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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.
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.
Since this sort of purchase would be of the "my money, my choice" category, I think I'll go w/ one of the inevitable competitors who comes out w/ a similar design. This might work well for that home-brewed PVR I've been planning for the last two years. Now, if I could only come up with a source of income that would let me pay for it.
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!
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.
Those don't count. Where are the drivers I can trust?
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