Athlons

[Simen Thoresen]

>Hi all,
>
>We are in the process of considering machines for a large Linux cluster,
>and have received very nice performance results from the Athlon
>XP1800+.  Since we're somewhat limited by space, we'd like to consider
>dual-processor machines, but there seems to be only one mainboard
>available, the Tyan Tiger, which has a bunch of niceties like onboard
>SCSI that we simply don't want.  Does anyone know of other dual processor
>Athlon boards (which accept XP1800+ chips, so, Athlon MP) on the
>market?  If there aren't any, does anyone have news about the development
>of lower-end boards?

We're still waiting patiently for other SMP chipsets for the Athlons, but currently only the 760MP is available.
According to rumors (roadmaps) the AMD 760MPX will support 66MHz 64bit PCI, rather than the 760MP 's 33MHz 64bit PCI (A south-bridge issue, I gather). ViA also supposedly had a KX266 chipset in the pipeline for 32/33 PCI and dual Athlons, but that has been awefully quiet lately.

Actually, the cheapest board currently around should be Tyans Tiger. They also have a Thunder-series, which has onboard SCSI and ethernet. Check out your Tiger specs again - the Tiger board should be at less than half the price of the Thunder board.

>Also, due to our space constraints, and to avoid incurring the cost of a
>rack-mounted solution, we're also interested in finding micro-ATX boards
>for these systems.  

So are we :-)

I think there would be quite a market for a large-memory capable, single 64/66 slot dual Athlon-board with onboard ethernet and sucky onboard video here in this forum :-)

>So, ideally we'd like a micro-ATX dual Athlon board.  Any information
>would be greatly appreciated!
>
It seems that Tyan is currently the only vendor using the 760MP board, but if/when the 760MPX comes out, others should start using that.

I hope this helps you a bit.

Yours,
-S
--
Simen Thoresen, Beowulf-cleaner and random artist - close and personal.

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