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What If................ (im not trying to start another flame war)
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then wtf were you trying to do? It obviously wasn't to start a thought provoking discussion, or answer some obscure question. It was to state a horribly biased and IMO wrong opinion. How did you expect people to react, or is that the point? Do you like making little flame wars because I am finding difficult to believe that you are really that stubborn and impervious to reason.
Gamingphreek
Lifer
Im interested in how you know that as no current games will run on it albeit unless there is an emulator.
Different microarchitecture man. The Itanium is uses the EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing) architecture where as all the consumer level chips use the x86(-64) architecture. All games are coded for x86 and would not run.
To correct early in the thread. IPC is Instructions Per Clock Cycle. OPC is operations per clock. Dont combine them 🙂 .
I agree with mark. FelixDaCat is back. Now the question is how long until he gets hundreds of people asking for a ban.
Itanium is not the fastest chip out there... far from it actually.
-Kevin
I was being serious when I posted that, but it can be a good laugh. I think it's been around for quite a while, too.
Unless the CPU is something REALLY old, it will probably at least boot the game (I believe that was the original question, because much of the antebellum portion of the discussion had to do with manufacturers' system requirements, which, as we know, usually do nothing more than let you boot the game and export it to PowerPoint), but of course it will perform horribly.
Unless the CPU is something REALLY old, it will probably at least boot the game (I believe that was the original question, because much of the antebellum portion of the discussion had to do with manufacturers' system requirements, which, as we know, usually do nothing more than let you boot the game and export it to PowerPoint), but of course it will perform horribly.
miketheidiot
Lifer
I hear tell of a 3.73 ghz EE
otispunkmeyer
Lifer
well some one had to succumb to intels marketing demons
Regrading the Itanium Buzz that I seem to have started.
Compare with an opteron. Opteron can execute 9 instructions per clock (IPC = 9), P4 can execute 6, so I think Itanic has an IPC of around 10. Anyway, if we compare Itanium2 1.5GHz 9MB L2 to Opteron x50 (2.4GHz)->>
Itanium2 is about 30% faster with float operations, Opteron is just a little faster with integer operations.
Itanium2 costs about 3x more, motherboards are more expensive then Opteron (NUMA) motherboards, software is more expensive AND there is less IA64 software availlable than x86 software. Itanium2 also dissipates more power, and requires better cooling. Opteron also scales better with every single CPU, becouse Itanium2 has a shared FSB, Opteron has HT.
All in all - I don't think Itanium2 is a way of the future.
Oh yeah, current socket940 motherboards are dual-core drop-in compatible, I think that's nice
Compare with an opteron. Opteron can execute 9 instructions per clock (IPC = 9), P4 can execute 6, so I think Itanic has an IPC of around 10. Anyway, if we compare Itanium2 1.5GHz 9MB L2 to Opteron x50 (2.4GHz)->>
Itanium2 is about 30% faster with float operations, Opteron is just a little faster with integer operations.
Itanium2 costs about 3x more, motherboards are more expensive then Opteron (NUMA) motherboards, software is more expensive AND there is less IA64 software availlable than x86 software. Itanium2 also dissipates more power, and requires better cooling. Opteron also scales better with every single CPU, becouse Itanium2 has a shared FSB, Opteron has HT.
All in all - I don't think Itanium2 is a way of the future.
Oh yeah, current socket940 motherboards are dual-core drop-in compatible, I think that's nice
In short:
- The Itanium is a bad choice for desktops for several obvious reasons. Even assuming excellent software support and dirt cheap motherboards, you still have heat output, power consumption, and price : performance.
- The Itanium is a bad choice for most workstations simply due to low price : performance. Workstations perform a lot of different work, and this work is often float-heavy (and when it's int-heavy, why you shouldn't pick an Itanium is pretty obvious), but it also generally benefits from multiple CPUs, and you easily could get a quad Opteron for the price of a dual Itanium 2.
- The Itanium is a bad choice for servers because of low price : performance and the integer-heavy work that servers are meant to perform. (What, you really think serving web pages involves a lot of floating point ops?)
- The Itanium is a moderately poor choice for massive parallel computers because of low price : performance and high heat output (both of which become very important on a large scale, especially the former). I say moderately poor because, hey, at least it scales well, right?
In short: IA-64 has/had promise, but the Itanium doesn't really have a niche.
So theres Intels "Fastest" CPU shot down. Im not anti Intel, that would be like calling Jeremy clarkson anti Rover just because he's slated there latest flagship, Just my thoughts, there not gosble.
The Itanium may have been promising at its debut, but the fact is that it's ill-suited to anything except massively parallel supercomputers... and even in those, there aren't really many reasons to use them over other, better processors (did someone say POWER5?)
The Itanium may have been promising at its debut, but the fact is that it's ill-suited to anything except massively parallel supercomputers... and even in those, there aren't really many reasons to use them over other, better processors (did someone say POWER5?)
Gamingphreek
Lifer
Of course 2 CPUs would be faster than one provided that the program being run is multi threaded (made for to take advantage of 2 CPU/Cores)
You misunderstand this on the other part.
x86 is a micro architecture just like EPIC. The 64bit is part of the micro-architcecure. The way you are thinking is 64 is a whole new miucro architecture when in fact it is just an extension to the x86 instructions. Any A64 (Opteron is based on A64) can do this. Anything that uses 754 (With the exception of Sempron), 939, and 940 can execute 32bit and 64bit apps.
Now on the other hand going outside the x86 realm you have other micro-architectures such as EPIC (Explicitlly Parallel Instruction Computing). IA64 is a part of the EPIC instruction set that Intel uses for its Itanium CPU's. However it cannot run 32bit code. It is 64bit only that is why you cannot play games on an Itanium based computer as no games are written for pure 64bit, and on top of that no games are written for anything other than x86 with the exception of the Apple. Im sure there is an emulator out but it will not run 32bit code or x86 apps efficiently at all ie MAJOR performance hit.
-Kevin
You misunderstand this on the other part.
x86 is a micro architecture just like EPIC. The 64bit is part of the micro-architcecure. The way you are thinking is 64 is a whole new miucro architecture when in fact it is just an extension to the x86 instructions. Any A64 (Opteron is based on A64) can do this. Anything that uses 754 (With the exception of Sempron), 939, and 940 can execute 32bit and 64bit apps.
Now on the other hand going outside the x86 realm you have other micro-architectures such as EPIC (Explicitlly Parallel Instruction Computing). IA64 is a part of the EPIC instruction set that Intel uses for its Itanium CPU's. However it cannot run 32bit code. It is 64bit only that is why you cannot play games on an Itanium based computer as no games are written for pure 64bit, and on top of that no games are written for anything other than x86 with the exception of the Apple. Im sure there is an emulator out but it will not run 32bit code or x86 apps efficiently at all ie MAJOR performance hit.
-Kevin
Markfw
Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
Not really. But you CAN do a game and encode at the same time faster than an HT enabled P4, since you have two REAL processors. However the cost is great compared to the payback. For me its just another toy, and a learning experience, I would NOT tell people to buy one for gaming unless they had nothing but money and wanted to multitask better, and/or be a combo gaming/server (like mine is)
x86 does have its problems, but a lot of PPC and IA64 supporters honestly couldn't tell you what these problems are, only that they exist. The PPC supporters are especially guilty of this.. not to say that the latest PowerPC processors are nothing special (they're really quite nice), just that Apple fanboyism often leaks over into architecture.
If you ask me, we're past most of what made x86, well, suck. Modern x86 CPUs are really just RISC in sheep's) for the most part, and the only reason x86 is said to drag us down is that CPUs basically have to translate x86 instructions into an easier-to-digest form (basically/semi-incorrectly: CISC to RISC, stupid to smart). Do we lose some speed doing this? Sure! Do we lose enough that we need to go through making an entirely new architecture for PCs? Well.. maybe not. The trouble isn't so much designing the new architecture, really. The engineers doing this probably find it fun. The trouble is that you have to tell the market "hey, we're going to break compatibility with everything out right now, but look at it this way-- if you buy all this expensive new hardware then run the expensive software coded for this new architecture, you'll get a moderate speed boost over the old hardware!" Who out there is going to say "ooh! Me first!"?
There are more.. delicate ways to handle this situation, of course. Ace's Hardware went over it in that Kill x86 article of theirs. It may not be the easiest thing in the world, but it would be relatively painless for the market. The point is that these light-handed (on the "market treatment" side, nevermind the poor engineers who're told that they have to make a CPU that's effectively two architectures in one) ways of introducing a new instruction set / arch were not the ways that Intel chose.
But I digress, a lot. Let's assume that Intel somehow make the Itanium 2 emulate x86 code at a reasonable pace. Now you just have the issue of getting it to the market, right? Surely that's all? No, sadly, it isn't. The 1GHz LV Deerfield puts out 62 watts of heat over a 180mm^2 die. Does that sound familiar? A die the size of a farm animal, power consumption in the low sixties? Why, that's what the 130nm Opteron 246s look like. Except they're a lot faster than 1GHz Deerfields, even with this horrible "maintaining backwards compatibility" deal, and even running in 32-bit mode only.
But that's not really fair, is it? The 1GHz Deerfield is awfully slow. It's an LV part, after all. But that brings me to my other point: the LOW-VOLTAGE part puts out 62W of heat. Even someone a few crayons short of a box (someone such as myself, I guess) can see that you might just have a few heat output issues with the non-LV parts. Huge die or no, that's a lot of heat to dump into a PC. And what do you get out of it? Something maybe as fast as an Opteron that, if market adoption suddenly grew by an ENORMOUS amount, might not cost TOO much more.
If you ask me, we're past most of what made x86, well, suck. Modern x86 CPUs are really just RISC in sheep's) for the most part, and the only reason x86 is said to drag us down is that CPUs basically have to translate x86 instructions into an easier-to-digest form (basically/semi-incorrectly: CISC to RISC, stupid to smart). Do we lose some speed doing this? Sure! Do we lose enough that we need to go through making an entirely new architecture for PCs? Well.. maybe not. The trouble isn't so much designing the new architecture, really. The engineers doing this probably find it fun. The trouble is that you have to tell the market "hey, we're going to break compatibility with everything out right now, but look at it this way-- if you buy all this expensive new hardware then run the expensive software coded for this new architecture, you'll get a moderate speed boost over the old hardware!" Who out there is going to say "ooh! Me first!"?
There are more.. delicate ways to handle this situation, of course. Ace's Hardware went over it in that Kill x86 article of theirs. It may not be the easiest thing in the world, but it would be relatively painless for the market. The point is that these light-handed (on the "market treatment" side, nevermind the poor engineers who're told that they have to make a CPU that's effectively two architectures in one) ways of introducing a new instruction set / arch were not the ways that Intel chose.
But I digress, a lot. Let's assume that Intel somehow make the Itanium 2 emulate x86 code at a reasonable pace. Now you just have the issue of getting it to the market, right? Surely that's all? No, sadly, it isn't. The 1GHz LV Deerfield puts out 62 watts of heat over a 180mm^2 die. Does that sound familiar? A die the size of a farm animal, power consumption in the low sixties? Why, that's what the 130nm Opteron 246s look like. Except they're a lot faster than 1GHz Deerfields, even with this horrible "maintaining backwards compatibility" deal, and even running in 32-bit mode only.
But that's not really fair, is it? The 1GHz Deerfield is awfully slow. It's an LV part, after all. But that brings me to my other point: the LOW-VOLTAGE part puts out 62W of heat. Even someone a few crayons short of a box (someone such as myself, I guess) can see that you might just have a few heat output issues with the non-LV parts. Huge die or no, that's a lot of heat to dump into a PC. And what do you get out of it? Something maybe as fast as an Opteron that, if market adoption suddenly grew by an ENORMOUS amount, might not cost TOO much more.
imported_Intelfanboy
Member
damn athlon's get creamed HERE! http://www.tomshardware.com/cp...221/cpu_charts-22.html look at bottom. (poor athlons)
imported_Intelfanboy
Member
hehe, sadly mik3y your wrong.
Ya know its sad I read these forums all the time I have never made an account... But sadly this thread just made me!
DUDE!! INTELFANBOY!! lets try to read your first post, shall we, dident it say gaming?!
ITELL FAN BOY GET A FRIGGIN LIFE U HAVE BEEN BEATEN JUST GO IN A HOLE FOR A YEAR THEM COME OUT!!!😉
DUDE!! INTELFANBOY!! lets try to read your first post, shall we, dident it say gaming?!
ITELL FAN BOY GET A FRIGGIN LIFE U HAVE BEEN BEATEN JUST GO IN A HOLE FOR A YEAR THEM COME OUT!!!😉
imported_Intelfanboy
Member
lol AMD has been beaten again http://www.tomshardware.com/cp...5/pentium4_570-16.html in 3dMARK!
imported_Intelfanboy
Member
ouch that stings a bit eh?
1.The skt939 board was a VIA.
2. You can not play 3DMock.
3. It is Tom's 😉
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