Nforce 3 pro benchmarks w/ 244 opteron

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: shady06
so is there any way to OC an opteron???

According to Nvidia, it's up to AMD on this. Nvidia is doing a lot of tweeking in their labs right now, but ultimately AMD has the ability to lock down what they don't want users tweeking, and they haven't made their minds up yet.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
A 64bit version of UT2003 is ready and waiting for WinXP 64. More apps will follow soon enough. Besides, the Athlon64 on WinXP 64 will run 32bit apps natively. A lack of 64bit software right now is a matter of no consequence.

Yes that is the one and only program I've ever heard so far. There may be others - but what? When? If there is only one common program available at its launch then it isn't the "gravy" of the processor. And I still don't know if 64bit UT2003 is any better than 32 bit UT2003 (if this info has been released please let me know).

Note: when I say "common program" I'm not talking about some research project that will be run by a handfull of people - I'm talking about a program that a significant % of users will buy.

 

[Pariah]

A 64bit version of UT2003 is ready and waiting for WinXP 64. More apps will follow soon enough. Besides, the Athlon64 on WinXP 64 will run 32bit apps natively. A lack of 64bit software right now is a matter of no consequence.

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/features/sweeney_interview/default.asp

"FiringSquad: Will you be adding any special features to 64-bit Unreal Tournament 2003 in particular?

No. Our goal in porting UT2003 to 64-bit was to show that it can be done without much work, that the platform is stable, and that it's ready for gaming. We're not doing anything that really takes advantage of over 4 gigs of RAM or the large virtual address space.

The next generation of the Unreal engine is where we'll be taking major advantage of 64-bit in a very visible way, in the 2005 timeframe. We expect to support 32-bit and 64-bit clients and servers for gameplay, but might require 64-bit for content creation, because of the significant requirements of our new content development tools."


A "lowly" Athlon XP 2700+ and 9700Pro can push over 200fps at 1024x768. So why exactly would anyone upgrade to an Athlon 64 for this technology port when you won't see any improvments and you will have to wait until 2005 at least to get a "real" 64-bit version? The move from 16-bit software to 32-bit software was painfully slow in the consumer market, and at the time 16-bit software was more limiting that 32-bit is today. Sure you may see a number of popular applications on 64-bit Windows soon after release, but like Unreal Tournament they will likely be simple ports of the 32-bit version that provide no additional features or performance which is not something worth upgrading for.

 

[dexvx]

^

Considering how crappy the Unreal series is, programming wise, I wouldnt doubt for a second that their next generation of games will munch above the 4GB limit. IMO, faster computers with more resources is a cause for lazy and inefficient programming more than anything else.

See you're both still looking at the 3.2GHz vs. 2.2GHz competition. For me I see 2.2GHz vs. 2.2GHz. I'm not denying that at the end of the day the P4 doesn't win out, that would be foolish. When I think about which CPU is designed better, I have to side with the one that gets more done per clock cycle. That's called efficiency and as an engineer efficiency is what it's all about.

Clock speed has nothing to do with efficiency. Power consumption, die size, etc, are examples of what efficiency is.

 

[glugglug]

Originally posted by: dexvx

Considering how crappy the Unreal series is, programming wise, I wouldnt doubt for a second that their next generation of games will munch above the 4GB limit. IMO, faster computers with more resources is a cause for lazy and inefficient programming more than anything else.

Unreal is crappy programming? It was completely smooth in 1024x768 on my old K6-2, and playable on an original 166MHz K6 OC to 208.... Incredible level of detail for back then...

Faster computers with more resources are not a cause of inefficient programming, although they do enable such crappy practices to survive. Languages that obfuscate what's going on like VB, and the surge of scripting language use so that even technophobes could set up a dynamic website to get into the useless venture capital web craze of the 90's are the root cause. If those happen to be SOOOO inefficient that your site crawls on the latest insanely fast CPUs, the solution is just to throw more servers at the problem. Server cost is not an issue when your business model does not ever involve a profit, if we were still using Pentium 200s thos e sites would simply use thousands of servers each instead of hundreds of servers.

 

[Acanthus]

I am disappointed this woulda been impressive a year ago. But now they are on par with intels flagship, and already at the clockspeed ceiling (so it seems). Unless 64 bit performance takes it off the charts, this CPU is VERY not worth it.

If this came about a year ago, we'd prolly have prescott in our hands now, but as it sits Intel is just sitting on their hands waiting for something to happen.

 

[Bovinicus]

I didn't see this review, but I saw one over at Extremetech. It seems to me that the Opteron has some potential if they can ramp up the clockspeed enough. It's already competing at such low clockspeeds. They should have no problem scaling this CPU past the speed of an Athlon thanks to more mature manufacturing processes and a longer pipeline. Also, as motherboards and their drivers mature it will make things look better. Programs can also be recompiled to take advantage of Opteron technology. All of these things combined will make for a nice boost in performance as time rolls on.

However, it is another year or two before Microsoft comes out with a 64-bit; Opteron's time to shine is then. Luckily, by that time, some of us might actually be able to afford Opterons.

 

[digitalsm]

Soon as Windows XP Professional 64bit Edition makes its way into the retail channel, you can then expect announcements of companies working on 64bit apps.

I would say that all DCC, CAD/CAM, etc software makers are already working on 64bit versions, as well as music/sound software companies, and highend video editing/compositing apps. Now in the home market, there really isnt a point to 64bit apps for quite awhile. But for DCC, CAD, Music/Sound, Video Editing/Compositing, 64bit apps will appear sometime in 2004, some may be ready to go sooner. As for games taking real advantage of 64bit, dont count on for a long time.

 

[Bovinicus]

I can still be cool and say that I'm running a 64-bit OS on a 64-bit CPU. Geek bragging rights!