Intel guy looking the AMD direction for the first time.

Scott Alfter wrote:
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
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)

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.
--
== The *Best* political site URL:http://www.vote-smart.org/ ==+
email: icbm: Delray Beach, FL |
URL:http://home.att.net/~Tom.Horsley Free Software and Politics ==+

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 00:33:50 +0000, Yousuf Khan wrote:

Scott Alfter wrote:
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? :-)

Last time I checked I still had a working 5150. ...last time I checked.
;-)

--
Keith

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.

Thanks to all who replied. I have a new question. What is the Athalon
64 and 64 FX front side BUS? I read 1600 MHz somewhwhere but another
place I read that when you get down to it the FSB is not REALLY 1600.
So I was confused.

"No Spam" wrote in message
...
Thanks to all who replied. I have a new question. What is the Athalon
64 and 64 FX front side BUS? I read 1600 MHz somewhwhere but another
place I read that when you get down to it the FSB is not REALLY 1600.
So I was confused.


If you want to really be confused then the answer actually is the A64 does
not have an FSB at all! FSB is generally used to signify the connection
between the CPU and memory controller. In the case of the A64 the memory
controller is actually right on the CPU it's self, there for it runs at the
same speed as the core. If you want something that is a bit easier to
understand, then the A64 uses a HyperTransport link to allow the memory
controller on the CPU to physically comunicate with your DDR memory. I
belive that currently the fastest HT connection available runs at 1GHz, but
I could be wrong. And if I am I"m sure I'll be corrected shortly. The desing
of the A64's memory interface is one aspect of it's design that is far
superior than the P4.

Carlo

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

Yousuf Khan

My Commodore 64 still worked the last time I hooked it up! (maybe a year
ago or so..)

Lachoneus wrote:
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.

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

Yousuf Khan

No Spam wrote:
Thanks to all who replied. I have a new question. What is the Athalon
64 and 64 FX front side BUS? I read 1600 MHz somewhwhere but another
place I read that when you get down to it the FSB is not REALLY 1600.
So I was confused.

There is no separate FSB on an Athlon 64, it's whatever the speed of the CPU
itself is. FSB is generally used to denote the common interface speed
between the CPU and the memory controller chipset. But the A64 has its own
memory controller built right inside it.

Now that 1600 Mhz speed that you're talking about might be referring to the
Hypertransport speed. Another interesting thing about the A64's is that they
have separate memory channels and i/o channels. The Hypertransport
connectors are its i/o channels. And generally they run at 800Mhz, and they
are DDR parts (meaning they operate on both the rising and falling edges of
a clock signal), so they are equivalent to a 1600Mhz SDR signal. AMD is also
about ready to increase the speed of Hypertransport pretty soon from 800Mhz
to 1000Mhz DDR.

The A64 is very different to a traditional CPU like a Pentium 4. It's quite
a bit more sophisticated. A lot of the old performance metrics don't apply
to it anymore, like FSB speeds, etc.

Yousuf Khan

Take a look at the higher-end systems we build, if not to buy from us, at
least to get an idea of what is compatible with what and to get an idea of
reasonable pricing. Alienware and Falcon Northwest are very pricy (high
profit margin for high overhead) and with Falcon Northwest, you're also
paying for a decent custom paint job. We offer both AMD-based and
Intel-based systems at reasonable prices including shipping costs and we use
only premium components for full retail component manufacturer warranties.
We handle all warranty replacement/repair work directly and offer free
advance replacement of any component(s)/system(s) found to be defective,
along with lifetime free tech support. We also offer a no-strings 30-day
full refund policy with no restocking fees on all systems, and we have a 10
rating at Reseller Ratings. You can see our current offerings (just a
starting point; we can also build anything else with any components you'd
like, as long as everything's compatible) at
http://tastycomputers.com/bistro_men...omenu_main.htm.

Regarding integrated components, most newer motherboards offer all these
integrated bells and whistles these days, and a lot of them work just as
well or better than separate cards (especially Ethernet and onboard RAID),
and integrated sound and graphics is greatly improved recently over previous
incarnations, but you certainly don't have to enable the integrated stuff if
you don't want to (unless you buy a cheapee motherboard with limited
expansion options.) If you're buying or building a higher-end enthusiast
rig, you'd probably want a higher end 8x AGP or new 16x PCI-Express graphics
card, good processor, chipset, hard drive(s) and memory, but you can
certainly be very satisfied with integrated sound and NIC these days.

Hope this helps...and happy hunting on the right system for your unique
needs!
--
Russell
http://tastycomputers.com

"No spam" wrote in message
om...

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.