AMD's counterstrikes at IDF with A64 2800+ mooted

AMD PRESENTED its now traditionial counter show suite at IDF last week. No major surprises here - it looks like its 939 and 90 nanometre announcements will be saved for the booth it doesn't have at CeBit in a month or so. It did have some neat bits to show, but nothing unexpected.

The first good one was the naming of the low power Opterons. The 55w version is called the HE, and the 30w one is the EE. All will be drop in replacements for the normal Opterons. No changes necessary, and they all run at the rated speed, a 246HE will run just as fast as a 246.

It also demonstrated a Rackable c1000 1U system powered by 2 246 HE chips.

The entire system, measured at the plug, took up only 136 watts. If you include the inefficiencies and loss of the power supply itself, that number is perilously close to the juice sucked down by a single Prescott. That is a Prescott chip, not system, and the AMD is much faster to boot. Server farmers must be smiling already in anticipation of the spring planting season.

One downside to this is the cost. AMD, being the only game in town here is pricing things in a Xeon like fashion. The two models offered, the 246HE and the 240EE both cost $1514. That may seem like a hefty premium over the normal 246 and 240, but compared to rewiring a building, or gods forbid pulling in new wiring to the building, that is chicken feed.

One thing it was not talking about is the Athlon64 2800+ launching soon. If people at IDF knew about it, why were the AMD folk so surprised when I mentioned it? Ah well, look for it soon, at a price comparable to the P4/2800. µ