Phenom II X2 and new cpus in collection

The time flows and I have some news in my department. As I planned I updated CPU on Asus M2A-VM HDMI motherboard with Phenom II X2 555 BE and added additional 2GB RAM (4GB in total now). However, I downgraded video from GeForce 9600GT to Radeon 4650. CPU was recognized without problems (I updated BIOS version to 5001 earlier). It works under 3.2 GHz, however, hypertransport drops to 2000 MT/s as Socket AM2 can't do more :). The performance difference from Athlon X2 4200 was very visible. Starcraft II and its scenarios load time reduced significantly (from minutes to probably a minute or two) and game felt much lighter (it can be that additional RAM played its part here too) even with inferior video card. I could to switch  between Starcraft and other applications without hassle (earlier it took a lot of time to do this with long black screens in between). It closes almost instantly too (it took several minutes to do that earlier). Windows XP 64-bit load time decreased too. Folding@home SMP project can be done in time by using computer 6-8h per day. In general, I was surprised  by the difference as I hadn't expected such performance improvement. However, there is one caveat. Cool'n'Quiet doesn't work in Windows XP 64-bit for me. Phenom always works under full 3.2GHz. The question remains about other power saving features. What is more, it may be a different story in Windows Vista, 7 and Linux. I'll try to investigate this later.The other bad thing is that default cpu cooler is very loud on max speed. I'll change it to Scythe Ninja 2 Rev B.

AMD Phenom II X2 555 box

In meantime I've received new CPUs for my collection. They were bought quite a long time ago mainly but they had been kept in USA. I got these ones currently:
Qualcomm MSM6500 (ARM926EJ-S core)
Fujitsu SPARC64 GP 810 MHz SFC881177FP (should be 0.15µm). CPU card with VRM modules. This one definitely will become one of my favourites.
Agilent PA-RISC 1QK9-0009 REV 5.1 (PA-8200, 240MHz(?)).
Motorola MC68000RC8
AMD AU1550-333 (MIPS core)
Motorola PPC755ARX400LB (embedded PowerPC 750)
Freescale PPC7448Hx 1.167GHz  (should be e600 (MPC7448) PowerPC core, maybe engineering sample)
IBM Power4 MCM terminator (second terminator in my collection).

Quite a big bunch :) but photos will be much later. I am waiting for some more (some MIPS CPUs, NEC V70, Itanium Montecito ES, AMD 29000). Probably thats it for this year (though, who knows I said the same thing several times). 

Fujitsu SPARC64-GP 810 MHz

New hardware and focus shift

I didn't wrote for a long time, however I had a lot of changes during this period in my hardware.

Firstly my secondary computers were updated to dual-core Athlon X2 systems. The first one uses Asus M2A-VM HDMI motherboard and AMD Athlon X2 4000+ 65nm CPU, other one MSI K9AGM3-F motherboard this older revision AMD Athlon X2 4200+ 90nm CPU. So, secondary computers (which are used by my sister and mother) now are faster than mine :). And a gap will be even more bigger soon. I decided to make a focus shift and I bought VIA VT-310DP Mini-ITX motherboard. It should arrive in one or two weeks. There are two tiny VIA Eden-N 1 GHz (based on Nehemiah C5P core) processors on it those max TDP is 7W. This motherboard fits more for small server purposes, however, I want to try to use it on desktop. Primary reason for this is energy saving and a wish to see if it has enough power for every day purposes (I'm sure that it will).



I had several other options for my new computer too. The range of them started from powerful and power consuming quad-core workstations and terminal servers (Fujitsu Primergy TX150 S6) to quite small dual-core energy saving computers (like industrial KINO-690S1 mini-itx motherboard with any AMD Turion X2 processor). Price range was between 800-2200$. However, at the last second I remembered about VIA motherboard and decided to go with it. I hardly found it, however, a transaction is already completed and I am waiting for arrival. Yes, it is a big step backwards in performance even if we compare it with my current system, however, it wasn't that the reason to buy it. I'm going to add PCI video card to boost video content performance.

IEI KINO-690S1

If we go back to my AlphaPC topic, I tried to install Linux on it, however, my multiply attempts were unsuccessful. I left it for some period without doing nothing.

There are some interesting news too. Firstly, VIA (or Centaur Technology) announced their 64-bit 65 nm Isaiah architecture and Intel branded their very small and ultra-low power 45 nm Silverthorne CPUs to Intel Atom (dumb name IMHO). These two processor families aimed for the similar purposes: small factor computers and appliances. I think they are strong contenders to replace my new motherboard (if it will meet my expectations) after one or two years. We will see. Interesting times are coming.