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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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.