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
Biostar
Biostar is still primarily a motherboard company, as was made quite apparent at their booth this year. However, like almost every other manufacturer that attended Computex, Biostar is expanding their market reach into SFFs (Small Form Factors), laptops, and full desktop systems. Lets first talk about Biostar’s upcoming motherboards.
Pictured above is a Biostar motherboard based on the ATI IGP 9000 chipset, comprised of the IGP 9000 North Bridge and IXP 150 South Bridge. Interestingly enough, it seems as if motherboard makers are finally starting to see some value in ATI’s chipsets. While not a discrete chipset (i.e. no graphics), Biostar believes that this particular chipset will do OK due to its good stock performance and excellent onboard graphics (easily besting nForce2’s IGP in DX8 gaming and most DX7 games). We’ll be examining this motherboard or a motherboard like it in about 3-4 weeks.
The above motherboard is Biostar’s PT800 board, based on VIA’s PT800 chipset. This single channel DDR400 is slated as a low cost solution for Pentium 4 users. However, we’ve heard from multiple manufacturers that PT800 has been quite troublesome, especially with various types of memory. Apparently this is being fixed in a revision sometime down the road, but exactly when is unknown.
The two motherboards shown above are Biostar’s Athlon 64 motherboard solutions. The motherboard on the top is Biostar’s VIA K8T800-based motherboard, and the motherboard on the bottom is Biostar’s NVIDIA nForce3 150-based motherboard. Right now, if you’re an overclocker, we suggest a motherboard based on nForce3 150 or 250. If you’re not much of an overclocker and simply desire a cheap, stable and fast Athlon 64 motherboard, either nForce3 150/250 or K8T800 will do just fine.
The SFFs you see listed above are all Biostar creations. They’re all ODM (Original Design Manufacturers) designs, but Biostar claims that they offer additional performance and price advantages with their choice of parts. Some of these SFFs are based on the yesterday’s newly announced single channel DDR Athlon 64 3200+ processor, and some are Biostar’s somewhat “old” 845PE and nForce2 creations.
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Anonymous User - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link
#9 My point is: Where are the Benchmarks?
The only place where I can compare the Itanium2's is SPEC.org (www.spec.org)
SPEC int 2000
(http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/cint2000.html)
Itanium 2 1500Mhz, 6Mb L3 cache 12Gb RAM
base 1322 peak 1322
(http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q3/cpu2...
Itanium 2 1400Mhz, 4Mb L3 cache 8Gb RAM
base 926 peak 926
(http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q3/cpu2...
I know that clock speed is not the same but is the closest i can get. The clock speed of 1400Mhz itanium2 is 93% of the 1500 itanium2. It has less cache. SPEC result of 1400 itanium2 is 70%
of 1500Mhz itanium2. I wonder how a 1400Mhz, 1,5Mb L3 cache itanium2 would do in SPEC.
The article talks about "cheap itaniums", and by cheap they mean $744 for 1.0Ghz and $1,172 for 1.4Ghz.
For about the same price you could buy an Athlon FX-51.
Before you talk about the 1400 itanium2 had less RAM look at these SPEC results, with 1Gb RAM
Athlon FX-51 2200Mhz, 1Gb RAM
base 1376 peak 1447
(http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2003q3/cpu2...
Andrew Ku - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link
#7 Typo, we fixed it. Thanks for being patient.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link
#8, it's not a difficult concept to comprehend. If you really think that the extra 4.5MB of L3 are going to make a huge difference in widely used 64-bit applications, you have a lot to learn about modern MPUs.Anonymous User - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link
'quote' "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." '/quote'This is nonsense. Where are the performance numbers of an Itanium running at 1.0Ghz and 1.4Ghz with only 1.5Mb L3 cache? the only numbers I'am aware of are the 1.5Ghz with 6Mb L3 cache and they should not be the same.
Anonymous User - Saturday, September 27, 2003 - link
umm...what happened to Computex Day #4? it went from day 1, 2,3,5 ?didnt anything happen of the 4th day??
Anonymous User - Friday, September 26, 2003 - link
I'm also looking forward to the XGI cards... Wasn't there a blurb on AT a few days ago about how the Volari 8 offered 6000+ 3dMarks?Of course, I'm not one of those extreme money-wasters who'd sink $500 on a single component (maybe the CPU, and the RAM), so I'd be looking more at the performance of their mid-range card (the V5?). Considering nVidia's weak overall performance in DX9, XGI only really has to compete with the 9500/9600 from ATI in the mid-range, and if its high end can compete with ATI's high end pretty easily (using beta drivers, no less), I don't see why the V5 couldn't penetrate the market and become a contender in the mid-range market. Here's hoping it doesn't turn into a Phantom or any of the other many attempts to break into graphics cards and failing miserably...
Xelloss - Friday, September 26, 2003 - link
A desktop Itanium2 would be pretty damn useless at this point anyhow. Yeah, you could run linux on it, but I'd imagine you'd have some trouble compiling a lot of software for it. I don't think Itanium is currently a high priority target architecture for desktop software.You could probably run apache, etc., but then why buy a desktop machine?
AgaBooga - Friday, September 26, 2003 - link
Yeah, don't expect Itanium 2 for desktop anytime soon.Anonymous User - Friday, September 26, 2003 - link
Until they replace some of those Xeons with the I2 line, I doubt you'll be seeing it at all in desktops.jliechty - Friday, September 26, 2003 - link
Well, now we have some half-reasonably-priced Itanium 2s. The big question is if the "Average Joe" will ever be able to purchase one from Newegg.