Intel guy looking the AMD direction for the first time.

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Hello everyone. I am looking to buy a new desktop PC. I currently have
a Compaq Pentium 3 733 MHz desktop and a Dell 2.0 GHz Celeron laptop.

I have always been a fan of Intel... mainly because when I got into
computers there was no AMD. My first IBM based PC was an 8088 with
640k RAM and a 21 megabyte hard drive.

The first time I had any knowledge of an AMD product was around 1996.
Because (and I might be remembering this incorrect ...) but as I
remember a good friend of mine had a K5 processor and I remember he
had all kinds of problems with Windows 95. MANY MANY more Windows 95
problems than I had on my 80486 SX 25... Or did I have the Packard
Hell Pentium (Classic) 100 MHz by then... Lol... I don't remember.

So as time went on I always stuck with Intel. I went from P classic to
PMMX to PIII to the latest which is the Celeron laptop.

Now I am looking to buy a new desktop and I am looking for the best
new technology. I am very interested in 64 bit technology. I know
Intel has had Itanium and Itanium II but as I understand it those are
not for consumers.

So I want the "straight poop" about the AMD 64 FX models. And is there
any new AMD 64 FX chip coming in the fourth quarter 2004?

Also can anyone explain the Intel roadmap for a consumer 64 bit CPU?

Any thoughts on the best place to order custom built High performance
PCs? I can't stand the newer all integrated systems. I do not want
integrated Graphics, sound, NIC, ect.



I was looking at Alienware. Are there other sites as well? I have to
say those Alienware systems always look damn cool.
 
No spam said:
Hello everyone. I am looking to buy a new desktop PC. I currently have
a Compaq Pentium 3 733 MHz desktop and a Dell 2.0 GHz Celeron laptop.

I have always been a fan of Intel... mainly because when I got into
computers there was no AMD. My first IBM based PC was an 8088 with
640k RAM and a 21 megabyte hard drive.

The first time I had any knowledge of an AMD product was around 1996.
Because (and I might be remembering this incorrect ...) but as I
remember a good friend of mine had a K5 processor and I remember he
had all kinds of problems with Windows 95. MANY MANY more Windows 95
problems than I had on my 80486 SX 25... Or did I have the Packard
Hell Pentium (Classic) 100 MHz by then... Lol... I don't remember.

So as time went on I always stuck with Intel. I went from P classic to
PMMX to PIII to the latest which is the Celeron laptop.

Now I am looking to buy a new desktop and I am looking for the best
new technology. I am very interested in 64 bit technology. I know
Intel has had Itanium and Itanium II but as I understand it those are
not for consumers.

So I want the "straight poop" about the AMD 64 FX models. And is there
any new AMD 64 FX chip coming in the fourth quarter 2004?

Also can anyone explain the Intel roadmap for a consumer 64 bit CPU?

Any thoughts on the best place to order custom built High performance
PCs? I can't stand the newer all integrated systems. I do not want
integrated Graphics, sound, NIC, ect.



I was looking at Alienware. Are there other sites as well? I have to
say those Alienware systems always look damn cool.

I'm not sure that AMD is really planning on releasing any new chips this
year, but it's been a while since I've looked at one of their processor road
maps. You may want to check www.amd.com for that information or do a google
search for "AMD Road Map" or something like that. As for the "straight poop"
on these chips, they are excellent preformers with amazing IPC. Which chip
you should buy will depend greatly on what kind of work you do, I use AMD
because I am a programmer who writes mostly web based applications. And as
it so happens AMD chips are much faster than Intel's chips when it comes to
running compiling source code, running webservers and running database
servers (espeacially in 64b mode). AMD's also tend to out preform Intel
chips in games, which was another factor in why I use AMD. As long as you
get a good quality AMD system preferably with an nForce 3 you shouldn't have
any problems what so ever with your system. From what I'm told Via chipsets
have gotten better recently, but I've heard that a lot and every time I've
ever tried one I was never happy with it. Which could explain your buddies
experience with his K5, chances are it was running in a system that had a
via chipset.

Carlo
 
No said:
Hello everyone. I am looking to buy a new desktop PC. I currently have
a Compaq Pentium 3 733 MHz desktop and a Dell 2.0 GHz Celeron laptop.

I have always been a fan of Intel... mainly because when I got into
computers there was no AMD. My first IBM based PC was an 8088 with
640k RAM and a 21 megabyte hard drive.

Well hi, and welcome to the 21st Century, Rip Van Winkle. :-) A lot of the
rest of us in these newsgroups started on those 8088 PC clones ourselves,
and we didn't seem to have much trouble accepting AMD as a credible
alternative.

Actually, AMD has been making Intel compatible chips for as long as Intel
has been making them. Initially it was making them with the complete
permission and support of Intel -- AMD was Intel's official second source
right from the days of the original IBM PC. And then later it was making
them without so much permission and support. :-)

I think the first time I'd heard of AMD was when I was shopping for a cheap
287 coprocessor to fit to my 386DX CPU. (Yes, 386's could also be fitted to
287's rather than 387's.) Then later I found out that AMD not only made
coprocessors but also direct clones of the processors. This was around 1988
or thereabouts.
The first time I had any knowledge of an AMD product was around 1996.
Because (and I might be remembering this incorrect ...) but as I
remember a good friend of mine had a K5 processor and I remember he
had all kinds of problems with Windows 95. MANY MANY more Windows 95
problems than I had on my 80486 SX 25... Or did I have the Packard
Hell Pentium (Classic) 100 MHz by then... Lol... I don't remember.

The K5 was not AMD's most successful design, not by a long shot. It was
AMD's first attempt its own original design. It's previous processors were
much more successful (the 386, 486, and 5x86), and it's later processors
were much more successful (K6, Athlon, and Athlon 64). So yes, you could
call the K5 to be AMD's lowest valley. Prior to the K5, AMD's designs were
all direct copies transistor-for-transistor copies of Intel's processors --
since AMD had been Intel's second source for years prior to that. At around
the time of the 386 were when AMD and Intel started having their first
feuds; Intel no longer wanted to have AMD as its second source, while AMD
insisted that they had a binding contract for just that. The court battle
eventually came down to an agreement that AMD would stop cloning Intel's
chips as of the end of the 486. So K5 was AMD's attempt to engineer a
Pentium-workalike, but with their own original design inside. The K5 didn't
succeed, but AMD's second attempt was the K6, which was also a
Pentium-workalike, and it also fit into the Pentium socket. This was much
more successful, and it in fact extended the Pentium infrastructure beyond
the Pentium, beyond what Intel had imagined for that infrastructure. The K6
was competing against the Pentium II's and III's, which were on their
next-generation infrastructure. AMD's next design, the Athlon, was (and is
to this day) their most successful original design ever; and not only was it
original on the inside, it was also original on the outside, as the Athlon
uses no infrastructure at all that's similar to anything from Intel's; oh it
runs all of the same software as Intel's, and all of the same peripherals,
such as USB and PCI cards work with either Intel or AMD, but below that
level Intel and AMD had diverged completely. Now the Athlon is giving way
slowly to the Athlon 64, which is another completely original design, and
actually quite a quantum leap over even the original Athlon, and anything
that Intel has (including their Itanium).
Now I am looking to buy a new desktop and I am looking for the best
new technology. I am very interested in 64 bit technology. I know
Intel has had Itanium and Itanium II but as I understand it those are
not for consumers.

No, the Itanium is definitely not for consumers (though originally Intel may
have had such hopes and plans). These days, it's living out life as a
server-only processor.
So I want the "straight poop" about the AMD 64 FX models. And is there
any new AMD 64 FX chip coming in the fourth quarter 2004?

Well, the AMD Athlon 64 FX processors are AMD's ultimate gaming processors.
And as such they are more expensive than their regular Athlon 64's. They
typically have slightly better memory interfaces than the regular A64's,
either dual-channel memory, or bigger cache, or both. I think most people
suggest that you stay away from the FX's, as they are extremely expensive
compared to the regular A64's. Quite a bit more money for only slightly
better performance.

Similarly, people suggest you stay away from Pentium 4 Extreme Edition vs.
regular Pentium 4. Exact same reasons.
Also can anyone explain the Intel roadmap for a consumer 64 bit CPU?

Intel has copied AMD's 64-bit language extensions now. But it hasn't
implemented these extension throughout the board on all of its processors.
It is first going to implement them in its server Xeon processors, before it
brings them to its desktop Pentium 4 processors. It's expect that these will
take until the middle of 2005 before Intel has it fully incorporated on all
of its non-Itanium processors. Intel calls its version EM64T, while AMD
calls it's AMD64, but they are exactly the same thing.

However, it's not just the extensions that matters here. AMD spent a great
deal of time not only improving the language, but it also came up with an
incredibly sophisticated infrastructure, which it calls Direct Connect
Architecture. That's just a marketing term for a processor that connects to
its RAM and its peripherals and to other processors directly with very few
other chips required in between, allowing for much higher throughput. This
is the real secret behind AMD64, not so much its 64-bittedness.
Any thoughts on the best place to order custom built High performance
PCs? I can't stand the newer all integrated systems. I do not want
integrated Graphics, sound, NIC, ect.

Not having integrated graphics is a good choice. Integrated sound is
actually not so bad, especially if you get a motherboard with an Nvidia
chipset in it, because they have a version of the sound chipset that is
present inside the Microsoft Xbox. And integrated NICs are just great, no
reason why you would want a separate card for a NIC anymore.
I was looking at Alienware. Are there other sites as well? I have to
say those Alienware systems always look damn cool.

Sure, they're supposed to look cool. They are geared towards the gaming
enthusiast.

Yousuf Khan
 
Any thoughts on the best place to order custom built High performance
PCs? I can't stand the newer all integrated systems. I do not want
integrated Graphics, sound, NIC, ect.

newegg.com has a good selection and prices. Look for a motherboard with
the nForce3 250Gb chipset.

Your aversion to integrated graphics is understandable, since they've
always been somewhere between pathetic and mediocre on the performance
scale. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a new motherboard that doesn't
have both integrated NIC and sound these days. You're better off with
an integrated NIC anyway (particularly for gigabit ethernet), because it
can run straight off the south bridge and not tie up any PCI bandwidth.
As for sound, new motherboards support 8-channel audio and SPDIF
digital output, so I don't even see the need for an add-in sound
card--and nothing's stopping you from disabling the onboard sound
plugging a sound card if you want to anyway.
 
So I want the "straight poop" about the AMD 64 FX models. And is there
any new AMD 64 FX chip coming in the fourth quarter 2004?
Very fast and very expensive. You'll pay a hefty premium (about $800) for
a small percentage of increased speed. Even the cheapest A64 (about $140)
will be at least 3 times faster than what you have now.
Also can anyone explain the Intel roadmap for a consumer 64 bit CPU?
Not me. The Intel CPu I had was a 486.
Any thoughts on the best place to order custom built High performance
PCs? I can't stand the newer all integrated systems. I do not want
integrated Graphics, sound, NIC, ect.
Sorry, I've always built my own. try pricewatch.com.
 
As for sound, new motherboards support 8-channel audio and SPDIF
digital output, so I don't even see the need for an add-in sound
card--

Unless you are a musician who wants a lower-latency and higher quality
than the onboard audio can deliver.
 
Lachoneus said:
Your aversion to integrated graphics is understandable, since they've
always been somewhere between pathetic and mediocre on the performance
scale. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a new motherboard that
doesn't have both integrated NIC and sound these days. You're better
off with an integrated NIC anyway (particularly for gigabit
ethernet), because it can run straight off the south bridge and not
tie up any PCI bandwidth. As for sound, new motherboards support
8-channel audio and SPDIF digital output, so I don't even see the
need for an add-in sound card--and nothing's stopping you from
disabling the onboard sound plugging a sound card if you want to
anyway.

You don't even need to disable the onboard sound system, you can keep it
completely enabled and still put a secondary sound card in. These days with
plug'n'play, you don't have to worry about resource conflicts as much. The
sound cards just rearrange themselves into different configurations to
accomodate whatever is in the computer.

Yousuf Khan
 
Lachoneus said:
You're better off with
an integrated NIC anyway (particularly for gigabit ethernet), because it
can run straight off the south bridge and not tie up any PCI bandwidth.

Which does the average home user a whole lot of good, considering
they're limited by their internet connection of 1Mb/s (give or
take)... 8)
 
Hello everyone. I am looking to buy a new desktop PC. I currently have
a Compaq Pentium 3 733 MHz desktop and a Dell 2.0 GHz Celeron laptop.

I have always been a fan of Intel... mainly because when I got into
computers there was no AMD. My first IBM based PC was an 8088 with
640k RAM and a 21 megabyte hard drive.

Believe it or not, AMD was around at that time to. AMD first got the
contract to make x86 chips as a second source for Intel as part of
IBM's agreement to use the 8088 on the original PC.
The first time I had any knowledge of an AMD product was around 1996.
Because (and I might be remembering this incorrect ...) but as I
remember a good friend of mine had a K5 processor and I remember he
had all kinds of problems with Windows 95. MANY MANY more Windows 95
problems than I had on my 80486 SX 25... Or did I have the Packard
Hell Pentium (Classic) 100 MHz by then... Lol... I don't remember.

Computer problems are almost never caused by the processor, but rather
by all the accompanied hardware. The problem that AMD (and Cyrix) ran
into was that their processors were cheaper than Intel's chips and
tended to be used alongside cheap components. Take a piece of shit
power supply, motherboard, video card, etc. and you will have
problems, no matter what processor you use.

The K5 exasperated this issue by being, umm.. somewhat of a weak
design. It was one of AMD's first attempts at doing a ground-up
redesign of the processor (most previous chips had been strongly based
on, or often direct copies of, Intel's designs). The design itself
wasn't so bad, though a bit late. However when combined with the
terrible manufacturing problems that AMD had at that time it ended up
being WAY late to market and underperforming. The chip ended up only
having about a 1 year lifespan before the MUCH more successful K6 came
out.
So as time went on I always stuck with Intel. I went from P classic to
PMMX to PIII to the latest which is the Celeron laptop.

Now I am looking to buy a new desktop and I am looking for the best
new technology. I am very interested in 64 bit technology. I know
Intel has had Itanium and Itanium II but as I understand it those are
not for consumers.

You can safely ignore the Itanium line, it's definitely NOT what
you're going to be looking for. First off, it's not software
compatible with existing applications, requiring emulation to run all
your current code. What's probably more important though is that
you'll have a heck of a time finding an Itanium system for less than
$20,000.
So I want the "straight poop" about the AMD 64 FX models. And is there
any new AMD 64 FX chip coming in the fourth quarter 2004?

Yup, the FX 55. This chip will fit into the relatively new Socket 939
and is basically identical to the Athlon64 FX 53.

Of course, you probably don't want an Athlon64 FX unless you've got
more money than is good for you. The regular Athlon64 line is nearly
identical but selling for much more reasonable prices. An Athlon64
3500+ sells for about $375 and offers better than 90% of the
performance of the $850 Athlon64 FX 53. The only difference is that
the latter comes with a bit more cache (1MB vs. 512KB) and higher
clock speeds (2.4GHz vs. 2.2GHz).

So, sticking to the Athlon64 line of processors, you get a few
options. First off you've got two basic platforms, Socket 754 and
Socket 939. The primary difference been that the older Socket 754 has
only a single channel to memory while the newer Socket 939 has a pair
of memory channels (ie you add memory in pairs, much like you probably
did back on your old Pentium 100). Having twice as much memory
bandwidth results in more performance. For comparison, AMD sells a
2.2GHz processor with 512KB of L2 cache in a Socket 754 format as an
"Athlon64 3200+", while they rate an identical processor in Socket 939
as an "Athlon64 3500+".

One thing you may have noticed is that AMD is not using clock speeds
here, but rather model numbers. This is something that Intel has just
started doing as well, and it makes a reasonable among of sense since
clock speed is a VERY limited measure of performance. Things like the
memory subsystem and cache can have a noticeable effect on performance
even within a single line of processors, while the internal
architecture of the chip can have a HUGE effect when compared to
another chip. AMD's model numbers suggest a rough equivalent to
Intel's P4 line of processors, ie an Athlon64 3200+ will perform about
on-par with Intel's P4 3.2GHz processor (generally speaking AMD is
actually a bit conservative with their ratings and they are usually
faster than the "equivalent" Intel processors).


So... where does this leave us? Well as far as the whole 64-bit thing
goes, there's not that much to say at the moment. Microsoft, as
usual, is taking forever to get their operating system to market.
WinXP 64-bit for AMD64 (aka "x86-64", or "X64" in Microsoft-speak or
"EM64T" according to Intel, all the same thing, just different names)
has been delayed about 17 times already and probably won't actually be
available until Spring of next year. In Linux land, there has been
pretty solid support for AMD64 for at least a year now and basically
all distributions support it fairly well now.

What does a 64-bit operating system buy you? Well, beyond the
bragging rights at geek gatherings, it allows for two keep points.
First it allows you to properly access more than ~2GB of memory.
32-bit CPUs max out at addressing 4GB of memory, but due to a variety
of limitations, in practice things quickly get really ugly as soon as
you go beyond about 2GB. Even using more than 1GB of physical memory
starts requiring some hacks to work right on 32-bit chips. On the
other hand, a 64-bit chip can properly address MANY terabytes of
memory, good enough for a few years at least!

The second thing that 64-bit x86 buys you is a bit of performance.
Despite popular belief, 64-bit code is usually SLOWER than 32-bit code
if all else were equal (twice as much data to be tossed around in
memory pointers, requires twice as much cache space and memory
bandwidth), however in the case of AMD64 all is not equal. AMD took a
good look at the x86 instruction set and did some very smart tweaks to
it. They streamlined a few operations and, most importantly, doubled
the number of integer registers. The result is that with AMD64, AMD
managed to actually increase performance by about 5% on average when
going from 32-bit to 64-bit. Some applications might be a bit slower,
and a few applications could be a LOT faster in 64-bit code, but
generally you're looking at about a 5% performance improvement on
64-bit code. Note much, but hey, it's free!
Also can anyone explain the Intel roadmap for a consumer 64 bit CPU?

Actually that's a good question, even Intel doesn't seem to know what
their roadmap for consumer 64-bit CPUs is!

About the only thing that is known so far is that Intel's Xeon
processors (x86 server chips) have copied the AMD64 instruction set
(Intel calls it "EM64T", but it's really AMD64). The latest and
greatest desktop Pentium4 chips also support EM64T in hardware,
however Intel has decided that consumers aren't ready for this and has
disabled this feature. In theory Intel could start selling 64-bit
desktop chips tomorrow, but thus far they have shown no interest in
doing so.
Any thoughts on the best place to order custom built High performance
PCs? I can't stand the newer all integrated systems. I do not want
integrated Graphics, sound, NIC, ect.

Integrated NICs are pretty much standard and, honestly, there's no
good reason to get a PCI NIC these days. In many situations add-in
NIC cards actually offer LESS performance than integrated ones since
integrated ones have a direct path to the chipset while add-in NICs
have to go over the (comparatively slow) PCI bus. Even integrated
sound can be quite reasonable, and given that about the only add-in
sound cards you can buy are Creative Labs trash, many people stick to
the integrated sound.

Graphics is a slightly different game. Integrated graphics have
improved TERMENDOUSLY over the past 5 years, and for 2D stuff they are
every bit as good as an add-in card, but for 3D games they are still
quite weak. Most PCs targeting business users stick with integrated
graphics for good reason, for business type uses they are just as good
and a lot cheaper. If you're main purpose is to play games though,
get a decent add-in card.
I was looking at Alienware. Are there other sites as well? I have to
say those Alienware systems always look damn cool.

I think you'll find that most of us in these newsgroups tend to build
our own systems from parts, so we're probably not the best people to
ask. However, if you like Alienware systems you might also want to
check out www.voodoopc.com, nice stuff, though not cheap. HPaq also
sells some Athlon64 based systems in both their HP Pavilion and Compaq
Presario lines, though the quality of such systems might leave a bit
to be desired.

You can also get some "barebones" systems from most computer stores
and add in whatever components you like. Most stores even have an
option to have them build the system for you, installing the hardware
and OS for a small cost. Shuttle has made a bit of a name for
themselves selling small form factor barebones systems, fitting some
pretty high-end components into very small enclosures. Others have
followed, including some doing full-sized barebones systems. The only
trick with these systems is that you need to know a bit more about
what components you want.


Wewf... hope that wasn't too wordy for you!
 
So I want the "straight poop" about the AMD 64 FX models.
Everybody in here is really helpful. For benchmarks, I like
www.tomshardware.com
Figure out which components you like, and then ask people in here about
their experiences with those components.

Any thoughts on the best place to order custom built High performance
PCs? I can't stand the newer all integrated systems. I do not want
integrated Graphics, sound, NIC, ect.
I was looking at Alienware. Are there other sites as well? I have to
say those Alienware systems always look damn cool.
The best custom shop there is for building your PC is either your basement,
coffeetable, or kitchen table. (IMHO) Building your system yourself, you
get a lot of knowledge about computers and how they work. Plus, most of the
main manufacturers will give you three year warranties on the parts (Asus,
MSI, Western Digital etc.)

And Personally (I'm probably going to get flamed for saying this) I like the
Athlon 64 3400+ Processor as the best value) There's not much of a
performance difference between it and the 3500+ (in fact in some benchmarks
I've seen, the 3400 can outdo the 3500) and you're going to pay less or the
motherboard, you don't have to buy the more expensive dual-hanel memory
kits, and the processor is a fair bit cheaper. So you now have a good
amount of extra money to put into the components you want to splurge on,
like more memory, better video card, or bigger hard drive....

But that's just me...
 
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Well hi, and welcome to the 21st Century, Rip Van Winkle. :-) A lot of the
rest of us in these newsgroups started on those 8088 PC clones ourselves,
and we didn't seem to have much trouble accepting AMD as a credible
alternative.

Actually, AMD has been making Intel compatible chips for as long as Intel
has been making them. Initially it was making them with the complete
permission and support of Intel -- AMD was Intel's official second source
right from the days of the original IBM PC. And then later it was making
them without so much permission and support. :-)

Toward that end, I have an IBM PC/XT at home (the real thing, not a clone)
that left the factory with an AMD processor. That would've been from the
era when AMD was copying Intel's stuff instead of rolling its own.

(Last time I switched it on, it still worked, too. It's currently set up
with DR DOS 6 and the DOS SMB client off of an NT Server 4 CD. When it's
hooked up to the network, it can access shared files on Linux and Win32
hosts (haven't tried it with Mac OS X, but that should work too) and it can
print to shared printers...not bad for 20-year-old technology. :-) )

_/_
/ v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
\_^_/ rm -rf /bin/laden >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

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Scott said:
Toward that end, I have an IBM PC/XT at home (the real thing, not a
clone) that left the factory with an AMD processor. That would've
been from the
era when AMD was copying Intel's stuff instead of rolling its own.

(Last time I switched it on, it still worked, too. It's currently
set up with DR DOS 6 and the DOS SMB client off of an NT Server 4 CD.
When it's hooked up to the network, it can access shared files on
Linux and Win32
hosts (haven't tried it with Mac OS X, but that should work too) and
it can print to shared printers...not bad for 20-year-old technology.
:-) )

Oh, you mean to say, you still have a working XT? :-)

Yousuf Khan
 
You're better off with
Which does the average home user a whole lot of good, considering
they're limited by their internet connection of 1Mb/s (give or
take)... 8)

That depends on the home user. If you have a local network at home,
gigabit ethernet can make transfering video fiels around a lot
quicker :-).

Back on the original amd/intel comparison question: We have both dual
Opteron and dual Xeon systems at work for linux development, and people are
constantly wondering what is wrong with the Opterons when they first start
using them because everything finishes too fast (something must have gone
wrong, right?), but no, nothing went wrong, they are just that fast :-). It
boggles the mind sometimes how fast they are.
--email: (e-mail address removed) icbm: Delray Beach, FL |
<URL:http://home.att.net/~Tom.Horsley> Free Software and Politics <<==+
 
Oh, you mean to say, you still have a working XT? :-)

I'm considering buying a GeForce 5900 XT; is that close enough?

You'd think the 3MB/sec 8-bit ISA bus would be a bottleneck for a GPU
that fast, though... maybe I should splurge for the 5900 AT with the
16-bit bus.
 
Lachoneus said:
I'm considering buying a GeForce 5900 XT; is that close enough?

You'd think the 3MB/sec 8-bit ISA bus would be a bottleneck for a GPU
that fast, though... maybe I should splurge for the 5900 AT with the
16-bit bus.

You know that GPU by itself could probably emulate an 8088 at better than
full-speed. :-)

Yousuf Khan
 
Tony said:
You can safely ignore the Itanium line, it's definitely NOT what
you're going to be looking for. First off, it's not software
compatible with existing applications, requiring emulation to run
all your current code.

Itanium can run IA-32 binaries. Why do you mention emulation?
What's probably more important though is that you'll have a heck
of a time finding an Itanium system for less than $20,000.

??

You can purchase a zx2000 workstation from HP for $5000.
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11665_na/11665_na.HTML
 
Where does it show prices on that page?
$5,000? Still not what the typical home user wants.
Under $1,000 would be good.
 
Grumble said:
Itanium can run IA-32 binaries. Why do you mention emulation?

Itanic can run x86-32 in hardware - but in that mode
it is equivalent to a Pentium running at about
20% of the Itanic's actual clock speed.

With a software emulator, the Itanic does much better -
apparently in some cases it is about as fast as a PIII
running at the Itanic's actual clock speed.
 
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