Itanium, a question.

[Booky]

First let me say that I personally own a Athlon 1.33. However my problem is this as follows. My bother-in-law wants to build a PC for the first time. My AMD was my first one but because of the current chipsets to choose from I have had some problems that I wouldn't wish him to encounter. So my question is this, is this Itanium a highend desktop chip? And will it have a good chipset to put on a good motherboard? I don't know much about intel products so if you have a link to a information page I would apreciate it. If he is likely to pay a fortune for the intel then I know he will go with AMD anyway, but since Intel has seemed to lower there prices some maybe he will get one of the new products. I just can't tell him to get a casterated P4. I'm not bashing Intel, I just need some info about Intel so I can help him make the right choice. I know I was somewhat rushed into this tweaking buisness, but I like that. As for him, I think he wil be more interested in stability and fast. Like I said above, a link to informative Intel site would be appreciated.

Crap, all the good ones are already taken.

 

[Kelledin]

The Itanium is currently targeted for high-end servers and systems responsible for serious 64-bit number-crunching. Not only would it cost a fortune, but the apps your friend is using today are going to run <i>very</i> poorly on an Itanium (unless he's using an Itanium-based UNIX variant as his main O/S).

Since you've already excluded the P4, you have to choose between the P3 and the T-bird.

The P3 has very little upgrade path left. It may hit 1.2GHz when Intel gives it a die shrink (which may be October of this year, or sometime next year, who knows). That's all the life that design has got left in it. Its main advantage is that you can go dual with it. How much (if any) of an advantage this is depends upon your applications.

The T-bird looks to have a considerable upgrade path, currently clocks higher than the P3, and gives you more bang for your buck. T-bird systems are a bit harder to build though.

If you get a P3, the currently favored P3 chipset is the i815 chipset. The favored motherboard based on this chipset is the ASUS CUSL2.

If you get a T-bird, it's hard to say which chipset is favored. There's quite a few chipsets out there. You'll have to do quite a bit of research to figure out what T-bird chipset/mobo you want.

Kelledin

bash-2.04$ kill -9 1
init: Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?

 

[Booky]

Thx for the reply. I guess he will be building a Athlon then. I guess now the question is which motherboard does he want. I know The K7T266 has been a pain in the neck for me so maybe we just wait for a more stable motherboard with the KT266 chipset. I wonder if there be more stable boards by the time the Palemino is shipped to public?

Crap, all the good ones are already taken.

 

[Kelledin]

I've heard great reviews of the upcoming SiS chipset (the 735 I believe). The AMD761 motherboards are currently the fastest, but every one I've seen has a VIA 686B southbridge on it. =(

I've heard good things about the ALi MAGiK 1's stability though. It performs almost as well as the AMD761 motherboards, with more stability and support for legacy(?) PC100/PC133.

The nVidia Crush chipset looks sweet too, but like the SiS chipset, it's not here yet =/

Kelledin

bash-2.04$ kill -9 1
init: Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?