Customers can now purchase workstations using Intel Corp.’s Nocona Xeon processor, with 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set, but they can’t run the beta 64-bit version of Windows designed for those extensions on the new workstations.
Windows for Opteron beta doesn’t support Nocona
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Some would say this processor would be ‘Windows-free’! Heh.
Article in summary
if CPU != AMD
then error
Microsoft won’t let the beta try to install on Intel’s CPU becasue they didn’t test it yet.
I am willing to bet that the good folks at AMD are more than a little mad at MS for sitting around waiting for Intel to “catch up” before releasing 64 bit Windows. I believe I remember the AMD suits were under the impression MS was going to release 64 bit windows with AMD being the only CPU available to run it on, a dream that never became a reality.
BTW, did the NDA not expire yet? Where are the benchmarks?
I suppose many sites are waiting for MSFT’s beta to support it before posting benchmarks.
Duh.
This Beta was released quite some time ago, so there’s nothing special about it not supporting the new Intel Nocona CPUs.
Expect the final version to fully support them.
Intel is slowly getting a clue. The next stepping of the Prescott P4 includes NX bit support and a few other cleanup items.
Because the codebase for 64-bit Windows relies on a specific stepping of the Pentium 4, this is why Microsoft is making it OEM only. They don’t want to sell it to a bunch of early Prescott customers and then be stuck with a consumer/press backlash.
I feel sorry for all the dupes that bought (and are buying) the current Prescott P4, not knowing it will be the ugly stepchild in a month or two. No software of import will ever run on these processors.
The only accurate way to describe Intel as of late is “a devious anti-consumer company”. There is no Intel value proposition anymore. PCI Express won’t have the bugs out of it for another 1-2 years. There is nothing that Intel is doing with quality in the market today.
MS has been promising Securuty, Speed, and Stability….Has any of these been delivered ? Well you could say that win XP the replacement for win 9x is more stable, and it is, but it still has miles to go in comparison to UNIX type OSes…
So MS promissing stuff is nothing new !
I love AMD processors too, but AMD has gone too far with their massive price hikes. Intel needs to get their stuff in a pile and start competing again on a technical level. Prices need to come down…
And you see that memory management particularly for I/O is different between Intel and AMD implementations of the 64 bit extensions. So there has to be separate code that detects which memory model to use based on the processor and the amount of memory installed. AMD has fewer restrictions than Intel for large memory implemetations.
Intels prices are still higher than AMDs!
BTW, you can buy Athlon 64s for pretty dang cheap, it’s the FX line that is expensive.
Intels prices are still higher than AMDs!
BTW, you can buy Athlon 64s for pretty dang cheap, it’s the FX line that is expensive.
Unfortunately the FX/Opteron line is really the only x86-64 chip worth getting. The run-of-the-mill athlon64 doesn’t even support dual channel memory.
Excuse me? I can buy an Opteron workstation for under $2000 which is comperably equiped to a Xeon workstation. Try doing that with an Itanium box.
Run some benchmarks or read some, your wrong. Don’t forget socket 940 req. registerd ram.
Unfortunately the FX/Opteron line is really the only x86-64 chip worth getting. The run-of-the-mill athlon64 doesn’t even support dual channel memory.
Socket 939 Athlon 64’s do. These were ‘released’ weeks ago (though they are sometimes hard to get, at least up here in Canuck-land)
The single-channel Athlon 64’s are no slouch either. Dual channel is better, but the A64 S754 CPU’s have 1 MB of cache, as opposed to the 512K the S939’s have.
Jim
Hank: Excuse me? I can buy an Opteron workstation for under $2000 which is comperably equiped to a Xeon workstation. Try doing that with an Itanium box.
Let’s just ignore that Opteron and Itanium are hardly in the same market (compare Itanium with Alpha, or SPARC, or the like next time)
Run some benchmarks or read some, your wrong. Don’t forget socket 940 req. registerd ram.
Socket 940 is an Opteron/Athlon64 FX. What is your point? I don’t think registered RAM is going to slow down the speed to half. I never said anything about benchmarks or anything like that. I just said that there is no dual channel. Apparently I missed the announcement. BTW, it’s “you’re” (a contraction for “you are”) not “your”.
Socket 939 Athlon 64’s do. These were ‘released’ weeks ago (though they are sometimes hard to get, at least up here in Canuck-land)
The single-channel Athlon 64’s are no slouch either. Dual channel is better, but the A64 S754 CPU’s have 1 MB of cache, as opposed to the 512K the S939’s have.
Jim
Thanks for the info. I must have missed that somehow. I know the single channel A64s are no slouch but it’s such a waste to buy a single channel chip these days when dual channel is available. What I’m waiting for is a good NUMA board. I have seen a couple, but they all seem to have misfeatures that prevent me from buying one.
Let’s just ignore that Opteron and Itanium are hardly in the same market (compare Itanium with Alpha, or SPARC, or the like next time)
Indeed, and additionally Itanium’s performance is downright ridiculous to be seriously considered for workstations (servers are admittingly a different story since they have different priorities).
If you shelled out the cash for a Nocona Xeon processor, and were hoping to run Windows on it, I’d take this as a sign that God loves you.
Price performance ratio of Opteron blows the doors off Itanium. Raw performance of the Opteron is no slouch either. There’s a reason why Intel is doing 64-bit extensions to the IA-32 line instead of pushing harder for Itanium adoption.
” The single-channel Athlon 64’s are no slouch either. Dual channel is better, but the A64 S754 CPU’s have 1 MB of cache, as opposed to the 512K the S939’s have.
”
I suppose you are reffering to the expensive 754 socket models. 3400+ has 1 mb lv 2 cache. I think all lower ones with the newer core have only 512k lv 2 cache. pitty. Right not it probably sucks getting a comp anyway. Wait for MS to release 64-bit windows, by then prices should be down. too much new crap coming out and some of the AMD64 mobos are that well developed yet i hear. XD. if you want a new pc get something you can trash in a year or two. an athlon xp is probably a cheap better deal. if your just doing word processing wel… even a duron could do that… my imac could do that… makes you wonder why you need a new pc if you aint going to play games. 😉
“Duh.
This Beta was released quite some time ago, so there’s nothing special about it not supporting the new Intel Nocona CPUs.
Expect the final version to fully support them.”
Beta software should work at least in part on intended platforms. I think Microsoft is more accurate in saying they hadn’t designed it for Intel’s processor than you are in saying “duh it’s cause it’s beta duh”.
I think maybe Microsoft might be jumping the gun on the beta release, but maybe they had no clue what Intel was doing (a likely story [/sarcasm]).
back when there was almost a 1GHz processor the prices weree like 1200 bucks…. just for the proc.. so quit being twitchy little spoiled bitches and be in awe that the prices for SERVER and WORKSTATION procs are that cheap.
lamerz
Don’t get me wrong, I love Ahtlon64/FX. But just look at HP, DELL, Gateway and many others… Where are the AMD Office PC? Everybody sells INTEL CPU for the Office PC. HP has a couple of AMD machine but it’s in the PC for Home or Small Office.
INTEL will come, 64bit extension, HT, SSE3, everybody will follow them. Where does that leave AMD? Microsoft could have done a better job (faster release) with XP 64 bits but then again, it seem that they waited for Intel to join the party.
So even if AMD is the clear winner in the 64 bits battle on the desktop (ok ok, G5 is here too), i’m affraid that it’s INTEL CPU that we will see sell the most.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love Ahtlon64/FX. But just look at HP, DELL, Gateway and many others… Where are the AMD Office PC? Everybody sells INTEL CPU for the Office PC. HP has a couple of AMD machine but it’s in the PC for Home or Small Office. ”
That’s because of closed minded people like Michael Dell who don’t believe in competition and only sell Intel!
Dell still only sells Intel right?
And HP sells a lot of Athlons.
[quote]Excuse me? I can buy an Opteron workstation for under $2000 which is comperably equiped to a Xeon workstation. Try doing that with an Itanium box.[/quote]
Heh, we just purchased two (with a third on order) 2U rackmount servers with dual-Opteron 244 (1.8 GHz) CPUs, 4 GB DDR RAM, 2x 160 GB SATA Maxtor (8MB Cache) drives. Came out to just over $5000 Can, after taxes.
The Intel based server that was also looked at was a dual-Xeon 2.4 GHz with only 2 GB RAM, and would have been closer to $6000 Can after taxes. Needless to say, we won’t be buying anymore Intel servers.
Actually, the last Intel servers we purchased were dual-1 GHz P3 systems. Since then, it’s been dual-AthlonMP systems.