First Intel Quad Core Ready Desktop Mobo Spotted 68
MojoDog writes "Today Universal Abit launched their AW9D and
AW9D-MAX motherboards based on the Intel 975X chipset. There has been much
anticipation in the industry for this series and as far as looks go, these
boards are built to please. One interesting bullet point in the spec list
is that these boards are "Quad Core Ready", in line with a possible year-end
release of
Intel's Quad-Core Kentsfield CPU perhaps? Time will tell!"
But! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:But! (Score:5, Informative)
"Clovertown" may be a quad-core version of the "Woodcrest" Xeon chips used in the Mac Pro, although I couldn't find anything definitive.
I'm not sure if Intel has any plans for quad-core mobile chips (the Core Duo used in the iMac/Mac Mini is the mobile-oriented chip, but has shown up in smaller desktop computers incl. the Macs).
Re:But! (Score:5, Informative)
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First off the new Clovertown processors must use the same socket and bus protocols as the Woodcrest processors. Even if the Clovertown processors use the same socket, the new processor must have the same pinout and must be electrically compatible with the Woodcrest processors. Another potential problem is that Clovertown could require new VRM specificati
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I can think of one other
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But, I have it on good authority (inside information, hence my AC posting,) that the server quad-core chips will come out first. So it will be more likely that the Mac Pro will become an eight-core system. (I have no inside info at Apple,
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Their 965-based AB9 Pro is not very good. (Score:3, Interesting)
The system is impressively fast when it actually boots and works, but those two issues make the motherboard very difficult to actually use.
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Unfortunately, I can verify the AHCI problem. In my case, it claims the device verification fails whenever I soft-reboot. It's annoying enough that I just run the SATA controller in Legacy IDE mode.
Otherwise, though, my AB9 Pro has been reasonably solid. Considering the dearth of good 965 motherboards -- and the expense of Conroe-compatible 975 motherboards -- it's probably the best of a limited pack right now.
Dumbass question (Score:1, Funny)
Why no ECC? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Why no ECC? (Score:5, Informative)
I've run multiple systems with non-ECC memmory. Uptime was originaly limited by time between brownouts/blackouts (~3 months). Then I got a UPS and uptimes have only gone up. If you need ECC to keep your system up for more than a week, you've got problems.
Re:Why no ECC? (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed, but bear in mind that a single-bit error doesn't have to crash your system (or an app). In fact, it usually won't, because the amount of "critical" memory is very small relative to the total amount of RAM installed. Instead it will silently corrupt data. This could result in a momentary glitch in what's shown on the screen; it could result in an app delivering nonsensical results; or, far worse, it could result in bad data being written to disk or an app delivering subtly wrong results. Since all modern operating systems use all memory in your box for something (cache, usually) pretty much every single-bit error is going to screw something up.
I work with many ECC-using servers and there are typically one to five single-bit errors per month. Even though I understand the reasons for it, I am kind of bewildered that ECC isn't more common on high-end desktop systems. The RAM costs ~15% more, but gamers, for instance, are already willing to pay 50% markups (or more) for a 1% performance bump (if that). You could even market it as overclocker-friendly: the error checking will tell you when you're overclocking too high, and the error correcting will help you when you're right on the edge. It could also allow overclockers to identify DIMMs which can't keep up without the laborious process of "pull out a stick, run memtest overnight; put stick back in, pull out a different one, run memtest overnight; etc." (Or the worse one when DIMM has to be installed in pairs. Then you get the joy of testing every combination.)
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Re:Why no ECC? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Virginia Apple Supercomputer initially used non-ECC nodes. Couldn't keep the machine up and they ended up selling off all of the original Xserve machines to get ECC Xserve's.
At Los Alamos altitude, the problem is even worse. It isn't uncommon for non-ECC workstations to crash every other day.
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Re:Why no ECC? (Score:5, Informative)
Also, you may not be able to accept single-bit errors, even at the lower rate you'd experience at sea level. What's good enough for a Joe Gamer's PC in Denver (5K feet) may not be remotely good enough for mission-critical servers. Wall Street is at sea level, for the purposes of this discussion. But you can bet they don't always look at random bit-flips kindly.
As usual, how you spec a machine depends upon what you're planning to do with it. That even filters down into whatever spares you may stock for a server farm. Compare mfg. memory prices for large multi-CPU (think 8-64 CPUs, not some generic 4-way) servers running Solaris or HP-UX to memory available from the mass market vendors. Last time I did that, the mfg. memory was about 10X more expensive than something generic that would at least boot your system.
In that environment you need to be sure that the memory you're buying really is equivalent--not just that the machine will still boot. In that case, BTW, it turned out that there was equivalent memory available, without paying a huge vendor markup. It wasn't as cheap as the rock-bottom stuff (which would still have yielded a bootable machine) but it was cheap enough to justify buying a (much cheaper) machine just to stress test it before adding it to the ready spares bin for production systems. Sometimes a four hour support contract is still too slow, but you don't want to pay six figures for a hot backup system. Which also has to be under that expensive service contract.
If you have TB of memory to deal with, and mission-critical means minimize or eliminate flipped bits, the rules change considerably. It's a whole different world.
God only knows what gyrations the NSA must go through. Oh, wait, they just pay vendor rates, no matter the cost. My tax dollars at work...
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I work at a research radar near Fort Collins, CO (alt: 1432m), and we have a Sun Blade 1000 with ECC, whose motherboard emits a curious "burp" sound each time it detects a memory error. It seems to do this about once every two hours. Also, the radar transmitters can sometimes emit small amounts of X rays. I've not noticed any increase in the "bu
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Realspeak, please? (Score:2)
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Any ways AMD is Better because they say that am2 cpus will work with am2 boards not like Intel where some boards with the same chip set do not alleys support new cpus.
With the mac pro you may be able to put in quad-core xeons but apple will have to come out with a bios update to make them fully work.
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In Fark-speak, submitter is an idiot.
Quad-Core Ready (Score:1)
insanity (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course some people are always going to want to have the fastest game machine on the block. But seriously, it's amazing the kind of performance you can get these days with cheap, low-end hardware. Yesterday I built a machine for $300 with a 3 GHz P4 and 1 Gb of ram. (I reused a hard disk, so that cut the price a little.) Sure I could have built a dual-core system, but I would have ended up with a machine that cost many times more, used tons of power, and had almost identical performance except when I had two cpu-intensive processes running at once (i.e., almost never).
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Moreover, money spent upfront is more expensive than money spent over time. The easiest way for the layman to understand the concept is as follows: I'll give you a million dollars.
One dollar a year.
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ECC is a good thing (Score:1)
Suppose you have a terrabyte database and you have not used ECC memory. Suppose that a single bit error got into the database undetected. And some months later, the records or pointers or tree of data with the corrupted bit is corrupted. What would be the cost of repair against the cost of having ECC memory installed?
My understanding of ECC Mem
First? Not really. There's already the GA-965P-DQ6 (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.gigabyte-usa.com/Products/Motherboard/
I vote to change the name of the article "Intel Quad Core Ready Desktop Mobo Spotted" to "Another Intel Quad Core Ready Desktop Mobo Spotted".
Re:First? Not really. There's already the GA-965P- (Score:2)
Oh, that just depends on who you are... (Score:2)
Kentsfield subsitute for 3.20GHz Core 2 Extreme (Score:1)
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20060817
2x2x2 == 8! Welcome Woodcrest in Q1/2007! (Score:2)
to us in less than 6 months!
2 physical CPUs on a Mainboard with each
2 Woodcrest units, 4MB 2nd each with each
2 cores
8 cores!
I'm looking forward to it. Put 16GB RAM into it and you'll
have a perfect setup for huge Websphere/Weblogic cluster
tests on a _single_ workstation!
See: http://pics.computerbase.de/1/3/0/0/4/2.png [computerbase.de]
Coooool!
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Until Intel drops the FSB you can't take their MP setups seriously compared to AMD.
Tom
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Eight cores in a workstation?
Where?
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Hint: Their dual cores aren't under 90W and there 4 core is just two dual cores strapped together. Do the math.
Tom
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Examples:
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v40z/ [sun.com]
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thundern4250qe.
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I'm still going to wait a little longer. (Score:2, Funny)
great for distributed computing (Score:1)
The amount of potential distributed computing power available has to be staggering, and its growing every day.
Fashonably Late or Not Fast Enought? (Score:2)
Quad Core vs Dual Core vs 3 Cores? (Score:1)
With this above configuration, the average queuing time, and hence service time is much less than if there is a dedicated queue per server.
From what I have seen, with multiple core systems, there appears to
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