What do you think of this System?.

Shamie

It's selling for IR£3600.

Supercell

£3600 and they give you Maxtor's hmm, wouldn't be my first choice.

Shamie

IR£3350 for that one.

Maxtor DiamondMax 80s are the best Hard Drives around.

Trojan

I don't see much point in supplying a raid card with only 2 disks, particularly at level 0, you need to do mirroring to get any practical use from the card and that defies having the expense of 2 disks...

Do you plan on working on disk-intensive tasks? Or is immediate data recovery or down-time that important to warrant the expense? If so, you probably need to add in at least one more drive, otherwise I think you should drop the raid card and upgrade something else if possible.

Al.

Hecate

Imho there isn't much point in having raid in a home system, and looking at the configuration thats what it seems to be; as Trojan said it's only really useful for mission critical stuff. You would be better off with scsi.

Sonic

Over the past 3 years out of 7 maxtor drives i have put into machines 5 have failed. in work we bought 12 dell dimension 4100's with 20 gig maxtor drives, after 6 of these drives failed i got dell to come out and replace the drives with IBM GXP's.
As you can imagine i dont think much of maxtor. Gerry whats your opinion on this

po0k

Am, scrap the RAID, go for one sufficiently big Ultra-3 SCSI 160 spinng at 14000rpm, and a SCSI CD burner or better yet, a DVD burner. Why would you have RAID ina ahome system?
More money then sense...
Why modem? why not ISDN or cable (if your in the area)?
Also, get a Athlon too, waaay out performs P4s at same or even higher clock, and get some of that new 300Mhz DDR ram, the stuff above 266 Mhz. And a decent mobo to support it.

While your at it get a 40" Plasma Wall-mounted screen too, seems like you have the cash.

JustHalf

Yes. Go ask Micron can you have some of the RAM they're only sampling now. Go on, I dare you.

BTW, that system's pretty expensive. Want me to try sort out a cheaper one?

llatsni

I build an almost identical system to that athlon 2 months ago for less than IR£2000, Specs:

Athlon 1GHz @ 1.33GHz (10x133, soon to be 10x140)
Quantum 40GB (7200, 100)
Abit KT7A Raid
Internal ZIP 250
Creative 5.1 Platinum
Geforce 2 GTS
Yamaha 16x,10x,40x
AOpen 16x DVD
512MB PC133 Crucial
Sony 19" Trinitron
Keyboard, Intellimouse, Ratpad
And a few other goodies...

So emm £3400+ is, let me say it politely, Crap.

JustHalf

From OC:UK ->
Shopping Cart (Prices in British Pounds)
Enermax EG465P-VE 431W ATX Power Supply x1
Corsair 256MB DDR PC2400 CAS-2 x1
Corsair 256MB DDR PC2400 CAS-2 x1
Pioneer DVD-106 Region Free! - OEM x1
Plextor PleXwriter 24/10/40A Burn-Proof CD-RW - Retail x1
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4GHz "AYHJA" 266MHz FSB (Socket A) x1
Abit KG7-RAID (Socket A - AMD Thunderbird/Duron) x1
IBM 60GXP 41.2GB UDMA100 x2
3.5" Floppy Disk Drive - OEM x1
OcUK Super ThermalRight SK6 (Socket A/FC-PGA) x1
Arctic Silver II x1
Asus V8200 GeForce3 Deluxe (AGP) - Retail x1
Delta 80mm Fan x1
Delta 60mm Fan x1
Chrome Fan Guards - 60mm x1
Chrome Fan Guards - 80mm x1
Hercules Game Theater XP - Retail x1
Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical USB/PS2 Mouse - OEM x1
Microsoft Natural Elite USB/PS2 Keyboard - OEM x1
Creative Modem Blaster 56 External - Retail x1
Rounded Ultra ATA100/66 IDE Cable (0.9m) - White x2
Rounded Floppy Cable (0.6m) x1
Subtotal: £1,333.63
Shipping: (Parcelforce Euro 48) £93.00
VAT: £249.71
Total: £1,676.34
= £2094.30 Irish, including delivery

You still need:
A monitor, speakers, case, OS

ITDirect are selling the monitor you are looking for here:
CPD-E400P Sony Trinitron CPD-E400P 19" Monitor .24dp IR£406.17(ex VAT) IR£487.40(inc VAT)
CL20001798 Creative Labs Desktop Theatre 5.1 DTT2200 IR£91.65(ex VAT) IR£109.98(inc VAT)

You can pick up a full tower case from Maplin or the like for around 80 quid (with a PSU, though you don't need that one) and if you're a student you can get the OS cheap with Microsofts student deals.

I'll guess 180 pounds for these two, leaving you with a grand total of:
-> £2871.68 - and that's Irish.

Add to that these facts:
* This system is better than the system you listed... better RAM, better hard disks, and probably better graphics card (I doubt the deal includes a v8200 Deluxe, probably the "pure" card)
* Even this probably isn't the best deal you can get... but I'm not your personal shopper! look at www.dabs.co.uk, www.overclock.co.uk, www.overclockers.co.uk, www.scan.co.uk and compare prices. Remember that the delivery charge for the monitor and case will likely be a lot (I was going to get a 19" Diamondtron from OC:UK, but the delivery was over 100 quid sterling).

JustHalf

Sorry, forgot about the printer.. but it's still unlikely to be over 600 quid for it

Supercell

Originally posted by Shamie
Maxtor DiamondMax 80s are the best Hard Drives around.

I'm sorry but the words "Maxtor" and "best" in the same sentance is stretching credibility to the limit. Perhaps they get pretty good benchmarking figures at the moment but as anyone who has ever had to support them will tell you, don't expect this to last...sooner rather than later expect the clicking sound of death from them.

Maybe Maxtor have turned things around but time will tell and a LOT of people won't touch them, particularily in a raid 0 config, yes this is going to be damn fast but twice as likely to fail, which is a pretty awful thing given Maxtors reputation.

Don't say we didnt tell you 12 months from now (which i really really doubt the two of them will last..)

IBM have a solid reputation, have had for some time and still do...would be a far better choice IMHO, in any scenario raid zero is a fast config but a very risky one..you need more drives for reliable, fast and safe raid.

JustHalf

RAID 5 with 4 disks!

astrofool

Raid 5 uses a logarithmic way of backing up, i.e 3 disks, and if either goes down, all data is safe, data amount is 2/3 of total drive space, + it's slow

speed wise the best is raid 0, 2 disks acting as one, bandwidth is about 70% higher, and equals and betters alot of scsi devices

Raid 1 is for mission critical data

Raid 0+1 is the best of both worlds, but not quite as fast as Raid 1, + needs minimum of 4 disks

Use a Raid 1 2 x 60gxp here, best thing I ever got, load times of everything are tiny, have a 75gxp as a 3rd hard drive to back up data to, best of both worlds

those prices are hugely inflated, have built an A1.33 512 RAM abit board, server full tower case for under a thousand

po0k

to repeat the point raised earlier,
Why do you need RAID?
Who is paying for this system?
Why spend the guts of 4 grand on something that will be outdated in 6 months and worth about a quarter of the current price?
Then again, if you have the money(and consequentially no soul), go for it.

BTW, about the ram, I was exaggerating, I know its only being tested, but like those 'Best PC ever?' threads, you might aswell have a bit of fun.

astrofool

hard disks cost about 100 for a 40 gig drive, so u can RAID them to 80 gig's for 200 (60gxp's btw) A fast hard disk system can make more of a difference to the system then going up a couple of speed grades chip wise, and can be a relatively cheap big performance boost.

U only need it if you need a fast computer

JustHalf

Astrofool, I want to know if you know the answer to these two:

How will it speed up your system?
Will it speed up your games faster than a faster chip/GFX card/RAM?

po0k

RAID , imo, is really on neccessary for ppl with moire money then sense (*ahem* above *cough*), webservers, Storage blocks (see SGi, Sun, Cisco etc.), or database machines/intense number crunchers/research PCs (and even for databases an ScSI3 drive will do fine).
Its a waste to get a RAID for a home system. A bit fo good ram is a far, far better investment atm due to the prices (which can only feasibly go up soon - less chip makers go out of business), and if you give a game/ap enough RAM, it should never need to use a swap file (OS and software requirement issues aside).
Ohg, DiVXing is about the only home use I can think of to use that much space and data bandwidth for a disk.

astrofool

hehe, k, easy answers if needed....

A computer's speed is quite often determined by the slowest link in the chain. If the computer is reading from the hard disk, then the speed of the entire system will be determined by it's speed.

Windows uses a swap file alot, nt or 9x, reading to and from the swap file (thrashing) is where alot of the performance in windows goes to, despite fast chips and graphics cards, it goes to the slowest variable, the hard disk. A Raid offers you about 70% more performance from the slowest part in the system.

This won't help when the programs are already loaded, but loading times are cut in half quite often, graphics work as alot easier (a detailed graphic will fill all the RAM + more by itself) allow you to do more things at once, without slowing to a crawl due to thrashing.

It can then depend on the game, for an fps probably not, these games feed all the data into the cache on the cpu, and run out of there, adding buckets of RAM makes virtually no difference to these.

Any other type of game, generally yes. Strategy games, with stats stored on the hard drive, or need a huge swap file (like Unreal Tournament, an fps I may add....) Championship Manager type games, anything bar fps basically.

Windows will load faster at boot saving time, maps for these games will load faster allowing you first person in alot of the time.

RAM beyond 256 adds nothing to games, a faster hard disk or a RAID will. RAID's are now cheap, built in controllers + cheap hard disks mean anyone can afford them, u add about 80 quid to the price for double the capacity + faster hard disk system, not too bad really.

Apps will ALWAYS USE THE SWAP FILE, it's the way windows works multi tasking, in reality running a couple of programs at once or graphics work takes up huge amounts of RAM space, u'd be talking about 2 gig's of RAM or more, before you might not need a swap file.

RAID IDE is alot cheaper than SCSI drives, and are generally faster, a single scsi drive can cost as much as 4 IDE drives...

try setting the windows swap file to 0, see how far u get...

Boston

Mine cost over a grand less then that, and id benchmark mine against yours anyday. I'd Win!

Supercell

I'd add video capture to the list of things that home users often do that is greatly improved with a cheap ide raid solution.

JustHalf

Longfield:
Yeah, but how many do that?
Personally, if I was doing that, I'd buy a PCI RAM disk for my swap file/scratch disks. Very nice - and SCSI RAID card with appropriate (hot-swapable) drives, and maybe some sort of silly long-term storage solution, like paper.

'fool:
Ha! Show me one benchmark that shows a 70% sustained increase in speed for varying filesizes. If you're doing home graphics work, maxomg out your RAM (a decent board should give you at least 1.5Gigs worth of room) and have a decent performing drive and you're sorted. If you're going to be doing professional work, you should have a professional set up. IDE Raid isn't the best solution, and for this application at least, choosing it as the solution is like choosing a GeForce2MX for all your gaming needs. It's half-assed.

BTW, this is classic:
"RAID IDE is alot cheaper than SCSI drives, and are generally faster"
This is quite general, and allows you to argue that you are correct no matter what... class.

astrofool

have a read of this article explaining RAID:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=1491&p=1

particularly the real world benchmark scores:

There is no question that a software RAID 0 IDE array will make your computer run faster, as the Content Creation Winstone 2001 scores clearly showed. Performance gains on the order of 13% are not negligible Just be sure that your software RAID chip is set to use its optimal stripe size, which we found in previous sections. The difference between a good stripe size for your card and a bad one can mean the difference between being faster than a single IDE drive or being slower than it.

the highest score being 43, 13% higher than the standalone IDE, in real world usage, thats about 4 speed grades chip wise higher to get that type of performance enhancement, maybe more due to the cpu i/o mismatch in systems

Read that and say RAID ain't worth it

cost of IDE RAID assuming you want 80 gigs of space for example

Standalone 80 gig drive 7200 rpm deskstar 75gxp cost: around 180 last I saw

Raid add on for motherboard: 20

Ide 40 gig: 90 60gxp
Ide 40 gig: 90 60gxp

cost is 200, now for 20 quid more u get a 13% boost to system performance, and thats not good value??

Course as you want less storage, RAID costs more obviously, but as with most things in computers, more is better, and 80 gigs is always nice to be able to use

SCSI drives require a SCSI controller, usually £100+, extra if you want one that can do RAID or uses ultra 160, the drives themselves are significantly more expensive than IDE drives, going up to £1000 or more for an ultra 160 10,000 rpm 6ms 4mb drive storing 80 gigs or more.

SCSI costs more because they are less used, genersally only being used in server's. IDE has become the dominant standard because it costs less in chip real estate to implement, that and the fact that as the cpu gets faster, so does the IDE system, as the cpu is doing all the work, RAID can take more cpu cycles if done in software, however seeing as the computer will be doing nothing while it waits for the hard disk information anyway, the cpu cycles are being used more efficiently.

Gerry

I'm on holidays, nice to see the board so active. Just a couple of things..

astrofool, windows nt/2k only uses the swapfile if you run out of ram. So more ram is better, however it only makes programs run faster after their initial loading, also the other programs do not have to be swapped out. I don't agree with your idea that running a few programs will take up 2 gigs. If you had 1 gig of swap on the go, your machine would be crawling. Most people would add more ram at that stage, if they were doing serious work. I have seen a machine with a gig of ram (in win2k) basically running everything from ram, ie windows was using the ram correctly, and after a few days, only user data was being read/written to and from the disk, all the programs were in ram.

More ram is far more beneficial to games than a faster hard drive, up to around 256 megs. If a game stops to read something for the hard drive, in the middle of a level/race or whatever, it doesn't matter how fast your hard drive is, it will still pause your game momentarily. And yes, a faster hard drive will benefit games, but only in terms of loading levels faster. More disk intensive games may benefit more I guess.

I do know the difference a fast hard drive makes, since I got an IBM 75GXP very soon after it was launched. It is very cool, since I would always be the first into a level. I don't think ide raid is the best solution though. Raid 0 is twice as unreliable as a single drive, and if you have a maxtor it's asking for trouble. Maxtor make decent enough drives, and they are improving, but their reliability is still not good enough. It is well worth splashing out on a fast hard drive, I just don't think raid is necessary for most people.

RAID 0, with 2 IBM 60 gxp's for example, is very useful if you are doing work which requires sustained reading and writing to disk. For example, professional graphics, and video editing. The striping is not so effective for small transfers, so you won't notice it in normal windows use. It would be a little help in games, but not really worth it either.

bonkey

Originally posted by astrofool
have a read of this article explaining RAID:

<snip>

Read that and say RAID ain't worth it

The benchmarks quoted are for measuring "overall" system performance. This involves perorming tasks such as opening huge documents to measure disk read-speed, and image-manipulating large images with sufficient complexity again to more or less ensure that memory is overloaded and swapping must occur.

These are not "real world" benchmarks. They attempt to determine average/overall performance. But no-one uses their machine in an average way - we all focus on one or two priorities.

if you are a gamer, for example, go compare your RAID system against someone who has spend the extra few quid on an extra chunk of memory or a slightly better gfx card. I pretty much guarantee that their 3dMark score will topple the RAID systems.

If you're looking at other uses for your system, then again, its a question of priorities. I work quite a lot with memory-intensive J2EE servers and so on. For me, more memory is a winner every time. You can improve your load times of large documents, but cutting my disk-thrashing by 50% through more memory will far outweigh the benefit of allowing my thrashing to occur faster.

There are situations (video editing being one) where IDE-RAID can be a cheap solution for the home enthusiast to gain performance benefits, but it is not a panacea for improving system performance.

jc

po0k

Is there anything to add about RAID? No?
Fair nuff.

Shamie.
Please explain
a) who is paying for the system
b) what the system is intended for
c) your of a soul spending so much cash on a hoime system. not that i'm jealous. oh no.

Praetorian

Im sorry to have to admit it but the 1900mhz p4 does easily beat the AMD 1400. How do I know?? Ive benchmarked both. VIA and S3 are releasing new chipsets for ATHLON mobo's that will apparently deliver 10-15% more speed. For the moment there is no point buying a new athlon and board, because the desktop ATHLON4 core will be out v soon.

Athlon TBirds are fast and cheap but run extremely hot. My pc sounds like a 747 jet engine.

The P4 2000mhz for example is much faster, in fact it beats the 1400Athlon by miles in all benchmarks. For proof check www.tomshardware.com or www.anandtech.com.

If your loaded and impatient you cant beat the P4-2000 atm. If you can wait tho, AMD should have a 2000mhz athlon 4 out by christmas.

Although watch out for the reintroduction of the PR rating system!!

JustHalf

A 2GHz Athlon by Christmas?

You are talking through your ass.

bonkey

Originally posted by Praetorian
Im sorry to have to admit it but the 1900mhz p4 does easily beat the AMD 1400. How do I know??

<snip>

Athlon TBirds are fast and cheap but run extremely hot. My pc sounds like a 747 jet engine.

This is what it boils down to. The current 1.4 Athlon is equivalent to about a 1.6 or 1.7 P4, depending on the benchmarks you run. Its also a hell of a lot cheaper.

As for sounding like a 747 - your machine will sound like that only if you go and buy a massive "overclocker" style fan to keep your chip cooler than you need it to, or you're overclocking. There are plenty of quiet fans, (and heatsinks as a result) out there which are perfectly OK for cooling a 1.4 Athlon. Sure, a chip running several degrees cooler is theoretically faster, but you'd be talking less than 1% there. Is the extra noise really worth that much to you?

If your loaded and impatient you cant beat the P4-2000 atm. If you can wait tho, AMD should have a 2000mhz athlon 4 out by christmas.

Although watch out for the reintroduction of the PR rating system!!

They may have an Athlon4 which is rated as comparable to the 2Ghz by early next year, but thats realistically gonna be a 1.6 1 .66 chip. Big diff. As for the PR rating system - stupid move by AMD IMHO. If they couldnt win consumers when they were winning the MHz war, they aint gonna win them now by pretending to win the MHz war.

If being the fastest, or best value high performance chip isnt doing it for them, tacky marketing isnt gonna make it any better.

jc

po0k

also you're comparing a 2GHz amchine witha 1.4GHz machine.
*ahem*
no sh¦t sherlock.

Gerry

An athlon machine can sound like a 747, but its better than running the machine too hot. Running the chip a few degrees cooler, WILL NOT make it 1% faster. It will increase the overclocking potential of the chip, and let it run with more stability. Good case cooling is also essential, but this does not have to be noisy either. you can run your fans on lower voltages to keep them quiet.

The 1,9 or 2 gig p4 will beat the athlon for a lot of things, but not heavy number crunching, 3d rendering etc. Its still not faster overall.

bonkey

Originally posted by Gerry
An athlon machine can sound like a 747, but its better than running the machine too hot.

Yeah - but whats too hot? The old slot-based AMDs were rated by the manufacturer for 70 or 75 degrees. The new AMDs (1.2GHz or more) are rated to 95 degrees, but most people seem to want to have the same operating temp as the older chips.

But bluntly, the chips produce more heat, and are rated to run hotter. Why has the acceptable running temp of the chip not increased by a similar amount.

I recall being told that a "good" operating temp for an older system was maybe 40 to 45 degrees, with 55 being the upper limit of where you would really want to have it for stability and long life. This is on a chip with a manufacturer's maximum rated chip temp of 75 degrees.

The newer chips are rated for operating at up to 20 degrees higher than the older systems (or more than 30 percent), so why the driving urge to keep the core temp down to the same limits?

It cant have that major an effect on the chip's longevity, surely?

Is a 1.4GHz AMD chip (rated to 95 degrees) not safely stable at 65 degrees? 70 degrees? And if not, why do the manufacturers not state the maximum recommended safe temperature, as well as the maximum rated temperature?

jc

Gerry

A chip running 60-70 degrees is cutting it fine. The heat is not being removed, and so the motherboard and its components around the chip get very hot. Not good for stability or reliability. If the cpu fan fails, the chip dies, and the whole lot goes up in smoke.

astrofool

get a good heatsink, and a quiet fan does the job, thermalright sk6 or the new alpha ones or a swiftech are the ones to go for (the swiftech one bolts to the board so very little chance of heatsink droppage)

thermalright sk6 here, athlon 1.33, 4500rpm big fan, so not huge amount of noise (the p166mmx mail server I use is noisier because of the hard disk), and cpu temp is below system temp alot. THe abit boards have a fan monitoring system, if the fan fails the board shuts itself down and the computer (obviously) saving the rest of the parts + the chip most probably.

The palomino's coming out run cooler again, and include very limited thermal protection (useless in most cases) but combined with an abit fan monitoring board, they should be as safe as anything. An athlon 1.4 + DDR(760) beats out the p4 1.8 +RDRAM in most benchmarks, so the two chips would probably have the same PR rating, AMD are in the situation that intel will win the megahertz war, but not the performance battle, but market on megahetrz (RDRAM anyone?) it can be very hard to persuade people to look at benchmarks when coming in off the street, so the PR ratings will most likely help AMD.

They seem to be conservative chip wise, saying a 1.4 is the same as a 1.6 and for every 66mhz they increase = 100mhz of intel increase, so expect them to have a PR 2000 soon enough (1.66ghz). The palomino 1.5 outperforms the p4 2ghz, and will be available next month when the KT266A boards ramp up and give athlon a decent DDR platform, next step in athlon will be the 333 bus and .13 micron (maybe sort the cache out, 512k with a 256bit bus hopefully:)) which will ramp quite high.

Remember when the athlon was first released and the pIII had to be one speed grade higher to compete, it was only when it went to on-die cache that the pIII performance managed to level against Athlon, because the athlon on die cache was inferior, if they bring it back to the same level, the athlon core should really be able to put out some huge numbers benchmark wise.

The clawhammer will at base level be an athlon + SSE2 + x86-64, there was talk of multiple core's a while ago, like intels new Jackson technology

JustHalf

Astrofool said this:
The clawhammer will at base level be an athlon + SSE2 + x86-64, there was talk of multiple core's a while ago, like intels new Jackson technology
Ahem.

The architecture of the Clawhammer is 64-bit. The internal architecture (in low-level terms)* of a 64-bit chip is SIGNIFICANTLY different from that of a 32-bit chip. So PLEASE don't say things like that again.

*I use this as I know that it's possible to describe the architecture of the chip, at high-level, like this:

  ------------
 |            |
 |            | <-- IN
 |            |
 |            | --> OUT
 |            |
  ------------

JustHalf

Of course, if you were to describe a chip like that, and use that against my point; you'd be a pedantic twat

astrofool

the sledge/clawhammer will be like the original pentium was with regards to 64 bit computing, still doing alot of 32bit code but also the ability to process code in 64 bit, i.e. being able to access larger chunks of memory

The Merced is a true 64bit processor, and has to emulate a 32 bit processor to run 32 bit code, so will be slow at it, but at pure 64 bit code it will most likely walk all over sledge/clawhammer

they Athlon and the Hammer will be as different as the 486/386 was to the pentium, or maybe a better analogy might be the 286 to 386 ?

64 bit means it's registers can take 2^64 bits at once, and will be able to handle 2^64 bits of RAM, 64 bit does not necessarily mean better if you think it does, optimised 32 bit code will be alot better than unoptimised 64 bit code, and the chips based on 32 bit code will be simpler and able to handle higher clock speeds, it's not all as simple as more is better in the computing world

The hammer series will be an expansion of the x86 code, which started as 16 bit (afaik, might even have been 8-bit?) but had the 32 bit instructions added to its set, the hammer will add in some 64 bit instructions to this instruction set, Intel went the other way and left x86 completely to pursue Epic architecture.

64 bit desktop code will not be happening for quite a few years yet, meaning boasting 64 bit coding could mean as much as supporting AGP 8x to the software at the time or release.

And remember when they do eventually release software to support it properly, there will be a faster cheaper chip on the market that supports it better. Imagine the original geforce owners trying to run the latest T&L titles?

JustHalf

Quotes are from Astrofool:
64 bit means it's registers can take 2^64 bits at once, and will be able to handle 2^64 bits of RAM, 64 bit does not necessarily mean better if you think it does, optimised 32 bit code will be alot better than unoptimised 64 bit code, and the chips based on 32 bit code will be simpler and able to handle higher clock speeds, it's not all as simple as more is better in the computing world

For a start, the P4 and Athlon (and even the Pentium MMX if I recall correctly) have a 64-bit memory bus. These are 32-bit chips.

Having a "64-bit processor" means your registers can take 64 bits at a time, not 2^64, or 18446744073709551616 bits. As you can see, there is a *huge* difference.

BTW, don't take a dig at me like this: 64 bit does not necessarily mean better if you think it does. I think you might also be refering to another post in another thread. AMD want the Clawhammer to be the premier 32-bit processor, which also does 64-bit operations. I want to get the best tech out, and if these beat the Xeons and P4's at whatever the latest shooter out is, I'm all for it.

Then you say these two conflicting statements:
The clawhammer will at base level be an athlon + SSE2 + x86-64, there was talk of multiple core's a while ago, like intels new Jackson technology
and
they Athlon and the Hammer will be as different as the 486/386 was to the pentium, or maybe a better analogy might be the 286 to 386 ?

All of that makes me give my first
GENIUS OF THE WEEK
award to you.

astrofool

first off I was pointing out why a chip might be called 64-bit, by that analogy of memory bus the geforce2 is a 128 bit processor. obviously incorrect.

to get this back on track...

the basis of the Clawhammer will be the athlon, the R&D costs of a processor are absolutely huge, the merced has taken 10 years to develop, u think AMD throw the athlon out and make a whole new processor from scratch?

No, they don't they take what they have already, add registers, more cache, more pipelines (which add the transistor count) and add new instructions, like the Pentium, then the MMX pentium, the MMX instrctions were added. Improvements are made to each unit, FPU, branch prediction, ALU's etc

but at base level alot of the chip will be of similar design to the athlon.

Just as the whole x86 family from intel were quite similar in chip make up, the pentium being alot like the 486, but had a much more powerful fpu, and higher speed bus, as well as the usual addition of registers + cache on chip.

If you understand what I said, it meant that they will in fact not be that different at all.

Sorry if you didn't get that

oh, and btw, take the number 2 and put it to the power of 64, in cpu code, each bit can present either a one or a zero, having 64 bits means that there are 2^64 different values that can be placed within the register.

a 64 bit bus is the related to memory bandwidth, but is usually carrying 2 x 32 bit instructions across it, or even less at times (nvidia's crossbar divides it up as much as it needs) and is a totally different way of talking about bits and processors and is the one game console makers used to use to make their products sound really good (mine is 64 bit, that = better) when in fact it was just the memory bus, or in the jaguar and saturns case it was 2 32 bit buses

+ calm down a bit more, tis only a bit a tech talk

JustHalf

To get it out of the way:
Sorry if you didn't get that
SMACK

first off I was pointing out why a chip might be called 64-bit, by that analogy of memory bus the geforce2 is a 128 bit processor. obviously incorrect.By which analogy is this? I never said anything of the sort.

the basis of the Clawhammer will be the athlon, the R&D costs of a processor are absolutely huge, the merced has taken 10 years to develop, u think AMD throw the athlon out and make a whole new processor from scratch?

No, they don't they take what they have already, add registers, more cache, more pipelines (which add the transistor count) and add new instructions, like the Pentium, then the MMX pentium, the MMX instrctions were added. Improvements are made to each unit, FPU, branch prediction, ALU's etc

but at base level alot of the chip will be of similar design to the athlon.
For a start, that's a hell of a lot more complex than this:
The clawhammer will at base level be an athlon + SSE2 + x86-64

The thing you have to understand is this: processing a 64-bit instruction requires a major core redesign when coming from 32-bit core. Of course they are not going to do a redesign from the ground up. There is no point in reinventing the wheel... but it *has* to be significantly different from the Athlon, or it won't be able to execute 64-bit code natively.

oh, and btw, take the number 2 and put it to the power of 64, in cpu code, each bit can present either a one or a zero, having 64 bits means that there are 2^64 different values that can be placed within the register.
Which isn't what you said.
64 bit means it's registers can take 2^64 bits at once
See? And please, don't try and give me a lesson on something like binary arithmetic.

The only way I know of that a 64-bit register could store 2^64-bits at once is if it was a row of 64 qubits, all unmeasured (and therefore being in a superposition of all possible states). I am not aware of any AMD processor due for release in the second half of 2002 that contains this technology.

a 64 bit bus is the related to memory bandwidth, but is usually carrying 2 x 32 bit instructions across it, or even less at times
*sigh* I'm not even going to start on this one.

'fool, please say what you mean first, don't post something that's incorrect and then refine it later (only to contradict what you've said immediately before). It's annoying... even more so when you reply in such a condescending manner - implying that it is my fault for not understanding that what you meant the first time was really what you now post.

I'm going to be reading this before post any further:
http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/64bit/pdf/x86-64_overview.pdf
I'll tell you all I can garner from it - though I won't be able to tell anyone if it's of any use till I do!

astrofool

"64 bit means it's registers can take 2^64 bits at once, and will be able to handle 2^64 bits of RAM"

sorry, my bad for that, I said that the register can contain the same amount of maximum memory a 64 bit based chip could access, which is impossible. I was already thinking of the next line in the sentence when I wrote the first.

You said that the pentium uses a 64 bit bus, despite being a 32 bit chip, thats where the analogy was from.

The athlon design will be what the hammer series is based on, which is why it will be athlon + SSE + x86-64

when intel added 32kbyte of cache to the pentium it wasn't heralded as a complete redesign, but more of an evolution of the design, which is what the hammer will be.

Whats most likely to happen is that they will add in a 64 bit execution engine for the chip, like the MMX engine, or sse part intel introduced. It's nigh on impossible making a 32 bit chip use 64 bit code, unless you make different execution units for the two, so the 32 bit engine will basically remain intact. For graphics chips the part was a TnL engine, the geforce was basically 2 TnT texturing units with a TnL engine (source: 3dfx), the hammer will be an enhanced athlon core (thoroughbred core possibly) with an x86-64 engine. The price of these chips will be very high, even for an AMD, due to the fact that there will be no 64 bit code on consumer machines, nothing we do today on a computer every day uses arrays that large, or gains by having large amounts of memory, unlike scientific computers, processing huge amounts of data, or network servers serving up hige amounts of data, none of that extra power will make consumer applications run faster.

We'll be using 32 bit for another while yet.

btw, stop making it so personal?

all this is just information

Shamie

Rights lads..
im not actually loaded and I didn't reply because I was away for a few days.

Me and a mate are setting up a custom system building company.

So basically people ask us what they want in their systems and we give them a price, build it and send it to their door.

Now I know that price is way too high and Raid is not necessary but it was a test system.

Thanks for all the opinions...

This company will be aimed at high end systems only.
So I need to know what you all think would be the best possible system to have as the Highest spec system amd and Intel and what price you think would be reasonible. So we will only be selling quality products.



Cheers.

Gerry

From my experience shamie, it is quite a small and difficult market. More and more people are just building their own systems, and if they aren't doing it themselves, they will get a fairly established company to do it.

As a top end system:

p4 2 gig with a vapochill case, clocked to 2.4 - 2.5 ghz possibly

or

athlon 1.4 with a vapochill case clocked to 1.8-1.9ghz

or

dual p3 tualatin 1.26s 512k cache

or

dual palomino 1.2 - 1.4 ghz

with

1-2 gigs of ram, ultra 160 15000rpm scsi disks. Geforce3, 21" flat crt screen, etc, etc.

There might be a small market for these machines, but there are decent profits there. If you go for the normal high end, you will need high volumes to be able to compete, unless you have super skills at finding customers who appreciate a personal service, and a fully custom configuration.

You have to consider what you are offering over a brand name machine. Eg, are you offering quality parts, which are checked for compatibility, good builld quality, good setup of the machine, including bios settings, drivers. Also you must have extensive testing. Support can be worked out with each customer. Perhaps just parts if the customer knows what they are doing, otherwise you may be contacted about the most stupid problem, which are not actually your fault at all, and which you did not factor into the price.

Have a good think about it anyway.

JustHalf

I'm heading up to discuss that paper with one of my lecturers... it might be better if I presented my response in a new thread however (we're a *bit* off topic )

Ivan

512mb Ram for £80

Lick