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Ace's Workstation Guide: Dual Xeons vs. Dual Athlon MP Battle Royale

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I don't see how you can claim this. The MP was released in June. How many MB's can I by now?

It was released in May actually, but that's not the point. I'm talking about how many MB's you'll be able to own in the not-so-distant future.

What's coming down the pipe (or has been trying to for 3 months) is irrelevant for somebody looking to buy now or 2 months ago.

Again, what's your point. It's not like the MPX motherboards by these 6 companies won't ever come out.

In the enthusiast market, yes. In the corporate and enterprise markets, except for Tyan, these guys are also rans. Supermicro stands head and shoulders above all those manufacturers to the point of not really even being in competition with each other in the multi-CPU corporate and enterprise markets.

Lol, please don't talk about Supermicro like it's anything amazing. Supermicro is too small to call it an "industry leader" or "head and shoulders above the rest" (btw, ASUS's revenues are over 10 times more than Supermicro's). While Supermicro has gained respect, it certainly isn't all you're making it out to be. I think having Tyan as a customer is more prestigious than having Supermicro.

That's the company AMD needs to convince if it wants respect in the market, not the Asus's and Gigabyte's of the world, nobody cares about them.

Yes, people care about ASUS and Gigabyte, you're definitely exaggerating here. In fact, ASUS and Gigabyte are more well known and liked than Supermicro, are bigger and stronger than Supermicro, and I'm guessing they'll eventually replace Supermicro.

There are no dual MP motherboards that compares to the Tyan Thunder i860(specs here)that H/P uses nor the Supermicro P4DC6(specs here)thats in the Compaq workstation I'm tyring this on now. Has Asus, MSI, Abit, Epox, Gigabyte or Tyan announced there releasing MPX boards that have equivalent specs as the Supermicro or Tyan i860 boards, nope.

What "extra" specs are you talking about? I'm not seeing them in your link.
 
Actually Asus' Revenue is going to be larger because they cater to Uniprocessor crowd while SM caters to the Business sector. But SM can pump out far more Business solutions quicker than Asus. Last time i checked Asus was dealing with Gateway with the Serverworks chipset. It was that 500 dollar server deal everyone jumped on with Gateway back in the summer.
 
Ultimately, the lack of demand for the 760MP platform by first-tier workstation builders is most likely due to AMD's limited experience in the high-end x86 market (the 760MP is the company's first SMP solution), where Intel has been thoroughly entrenched for many years. Intel has several generations of multiprocessor products backing it, but one look at AMD's recent Hammer presentation will tell you that they have no intention of lying down on multiprocessor products

This is where AMD really need to put in the work (at least outside of the US). Unfortunately their corporate care is still a long way behind Intel's and big companies tend to want the highest level of backup possible
 
I was actually waiting on VIA to produce another Dual chipset. But they taking their time with Dual P4X266/333D chipset and time is money.

They are making such a chipset? How, when SMP is disabled on P4s. Do they use Xeon processors? If they did, there goes any hint of a cost saving
 
Um, that was a joke between me and pabster, but since you seem to not know i will allow you to stare @ your monitor with the blank look you have.
 
"I'm talking about how many MB's you'll be able to own in the not-so-distant future. "

How is potential future support a valid arguement vs AMD having current and past support problems? Until we see any of these boards on the market, AMD will continue in their state of practically zero MB market support. I fail to see how the eventual release of any of these MPX boards is going to somehow be a boon for AMD in the OEM market. There's nothing wrong with the current Tyan boards and no one even thought of using them. Everyone knows that there is nothing wrong with the Athlon MP CPU, the problem is with the platform it is running on, both in availability and maturity. Releasing a new platform will on push back possible acceptance further as everyone looks see how the new boards will work out.

"It's not like the MPX motherboards by these 6 companies won't ever come out."

I don't think you have the inside knowledge to back up this statement. There have been past planned AMD SMP boards by these companies that got cancelled due to problems, until the new ones hit the shelf you can't claim they won't get canned as well. These boards are significantly more complex than your standard single CPU enthusiast board. I certainly wouldn't expect them all to have problems, but to assume they will all make it to market in a timely fashion, ignoring the fact they are already months late, is wishful thinking.

"Supermicro is too small to call it an "industry leader" or "head and shoulders above the rest" (btw, ASUS's revenues are over 10 times more than Supermicro's)."

Total revenue has nothing to do with specific market revenues. You need to compare Supermicro's server/workstation lineup to Asus's then come back and tell all of us that Asus is the market leader and innovator in this market. I can't believe you are even trying to argue this point. The only other "mainstream" manufacturer that can claim to compete with them is Tyan.

"In fact, ASUS and Gigabyte are more well known and liked than Supermicro, are bigger and stronger than Supermicro, and I'm guessing they'll eventually replace Supermicro."

Once again, you are comparing apples to oranges. These companies are in different markets. Asus and Gigabyte's highend barely competes with Supermicro's lowend. I doubt either Asus or Gigabyte even have a desire to be in the mid to highend server/workstation market let alone "replace" the incumbents.
 
There have been past planned AMD SMP boards by these companies that got cancelled due to problems, until the new ones hit the shelf you can't claim they won't get canned as well.

And how many years ago was this? Which AMD boards were ?cancelled due to problems.? Was this back when the Athlon was first introduced or something? Here?s what I?m talking about:

1. Abit has a sample MPX board.
2. ASUS has a sample MPX board.
3. Gigabyte has a sample MPX board.
4. MSI has a sample MPX board.
5. Tyan has a sample MPX board.

Epox is the only manufacturer that didn't show off their MPX based motherboard at Comdex. Now, do you really think that these 5 companies (I won't include Epox because they didn't show off a sample MPX board) will simply cancel their MPX boards due to "problems" this late in the game (with rumors suggesting that MPX will be launched THIS week?).

I fail to see how the eventual release of any of these MPX boards is going to somehow be a boon for AMD in the OEM market.

I fail to see how you could argue this point. What do you think is the reason that 5 or 6 mainboard manufacturers are going to release MPX motherboards, simply for us enthusiasts to enjoy? Come on now, it's for an OEM (s?) IMO, there's absolutely NO reason why 5 or 6 different mainboard manufacturers would produce MPX motherboards when AMD's market share in the MP market is virtually nothing. If they were not going to be making a profit, then why would they even think about producing an MPX motherboard?

How is potential future support a valid arguement vs AMD having current and past support problems?

I don't know, I was responding to what you said here: I don't see how you can claim this. The MP was released in June. How many MB's can I by now? And I said that this isn't going to be a valid point much longer once MPX boards are released. And as I proved above, this isn't "potential" support Pariah, 5 out of the 6 mainboard companies that said they would produce an MPX motherboard have showed off their samples, so it's more then just "potential" at this point. We can discuss this further once MPX boards hit the streets.

Total revenue has nothing to do with specific market revenues. You need to compare Supermicro's server/workstation lineup to Asus's then come back and tell all of us that Asus is the market leader and innovator in this market. I can't believe you are even trying to argue this point. The only other "mainstream" manufacturer that can claim to compete with them is Tyan.

All I'm saying is that Supermicro doesn't have the resources like ASUS, Gigabyte, etc. does to put into R&D. And even though Supermicro has an excellent track record in this field, it doesn't mean you can easily dismiss much larger and more well funded companies like ASUS, Gigabyte, etc.
 
Agodspeed, i don't understand you on some of the stuff you post. You say that Asus has more resources and such a large revenue but if that is so true then why didn't AMD choose Asus over Tyan to Co-Develop the 760MP reference design in the first place?

Actually you guys are arguing over nothing. We are supposed to be discussing some performance factors here. Like would this situtation be the same if this P4 Xeon had its SMT capabilites to display?
 
According to this article my last post directed, all P4's already have SMT-circuitry (aka HYPERTHREADING) built into the processor awaiting a simple "enable" mode in the O/S to get it working. (Actually there are some O/S problems that Microsoft, according to the article, has to sort out in order to optimise its use.) If this is true then AMD needs the SMP-capable motherboards mainstream just to compete with P4's once Intel releases this "sleeper" function.

Edit: linked
 
I know Maddy, i was waiting for you or Fkloster to come back me up. 🙂 With Agodspeed and Pabster in here, they might perform a tag team on me(MPsuplex right off the turnbuckle) 😀
 
MadRat wrote:

"If this is true then AMD needs the SMP-capable motherboards mainstream just to compete with P4's once Intel releases this "sleeper" function."

I don't buy that. It's absolutely foolish to think the current P4 Xeon's have SMT capability, let alone that the ability is somehow being "hidden" by Intel until Microsoft gets it "working"? That's ludicrous. If they had it, they'd be using it.
 
Well, let me rephrase my reply:

It is ludicrous to even contemplate that P4 and/or P4 Xeon have SMT capability, let alone that it is somehow being "hidden" until the great Microsoft gets it "working". If the capability was there, it would be in use. My own take is that 'Jackson' is considerably down the road yet.
 
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