An Itanium system!

[Maximilian]

Ive noticed that the formerly thousand dollar chips now go for somthing like $30 on ebay (Itanium 1 733/800). What do these things actually run? Windows? Linux? Could i make a cheap system around it? There dosent seem to be any single mohterboard for this chip, only a collection of cpu/memory boards.

 

[Fox5]

Itanium can run Windows or Linux, performance, even in native stuff, is likely to be much worse than what current x86 processors can do, and since it's not an x86 chip, much much worse for general x86 stuff.

 

[dexvx]

First generation itaniums (less than 800Mhz) are not worth it to run. They barely perform on par with a Pentium-3 of the same clock speed. However, 2nd generation Itanium2's are actually worth it performance wise. I've seen 1.6Ghz/9MB chips go for around $200 on eBay, the problem is finding a motherboard + PSU to power it.

 

[stevty2889]

Well you wouldn't be able to do much with it. Programs have to be specialy written for the Itanium architecture, it can't run programs for x86 based chips without an emulater, which performs very poorly. There are specialized operating systems written for Itanium, which aren't going to be cheap. Basicly, it's just not worth it. Itanium is designed for large server environments, and isn't going to make a good stand alone PC.

 

[TrevorRC]

Grab an Opteron 265.


No use going with the (T)Itani(c)ums.

 

[Maximilian]

Im not looking for a new rig here lol. It would just be interesting to mess around with an itanium based system. It would perform like a dog either way as i intent to pair it up with a geforce 2 MX (my only available card).

I get the idea that the motherboards are gonna cost a lot more than the CPU

How about the software emulator for it? Is that free? Or will linux do it for free?

 

[RichUK]

Originally posted by: Soviet
Im not looking for a new rig here lol. It would just be interesting to mess around with an itanium based system. It would perform like a dog either way as i intent to pair it up with a geforce 2 MX (my only available card).

I get the idea that the motherboards are gonna cost a lot more than the CPU

How about the software emulator for it? Is that free? Or will linux do it for free?

Windows has specially built an XP OS that doesn?t run on x86 code, but rather IA64 to run on these Intanium processors, Linux has also built a compatible OS ?Linux IA64?. The emulator is already embedded in the OS and just allows for it to run 32bit x86 code. It will run awful as it has to emulate a working x86 processor which is software driven not hardware driven. Also the driver support is pretty much nil.

These processors are built for managing large server farms (and i do mean LARGE). It will have no use to you what so ever, you might as well buy it and use it as a keychain. Pretty much every part of the subsystem is designed specifically for this chip.

 

[Maximilian]

Originally posted by: RichUK

Originally posted by: Soviet
Im not looking for a new rig here lol. It would just be interesting to mess around with an itanium based system. It would perform like a dog either way as i intent to pair it up with a geforce 2 MX (my only available card).

I get the idea that the motherboards are gonna cost a lot more than the CPU

How about the software emulator for it? Is that free? Or will linux do it for free?

Windows has specially built an XP OS that doesn?t run on x86 code, but rather IA64 to run on these Intanium processors, Linux has also built a compatible OS ?Linux IA64?. The emulator is already embedded in the OS and just allows for it to run 32bit x86 code. It will run awful as it has to emulate a working x86 processor which is software driven not hardware driven. Also the driver support is pretty much nil.

These processors are built for managing large server farms (and i do mean LARGE). It will have no use to you what so ever, you might as well buy it and use it as a keychain. Pretty much every part of the subsystem is designed specifically for this chip.

*sigh* Oh well.... It was a nice thought.