NEWS
CINELERRA
XMOVIE
LIBMPEG3
QUICKTIME 4 LINUX
MIX2000
MIX2005
FIREHOSE
HEROINE 2200
TRAPEZOID
SHECHARGER
HEROINECLOCK
CANON
LEVITATOR
VICACOPTER
HARASSMENT
xena:/root% cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 6 model : 6 model name : AMD Athlon(tm) Processor stepping : 1 cpu MHz : 995.558 cache size : 256 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow bogomips : 1985.74 processor : 1 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 6 model : 6 model name : AMD Athlon(tm) Processor stepping : 1 cpu MHz : 995.558 cache size : 256 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow bogomips : 1985.74 xena:/root% df Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/hda2 3882016 919408 2765412 25% / /dev/hda1 69973 9829 56531 15% /boot /dev/md0 107308824 37595628 64336896 37% /mov
As for performance our experiences are biased because this system is almost exclusively used for video software development not games like most. It needs a reliable operating system like Linux and very fast media storage drives.
The inverse telecine, a grueling memory excercise which takes 3 hours on a dual PIII 933 and 2 hours on a dual Alpha, takes about 2 hours on the dual Athlon.
Our 100 Gig SCSI raid, consisting of 6 15,000 rpm drives on the motherboard's two SCSI 160 channels gives a full 110MB/sec read and write with RAID 0. With RAID chunks set to 1MB the write accesses go to 160MB/sec and read accesses go to 90MB/sec sustained. This system would make a good motion capture tool. Previous Intel attempts at onboard disk I/O would give 50MB/sec.
As for compiling, we compiled the Cinelerra main executable, a brutal C++ compiler test resulting in a video editing program, and observed the following:
Dual PIII 933: time make -j 3 real 3m10.386s user 5m52.000s sys 0m15.260s Dual Athlon 1Ghz: time make -j 3 real 2m44.692s user 4m54.150s sys 0m12.950s
Dual Athlon 1Ghz: time mpeg2enc -q 15 -n 45 -d -f 15 anorexic1.mov real 4m24.988s user 1m14.570s sys 0m3.030s Dual PIII 933: time mpeg2enc -q 15 -n 45 -d -f 15 anorexic1.mov real 5m46.673s user 1m52.860s sys 0m3.620s
As for reliability several months of use have reveiled that heavy dma transfers over the PCI bus crash the Thunder K7 easily. Don't bother doing any broadcast quality video capturing on this board although it is still reliable for rendering and compiling software. Most people will probably have their 760MP's in a server farm compiling one or two web pages every hour so the dma crashes won't be a deterrant to sales.
The 760MP chip meanwhile gets hot enough to cook popcorn. The DDR stick is quite cool compared to the RAMBUS grill irons of yesteryear. Although it requires a 460W power supply with an 8 pin subconnector, the system doesn't use nearly that much power running Linux. The real power users are the 15,000 rpm drives.
While all this high performance feels good, whether the dual Athlon becomes the next big thing or a distant reminder of our long lost obsession with desktops is pretty clear. When Intel introduced the dual pentium Pro in the early 90's it was on every magazine front page. Today new desktop innovations are hardly a blip on the radar. The last 3 years have shown increasing distaste for big, powerful, hard to use desktops and increasing devotion to lower powered handhelds.
(C) 2008 Adam Williams
Hosting by SOURCEFORGET