require AGP 8x. That's what workstation means to me. Not some over-CPUed muscle box that can't display a thing. That's what you stick in your rack of thousands when you need a supercomputer, not what you stick on your desk.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I bet this thing will be loud with fans trying to cool 2 CPUs. Most SFF owners also want quiet. It seems to go hand in hand.
Also, why did they mamke it look like a Gamecube?
Nice idea, nice price, but probably will not be a good product. We will just have to wait for dual core CPUs for real good implementations like this.
Guess the $499 is no memory, processors, drives, or whatnot - but it's still cheaper than the Tyan or MSI mobos. Just gotta save up the $2000 for the Opteron 250's...<grin>
The northbridge, AKA the nForce3 250Gb is one chip, hence a SINGLE CHIP solution. In the first paragraph they clearly state its a dual opteron box.
AMD Opteron Processor Models 146/246/846 HE series produces only 50Waats and EE series produces 35 watts. this means even dual chips may produce less heat than a Intel Presscot P4. HE and EE series will be unveiled this year.
http://www.amdboard.com/opteron_low_power.html
The "solution" uses a single chip, as opposed to many components. ZMAX != Opteron, mmk?
Try Corewar @ www.koth.org - rec.games.corewar
I would be even more impressed if they had PCI-X on it.... but YAY opteron x 2 =) in micro atx is a feat in itself.
The Opterons must use much less power than the Athlon64. I had to upgrade to a beefier power supply when I put in my Athlon64 mobo and CPU, and that's for a single CPU.
Thank you. Drive through.
otherwise here is the text...:
------- In the end there are no begining
The new SFF bare bones kit today is also billed as a fully functional hotplate so you can crunch numbers and fry you dinner at the same time
First we get paint jobs, then windows, then neon and now.......Wings and fins on a computer case. Yikes.
that hardocp posted this earlier today :o
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
Saving sig aborted.
Reason: Your subject looks too much like ascii art
I am curious, will this chipset support having independant pathways to the RAM, or will it share the ram thru the main CPU via the hyperlink stuff?
I am asking this because one of the big advantages of having a Opteron is that they have their memory controllers built into the chip. That way you can have a bank of memory for each CPU and get significant performance advantages over cheap motherboards that share their memory...
when are we going to see a dual Athlon FX board? Does FX even support SMP? I'd put money down if I could get today's equivalent of an Athlon MP system from two years ago.
Athlon MP pooped out with the MP 2800, the Opteron are very server-ish, so gimme a good ole SMP Athlon FX system, thank you very much.
Remember, Longhorn isn't going to come out for another couple of years, so most of those standards were intended to staunch shortsightedness.
"Why would someone want to do X? It requires hundreds of gigabytes of disk space, and runs poorly on anything less than gigabit ethernet."
By 2007, most any new system will exceed those requirements-- so if a new user wants to perform task X, they will be able to.
available? maybe but cheap enough for joe blow to buy it? nope. 2007: welcome back to the day of $5,000 computers
The $499 price seems too low to include the processors. Is this the barebones price, processors sold seperately?
Bill Machrone wrote in a recent article in PC Magazine that the computer you Really want will always cost $5000
the forst 286, 386, and 486 systems all cost $5000 when they were forst released.
And today, the really drool worthy computers cost $5000. just look at any of the Botique(sp?) gaming box makers. Heck, an Apple Dual G5 2.0 and a 23" studio display is $4998 Plus tax!
One of the features supposedly included in Apple's System 10.3 release was a video codec that required a 1 GHz G4 for proper playback. That requirement certainly exceeded the capabilities of older computers, but most, if not all of the current Apple lineup exceeds this requirement.
Am I pissed that my long in the tooth g3 ibook can't use this feature? No. It's just a video codec, and by the looks of things is rarely used. Besides, my newer computer is perfectly capable of such computations.
My guess is that in 2007, if you buy a new computer with MS's new OS, it will be able to run most all of the new features just fine. And it won't cost more than $1500.
I read 1x AGP and I think terminal... This is not a game worthy machine???
/. effect...)
Is this just me??? Does that simply indicate that there is only one AGP slot... not the speed of the AGP bus?
Somebody fill me in here, I must be missing something.... (and I would read the article but for the
Of blankness, I know nothing.
Longhorn.
THANKS for being a karma whore, Frys displays all thier SFF cases and mobos....
The secret to getting modded up is to allways say i've got karma to burn in your sig..
Why do all the OCer's and Gamers always drool over Dual proc boards? There are *very few* SMP capable games at all. This is one huge old myth I would like to dispell for these people. To my old gamer knowledge, only ID and maybe a few other people have made SMP capable game engines, and then, they weren't fully SMP capable, and it only mattered if you used software rendering. There have been one or two SMP game servers.. Adding another processor is virtually useless for a 'gaming machine' unless you want to be running Seti@Home one the other processor while you're 'fragging' or whatever you kids are calling it these days.
I can only think of a few uses for a dual processor machine for '1337' gamers and OCers and it's things like restricting apps to individual processors, if you *must* encode the latest DVD you rented from blockbuster while teaming up in a death match -and most people don't know this is possible. There are though more than a few SMP capable DVD ripping/encoding apps, but it hardly justifies two opterons.
These things do look great for rendering though.
Am I the only one who read the headline as a barbeque pc? I imagine that with two opterons in there, it'd make quite a good one.
Just so long as they actually give you a set of memory slots for each chip. Some companies (Tyan) have put out quad-boards that only have memory slots for two of the chips. It'll work, and it saves a lot of real estate, but then you're completely losing one of the greatest strengths of the Opterons.
steve-O
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Actually, back in 1992, the computer I really wanted was $10,000. It was a 486DX/33 with 64 megs of RAM, 1 gigabyte hard disk, and a 1 gigabyte tape backup - unbelievably huge at the time.
I'm soooooooo glad I never bought one.
One of my coworkers in about 1994 had spent some thousands of dollars on a motherboard with 64 megabytes of sram as the main memory. Insanely fast at the time. But again, I'm soooooooo glad I didn't buy one.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Sign me up, Bitch!
Of course, next year, dual opterons will be available on a single chip. But.. Sign me up, Bitch!
Even so, it's still insane. The fact that it will take multiple 3GHz+ cores to let you do the same tasks you can do right now with a single 1GHz core is just silly.
It's like saying "Oh, it's not a problem that this car has an extra two tons of useless weight. After all, we can just throw in one of those huge V10's!"
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I wish I had the board in question. then I would be busy playing quake rather than being sad that I didn't get FP
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
it it comes with 64/66+ pci... that and an ATX form factor would be perfect... thanks.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
*yawn* wake me up when an interesting CPU architecture comes around, that is worth playing with
where are the dual-proc small form factor CPU-X(where X is anything -x86) mobo's these days?
it sucks. nobody seems to be pushing the CPU envelope, cheaply any more... its all x86 hegemony, or bust. booo-o-ring.
one thing that the 8-bit days have that is still not happening in this wonderful 'gonzo era of 32-bit' is variety. spice. having an oric-1 and a c64, now -that- was naughty!
not trying to flame, seriously. as a coder, i'm just not inspired by x86 hardware any more...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
the Longhorn minimum standards reported on Slashdot a while back
Assuming we're thinking of the same report, that was a report of speculation from another site as to what MS was going to recommend by way of specs for Longhorn.
I don't recall having seen any confirmed official specs yet. It's funny how these things get accepted as fact without any substantiation...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, well welcome to slashdot. You may want to try osnews for (slightly) more informed discussion.
h ics-reqs.mspx
Also, check out this page for some official, but not very specific HW requirements:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/display/grap
1. They weren't supposed to be minimum specifications.
2. They weren't real anyway.
yes
If you're referring to PearPC, you're not going to run Mac OS X on that thing "as fast as a G3 imac". Running Mac OS X on PearPC is unuseably slow.
No, if you want the to "enjoy the awesome features of the OS X user experience", you'll still need a Mac. You'll be able to run Doom III just fine natively on Mac OS X as well...
Tyan only has 2 models of quad-Opteron boards and both of them have memory slots hanging of all the processors (and they're massive). As far as this system goes, motherboard makers have a tough time making a NUMA capable dual Opteron board small enough to fit in a standard ATX case, how do you expect to fit one in a SFF?
No Athlon SMP huh?
l
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk7.htm
Righto.
Aw, come on
/. can send as much traffic to a site in an hour as it might otherwise receive in a month. Why should admins shell out for the kind of bulletproof hosting Microsoft and the BBC have just in case a /. editor decides their site is worthy of a mention?
A link on the front page of
On a subject of as much interest as 64-bit computing, if this topic had been linked instead back upon itself, Slashdot might have slashdotted itself.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Because Canada sucks so hard.
As for the G5, you should really look into getting some more memory-- a gig or two should get you started, though you'll probably be able to use a few more when Apple releases a 64 bit OS.. (The OS won't consume that much RAM, but it will make it easier to write programs that take advantage of it.)
Since Apple is offering $500 rebates to people who buy 23" displays with G5s, you should be able to afford 1-2 GB of memory. Not much, but it's a start. And that Radeon 9600-- better replace it with a current model. Remember, the 9800 will soon be ready for the scrapheap-- or the thrift store.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
doesn't look like you can fit too many drives in that little box - it is nice looking though.
I suspect that the webpage linked to was designed more by a marketing person than a tech person - I can't believe they would only have a 1xAGP slot. I think they just mean there is only 1 AGP slot. Because, games aside (it's not their target market anyhow - they are targetting the Workstation Market), if it *truly* has a 1x AGP slot, that would kill it for any kind of CAD/CAM, 3D visualization, 3D graphics design (like the people who create all the 3D models for games, movies, etc).
In otherwords, for a lot of the Workstation market, 1x AGP would be a huge problem in a WS design.
Antec now sells a Micro ATX case fry's/compusa 114/129 dollars. MSI Dual Opteron board would cost you around 200. So for 314 (Even less than a Shuttle SN85G Athlon 64 machine.) you get a quiet case (That can even have watercooling with a external set)
The Micro ATX ones also have 3 PCI 1 AGP slots.
However I'm still waiting on faster SATA and PCI Express to make it's way into these motherboards before I decide to upgrade. And I'm still hoping that AMD will make athlon 64 dual proc chips.
The front look like the front of a Panasonic GameCube Q with his 4 leded plug on it.
-- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hold on there, pardner!
I have it on great authority that many, many unixy type folkses have been running all sorts of applications over X (They keep wanting to call it the X Window System or some sort of techy name) for many years now. I'm pretty sure that they didn't have "hundreds of gigabytes of disk space" or "gigabit ethernet" back in the day...
Maybe you are making a comment with the "runs poorly" part...
Given the $$ and watts consumed by these pigs,
I'd much rather have a dual athlon system.
Is there anything out there in an SFF box?
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
So, have you tried exporting a VLC display window over 10baseT?
Somehow, I feel posting a link on the front page of ./ could be called Slashdot-Kiri.
There are sites that specifically forbid their membership to post links to that site on Slashdot for the express reason that the website will go down or cost a lot of money.
Hint: A really Looooonng Horn :-P