Computex 2003 - Day 4: XGI, Motherboards, and cheap Itaniums
by Evan Lieb & Andrew Ku on September 26, 2003 7:54 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
DFI
This year, DFI was all about their patented “CMOS Reloaded” BIOS options. CMOS Reloaded was created by the lead engineer who designed ABIT’s famous BH6 motherboard from the old PIII Celeron days of yore.
As you can see above, CMOS Reloaded allows users to save BIOS settings of their choosing using the Backup command. High-end DFI motherboards will have the ability to save a total of four different sets of BIOS settings depending on what the user would like to do with their machine. For example, if someone wants to have aggressive BIOS settings for gaming, all they have to do is create that configuration and save it to CMOS and they’ll be able to use that setting every time instead of having to change their settings each time they enter the BIOS. All in all, CMOS Reloaded is an interesting idea and a very useful BIOS feature.
Some other motherboards DFI had displayed at Computex included an Athlon 64 motherboard based on ALi’s Hammer chipset. This is the first motherboard we’ve seen based on ALi’s Hammer chipset at Computex. However, DFI says that it performs well and they even believe they can make it their flagship Athlon 64 motherboard. We’ll have to wait and see how this chipset develops.
DFI’s VIA K8T800-based motherboard, pictured above, is ready for prime time and should ship in quantity in about two weeks. So far, DFI says that they have been able to get K8T800 to work better than nForce3, which they are delaying due to driver issues. It’s really quite odd that there all motherboard makers seem to be split right down the middle on nForce3 and K8T800 performance numbers and stability issues.
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Maverick215 - Monday, September 29, 2003 - link
wonder if the XGI guys got any pointers from the Bitboys :)Anonymous User - Monday, September 29, 2003 - link
Don't wait for HL2, the interest rates are excellent. The economy has allowed all investors to become "flexible" in their search for graphics infinity. The competition in the desktop video card world is not equally fierce, HL2 has disallowed it. ATI will be the eventual standard of every process required, either it be Microsoft's next console or Doom3.Anonymous User - Monday, September 29, 2003 - link
Nah, spurn was a typo for sperm, seeing as the article was a load of w**k. ;)Anonymous User - Monday, September 29, 2003 - link
I'm excited about the ATI IGP9000 myself.I've sold quite a few nF2 IGP systems thanks to the full integration combined with adequate on-board graphics for most my clients needs.The IGP9000 will be a great solution for me to base builds on if the pricing is close enough to the nF2 G4MX boards.
BTW, here is a small typo "legitimate DX9 titles coming soon that will spurn sales of ATI’s DX9 cards" it should state "spur" not spurn :-)
Anonymous User - Sunday, September 28, 2003 - link
I'm afraid that the authors blew their credibility in the first couple of paragraphs."By the way, we’re not being sarcastic when we call these processors “low-priced”; the cost of entry for 64-bit processing has really never been this low for such a legitimate 64-bit architecture."
Say, what? Ever heard of Sun, and SPARC? Sun has been selling $1,000 entry-level SPARC *workstations* (not just bare processors) for a couple of years now.
And Opteron processors sell for as little as $229, last time I checked: just what about them shouldn't be considered 'legitimate'?
(And of course there's MIPS, if you want *really* low-cost 64-bit processing with an architecture far better established than Itanic's may *ever* be.)
"I2’s 32-bit performance is no where near as fast as Opteron series processors, but depending on the 64-bit application, I2 is much faster, and could be much faster in the future when more applications are developed specifically for IA-64."
Puh-leaze! Model 140 and 240 Opterons at 1/3 the price of the bottom-of-the-line $744 Deerfield are considerably more than 'noticeably cheaper', handily beat Deerfield in SPECint (880/933 to an estimated 750: split the difference between the 810 that a 1 GHz McKinley achieved with 3 MB of cache and the 674 that a 900 MHz McKinley achieved with 1.5 MB of cache), and aren't even *that* far behind in SPECfp (934/1012 vs. a similarly-estimated 1290, not that SPECfp is of all that much significance for most commercially-significant processing). Or, if you'd prefer to compare Deerfield against a similarly-priced Opteron, you see SPECint scores of 1095/1170 - i.e., *well* over 50% faster than Deerfield - and SPECfp of 1122/1219.
And that's just Opteron's 32-bit performance, compared against estimated Deerfield SPEC scores obtainable only with HP's HP-UX compiler using feedback-directed optimization. In the real world, using commonly-used compilers (and techniques) and taking advantage of its 64-bit code extensions, Opteron's lead will only increase.
Deerfield's lower power (at least relative to previous Itanics) will allow FP-intensive applications to start taking advantage of 1U rack-mount units to increase processing density, but that's about it. It's price isn't even *that* dramatically lower than the previous bottom-of-the-line Itanic that's been available for over a year at about $1300.
- bill
Anonymous User - Sunday, September 28, 2003 - link
"simply buy ATI cards now and wait for Half Life 2 (which we suggest you do if you’re buying now)."Hi, I don't understand this comment. Won't the prices of the video cards go down!?
I was planning on waiting as long as I can to get a video card before HL2 comes out, is this a bad idea?
-CalicoRabbit
Anonymous User - Sunday, September 28, 2003 - link
I have to question the faster in the future statement. There are only 20,000 chips out there last time I checked (and thats in 2yrs or so of selling them). Opterons will have already sold 80,000+ (intels recent goal with Itanium supposedly by end of year I think) in a few months. Why would you write software for 20,000 chips when an opteron has much more volume for you to sell to. Not to mention it usually takes 1 guy a week to optimize for opteron, while itanuim could take a whole TEAM ages to compile code for. Most have already figured this out. If you can't recoup the costs on software engineering (too few to sell it to) then why write for it?If you don't have a SPECIFIC application that is already optimized for itanium don't count on one being created. The ONLY chance you have of getting one, is if you can find an app where performance on other chips (64bit chips) are completely blown away by an itanium (which, I can't think of many). Opteron put another nail in itaniums coffin, and Intel will probably seal that coffin up as soon as they offically inform us that they're adding 64bit to the desktop (prescott). Buying Itanium/2 today is completely retarded unless you already KNOW you can buy an app that is what you need NOW. No 32bit killed this chip (well, opteron did...LOL). When I say no 32bit, I mean a Pentium100 performance doesn't count as 32bit. If its for all intents and purposes, USELESS, it doesn't count. They still have to prove its "faster" in anything yet. There isn't enough out there to say that if you ask me.
With the pricing and # of chips it takes to get that performance, you can buy a whole cluster of opterons to catch them, without the "what can I actually run on this expensive piece of crap" question. It would have been a great chip in 5 years if opteron didn't exist. Now its just dead. 20,000 chips sold in OVER 2.5 years (debut may 2001)? The industry obviously hates this chip. Most of those 20000 are in the hands of NON-customers. Testers etc. NOT users.
AgaBooga - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link
#8, you have to remember that the Itanium does not have a "hardware" method of running 32bit apps like the Opteron does, and so it is very slow. In fact, I dought you can easily find some place using 32bit on an Itanium, it would be comparable to running it on a pentium 90mhz or so.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link
#13 Andrew Ku
I know that itanium2 are $5,000, and the new Itaniums are cheaper.
In my #8 post i just disagreed that Itanium2 "...is much faster, and could be much faster in the future..". I just asked for the benchmarks for the 1.0Ghz and 1.4Ghz, 1.5Mb L3 Itanium2. Then #9 said the diference in L3 cache did not make a diference in 64-bit aplications.
My #12 post is about the diference in L3 cache.
You just can't show a price for an Itanium2 (1.4GHz , 1.5Mb L3 cache) and then talk about performance of another totally diferent Itanium2 (1.5Ghz, 6Mb L3 cache) and say Itanium2 "...is much faster, and could be much faster in the future..". There are NO benchmarks for 1.4Ghz, 1.5Mb L3 cache at SPEC.org. Does Anyone know where can we find them? Or another type of benchmark?
Andrew Ku - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link
#12 Keep in mind that previous Itanium2s ran just shy of 5,000 USD. The new Itanium2s are definately considered cheap in that respect.