What do you think of this System?.

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