This is a semi-cool treat. EE Times has a scoop on Intel's Itanium processor (their new 64-bit offering) which features an 8-stage pipeline (as opposed to the P4's 20-stage or the PowerPC G4's 7-stage) and clock speeds are a bit lower (about 1 GHz or so, but with a LOT more guts than the P4).... Here's some nice numbers: 130 watts power consumption (450W power supply minimum, no doubt), 328 registers (the x86-class processors sport 18 registers, counting the MMX registers and pointers and what-not; the PowerPC has about 80, more or less), a 6MB L3 ONCHIP CACHE (it'll be >$2000 CDN probably).... My oh my. Chess will be impossible to beat the computer at on this monster.
(Note on my last comment: Chess AI uses a lot of 64-bit numbers in a huge hash table. On the x86 class processors, slow 32-bit math is all you can hope for. 64-bit processors use 64-bit numbers natively.)
OK, the usual disclaimer:
WARNING: Some of these prices may shock you, leave you breathless, make you sick, get out your wallet, or something else dangerous or drastic in some way. The Junkyard is not responsible for your actions.
| Memory (256MB) | |||
| Type | Price | from last week | Retailer |
| PC-100 | $15 | -$2 | Alpha International Business (this is low-density stuff; BUY if you have an older mo/bo) |
| PC-133 | $16 | $0 | 1st Choice Memory |
| PC-150 | $23 | -$1 | Rich Pacific |
| PC-1600 | $35 | $0 | TechMIA (Micron chip; phone orders only, mention pricewatch) |
| PC-2100 | $30 | -$1 | 1st Choice Memory |
| PC-2400 | $69 | $0 | BayAds.com |
| PC-800 RDRAM | $76 | $0 | 1st Choice Memory |
| CPUs | |||
| AMD Athlon 1.4GHz (200MHz FSB) | $113 | -$3 | EconoPC (phone orders only, must mention pricewatch) |
| AMD Athlon 1.4GHz (266MHz FSB) | $105 | -$1 | Accubyte (phone orders only, must mention pricewatch) |
| Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz | $185 | -$9 | Accubyte (phone orders only, must mention pricewatch) |
| AMD Duron 950MHz | $54 | -$1 | EconoPC (phone orders only, must mention pricewatch) |
| Intel Celeron 850MHz | $55 | -$3 | EconoPC (down toward the bottom) |
(Wow, isn't this amazing? A Duron is STILL cheaper than a FASTER Celery.)
Please note that the Pentium 4 and Celeron processors are available at slightly higher speeds. I will not be adding those new speeds this week. Please also note that the Athlon "MP" (the mutiprocessor version) is available at 1 and 1.2 GHz. I will consider adding them at community request.
| 40GB 7200RPM EIDE Hard Disk Drives (5 choice manufacturers) | |||
| Maxtor | $100 | $1 | House of Computers (must mention pricewatch) |
| Seagate | $98 | -$2 | House of Computers (must mention pricewatch) |
| IBM | $100 | -$1 | House of Computers (must mention pricewatch) |
| Western Digital | $99 | -$3 | House of Computers (must mention pricewatch) |
Quantum is now depecated. Since Maxtor bought Quantum a couple weeks back, (geez, I actually REMEMBERED this?) there is no use in listing prices for Quantum drives as they are now Maxtor drives. Quantum will be removed from the list next week.
