[Alien]

Originally Posted by keithwalton

One of the american sites decided to split the bundles recently only for amd to turn round and say you do that, and you kiss goodbye to your warrenty from us.

I hadn't heard that, but then I've still got a bit of catching up to do on my tech news feeds.

Originally Posted by keithwalton

Back to the technology tho, the boards are very expensive, you'll need a 700W+ psu as the system really does eat power like there is no tomorrow,

I noticed that in 1 of the Quad FX articles I read, then again it was based on the assumption of using 2 Nvidia cards in SLI mode. Personally, I could live with having only the 1 [ATI] graphics card, as it's more CPU grunt that I need. Having said that, the [yet to be released] Saphire "Crossfire on a card" X1950 Pro Dual does look rather nice. [img]Download Failed (1)[/img]

Originally Posted by keithwalton

you'll need at least 4 sticks of matched ram and you have to hope that your cpu works with its own ram and not the ram from the other cpu else performance falls through the floor.

I can't help but wonder if the Socket F Opterons [2000 & 8000 series] might not have the same problem, as in reading reviews of them I don't recall seeing it mentioned.

I could be wrong, but I think the 2000 series have 2 HT links [1 to their own RAM, 1 to the other CPU], & the 8000 series has 3 [1 to their own RAM, & 1 each to 2nd & 3rd CPUs]

Originally Posted by keithwalton

And yes i've been championing vista for a while now of how much better it is at handling a dual core system than xp is.

It's supposed to be a lot better, in terms of the scheduler assigning threads to cores, than XP, but only time [& reviews ] will tell.

I have to [grudgingly] admit that some of the stuff in Vista looks nice, for example the ability to make thumbnails in a folder bigger or smaller with a slider, & also the ability for the search funtion to whittle down the listed results as you type in the search box, similar to the 1 in Thunderbird.

Other than those 2 things [which I reckon should be able to be added to XP by a 3rd party app], I don't really see a compelling reason [for me] to switch to Vista. I'm also not happy with all the DRM/TPM crap in it.

Originally Posted by keithwalton

Edit - Scan should not be selling these as single chips, they'll soon be saying hello to mr amd soon for doing so

Well, they're still listing them. The American site [I'm assuming you were referring to Newegg?] was still listing them yesterday as single CPUs, though there was some mention of them having to be purchased as part of a bundle, so it looks like they may be caving to AMD's demands whilst trying to make it appear [to the buying public] that they're still selling them seperately.

Originally Posted by keithwalton

These chips are just opeterons with a gamers tag applied to them.

No, they're AM2 X2 cores with the HT links enabled [IIRC standard AM2 X2s have the HT links disabled].

Just had a quick look on the AMD CPU comparison site, & compared 2 CPUs: the FX-70 & the Opteron 2218 [both 2.6Ghz, both have 2x1MB L2 cache]. Even though they're both made with a 90nm SOI process, the FX-70 draws 125W - compared to the 2218's 95W. There's obviously something different there.

Originally Posted by keithwalton

I'd much rather have some Xeon 5300's.

I may be an AMD fanboy, but I have to admit they do sound nice. Mmm... 8 cores... [img]Download Failed (1)[/img] [yes, I do use a piece of software that would take advantage of all of them ]

Originally Posted by Jefferson T

My (admittedly small) brain hurts after listening to that lot

& mine from reading it. I imagined him saying it out loud, going blue, & then gasping for breath when he was finished.

Originally Posted by CrC-3rr0r

Doubt it Zing... I'm a developer and companies dont give a toss about effecient coding. Besides a single core is fast enough by itself and why build faster and more efficient coding when you dont have a direct competitor.

I know of a company that does... or does now anyway [they coded themselves into a corner with the previous "architecture" of their software, & had to start over from scratch].

Originally Posted by CrC-3rr0r

Some apps will have to go smp of course due to stiff market competition... Also how much is Vista internally tuned to running under SMP vs single core anyway.

I don't know any specifics, but I keep hearing that 2 or more cores are definitely recommended.

Oh, & on the clock speed issue, for whoever was saying that higher clock speeds were not too likely any time soon - somebody managed to get a a quad core Intel to 5Ghz, & a dual core Intel to 8Ghz... admittedly they had to use LN2 in both cases, but they did it. Also, IIRC, IBM's latest PowerPC chip - the Power6, weighs in at 6Ghz.