BOXX Technologies First to Ship Dual AMD Opteron(tm) Workstations

[SheepFactory]

:drool:

niiiice!

[WhiteRabbitObj]

It'd be nice if people can post some info on these systems as they proliferate (not Boxx specifically, 64-bit AMD cpus).

I personally have been looking forward to the Hammer family of processors for a long long time (they were supposed to come out at least a year ago originally) and they OUGHT to offer some significant performance increases, especially in rendering, but that is of course dependent on the software knowing how to take advantage of the extra power. Does anyone know any details on how much of a benefit these new beasts are going to have right off the bat (and before 64-bit versions of 3D apps arrive)?

Thanks.

[froggyplat]

here are specs on at least the Boxx version

Dual AMD® Opteron® Processor Capable
AMD-8131 HyperTransport PCI-X Tunnel
AMD-8151 HyperTransport AGP Tunnel
128-bit Dual Channel Memory Bus
Up to 16GB (:eek: ) ECC Registered 333MHz DDR
(8) DIMM Slots
Dual Channel UltraDMA 133 IDE Controller
Four Channel Serial ATA RAID (0,1,0+1)
6 Channel Audio
(1) 8x AGP Pro Full Length Slot
(2) Full Length PCI-X 64bit/133MHz Slots
(2) Full Length PCI-X 64bit/66MHz Slots
(1) Full Length 32bit/33MHz PCI Slot
(1) Onboard 10/100/1000Mbs Ethernet Adapter
(4) USB Ports: (2) Front USB 1.1, (2) Rear USB 2.0
(2) Onboard IEEE1394 Ports
(4) 3.5" x 1" Internal hard drive bays
(3) 3.5" Exposed drive bays
(2) 5.25" Exposed drive bays
460W Power supply
(2) 92MM, (1) 80MM Cooling fans
1.44MB Floppy drive
Tower Chassis (Optional 4U Rackmount kit)
Physical dimensions: 7.0"W x 17.0"H x 17.5"D

[dbach]

Now can someone pls tell me if any 3d software currently supports the 64bit arcitecture? Pls note that I know all software can run on the Opteron chips but that will esentially be in 32bit mode.

Out,
Don

[JA-forreal]

Nice Specs. I look forward to building one of my own rigs.

[bentllama]

damn. and i just built a new rig. aint that always the case. seconds after getting a new sys, something better rears its head...

[though i knew about the opterons for a while... ;)]

[JA-forreal]

I price configured a RenderBoxx Dual Opteron Model 244 and it was still a thousand bucks cheaper than my first P233 PC. Whew, times have changed for the better pc hardware wise.

Tasty.......

[BrandonD]

The good news with the Opterons is that while they're 64bit chips, they still should run 32bit apps natively without code recompiles. Of course, the real performance advantage will come with optimized 64bit code. I think the Itanium2 will outperform the Opterons in floating point performance, but they're also 10 times the price and can only run apps compiled for IA64. Another advantage of the Opterons is their scaleability. Their new bus architecture uses a method of scaling bandwidth with the CPUs. This is partially due to the addition of an on-board memory controller for each CPU. This means that a quad Opteron will have four times the bandwidth than a single - something you won't find elsewhere (maybe SGI).

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