Athlon 64 and Opterons for hella cheap

elevate

elevate

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AMD/Microsoft Tech Tour

$250 gets you the Desktop Bundle:
* AMD Athlon™ 64 3200+ 939 pin processor
* Asus A8N-E Socket 939 motherboard
* Microsoft® Windows® XP x64 Edition

or, $500 gets you the Server Bundle:
* 2 - AMD Opteron™ 246 CPUs
* Tyan Thunder K8SD Pro (S2882-D) motherboard
* Microsoft Server 2003 x64 Edition

The server deal is especially good as those Opterons go for $345 apiece, the motherboard is almost $500, and the OS is $1000.

Here's the dates for the tour:
June 16 Atlanta, Georgia
June 21 Dallas, Texas
June 23 Houston, Texas
June 27 Irvine, California
June 29 Burbank, California
July 1 Sunnyvale, California
July 12 Seattle, Washington
July 14 Vancouver, Canada
July 19 Boston, Massachusetts
July 21 East Brunswick, New Jersey
 
Check if the Opteron board doesn't use pci graphics, like most server boards do. But it could be worth it for the cpu's alone.
 
sile2001 said:
Just checked with Tyan and that Opteron server board is PCI only...no AGP.
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but I think it will take PCI Express Graphics cards...which are actually cheaper and better than AGP.
 
Was afraid of it. If you want agp or pci-e there is not much choice. I got a K8WE and it is nice, but next to impossible to get linux running on it (for me that is).
 
bennychico11 said:
although 250 for XP64, AMD64 and a board...is a damn good deal.
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Well, I don't think anything I actually use Windows for (gaming only) would be anything special in XP64 if it even worked so I don't really care to have the OS. That leaves the MB and proc and better deals can be had.

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=MB-BA21441

Select MB and pick Asus A8N-E and it is $9 less for a total of $183.

So that means $67 for an OS I don't want plus the gas and hastle of driving to Seattle. Isn't looking like that big of a deal for me ;) I'm sure for someone who wants XP64 it is a decent deal though.

Keep in mind though that MS has filed promotional material with IRS in the past. A coworker recently went to a thing they held and got some "free" software given to him. He had to file for it as income on his taxes for FULL MS LIST PRICE (they sent him a 10somethingorother) and this added up to well over $1000 the way they do their counting (an os anyone can get for $100 is suddenly worth $900). It ended up costing him a great deal of money. If they are saying that the OS is comming complimentary with a purchase of hardware I wouldn't go near it (ie you buy hardware and then they "give" you a free XP CD) unless you are willing to pay taxes on whatever they say it was worth, which could be a small fortune. If they are charging for the OS then I don't see how they could get away with such an action.
 
nroberts said:
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=MB-BA21441

Select MB and pick Asus A8N-E and it is $9 less for a total of $183.
Click to expand...

actually, if you click on the A8N-E motherboard it's $110 PLUS the $192.00 of the AMD64 chip. Select your motherboard and then click buy now. Total comes to $302 with no OS.

yeah, the 64 works great in the 32bit environment, but you're just emulating 32. You're not really using it's full potential. I'm sure one of the reasons they came out with the 64 was because they knew Windows would get up to 64 soon and everyone would eventually switch over. I'm sure in a year or so, you will be too. It's bound to happen...technology advances, people have to upgrade.

I'm guessing they just include the OS as part of the price, probably some promotional thing they're doing with Windows now to get people to use the new version. And if you're "buying" it with hardware, it's most likely an OEM version, which brings the cost down. I ain't drivin' to Seattle either just for this, but still a good deal IMO.
 
bennychico11 said:
actually, if you click on the A8N-E motherboard it's $110 PLUS the $192.00 of the AMD64 chip. Select your motherboard and then click buy now. Total comes to $302 with no OS.
Click to expand...

Hmm...didn't realize that. Well, counting the gas and hastle it is still a better deal.

yeah, the 64 works great in the 32bit environment, but you're just emulating 32. You're not really using it's full potential. I'm sure one of the reasons they came out with the 64 was because they knew Windows would get up to 64 soon and everyone would eventually switch over. I'm sure in a year or so, you will be too. It's bound to happen...technology advances, people have to upgrade.
Click to expand...

Actually I have been running a 64 bit OS for over two years. I was a very early adopter. I use 32 bit 2k but Linux is 64 and has been since day one. I think I got mine like 2-3 months after they made their public release announcement.

I doubt that Windows was a major concern when developing the 64. That's why they have the legacy mode ;) It has been rather obvious for a number of years that this was the logical next step in the evolution of computers. There was actually an article expressing that MS was doomed in this future 64 bit world because their OS simply never did work quite right on current 64 it hardware and they eventually gave up trying. It seemed at that time that MS just wasn't going to make it when the 64 bit processors finally took over and everyone knew they would.

I'm actually wondering how much actually works in the 64 bit Windows. I expect there will be a lot of driver issues for some time to come with a lot of hardware; a lot of legacy hardware may simply stop functioning and never have drivers. I am under the impression, from those that already have the beta when they bought systems, that the 64 bit XP doesn't really work that great and has a big lack of software issue. But that was beta, this is release, maybe things are different. I wouldn't expect to have something that runs as smoothly as the 32 bit version though.

I had some fun in the first few months using 64 bit Linux. My DVD writer didn't work for one; software was somewhat buggy if it even compiled... I don't think it will be that different for the 64 Windows users and might actually be worse.

I'm guessing they just include the OS as part of the price, probably some promotional thing they're doing with Windows now to get people to use the new version. And if you're "buying" it with hardware, it's most likely an OEM version, which brings the cost down. I ain't drivin' to Seattle either just for this, but still a good deal IMO.
Click to expand...

Hopefully they are including it with the price, and yeah it is almost guaranteed to be OEM, but I wouldn't put it past them to sell the hardware and "give" you the OS and then stick you for the taxes later. I wouldn't necissarily turn the deal down if I was inclined toward it in the first place but I would be careful.
 
nroberts said:
I don't think it will be that different for the 64 Windows users and might actually be worse.
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What will be the hitch for XP64 adoption will be that devices must have XP64 compatible drivers. Unlike OS X, XP 64 is entirely 64 bit. I had XP64 installed for a couple weeks. If hardware had drivers, everything worked fine. All my 32-bit software worked fine. Only reason I went back to 32-bit XP was no 64-bit drivers for my CD duplicator and my Epson printer.
 
elevate said:
What will be the hitch for XP64 adoption will be that devices must have XP64 compatible drivers. Unlike OS X, XP 64 is entirely 64 bit. I had XP64 installed for a couple weeks. If hardware had drivers, everything worked fine. All my 32-bit software worked fine. Only reason I went back to 32-bit XP was no 64-bit drivers for my CD duplicator and my Epson printer.
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I think any OS is really going to need 64 bit drivers, but they should be providing a 32 bit emulation layer for user space programs. The 64 has a compatibility mode for 64 bit os w/ 32 bit programs. It is a bit of a hassle to use 32 bit programs because you have to have a whole second set of system libraries that are 32 bit, but the kernel should be providing 32 bit system calls for these libraries. If XP isn't providing this then application availability could very well be a major issue. Theoretically all you need do is recompile programs, but in practice there are always 32 bit dependencies of some sort in the code that are not evident until you try to compile and run on 64 bit machines. Only truely experienced developers that adhere strictly to standards can develop code that is easily recompiled on different architectures like that...and they are very rare (I am not one of them though I try) and windows developers are not exactly known to be very worried about standards :D
 
elevate said:
What will be the hitch for XP64 adoption will be that devices must have XP64 compatible drivers. Unlike OS X, XP 64 is entirely 64 bit. I had XP64 installed for a couple weeks. If hardware had drivers, everything worked fine. All my 32-bit software worked fine. Only reason I went back to 32-bit XP was no 64-bit drivers for my CD duplicator and my Epson printer.
Click to expand...

yeah, that is one of the downsides and probably the only reason I won't upgrade for quite awhile. The biggest thing is my PCI card for the TDM interface which isn't 64bit supported nor ever will be supported...so until I upgrade to HD (which probably won't happen for awhile), I'm stuck using 64bit processor in 32bit windows. ohhhhh well. ;)
 
bennychico11 said:
yeah, that is one of the downsides and probably the only reason I won't upgrade for quite awhile. The biggest thing is my PCI card for the TDM interface which isn't 64bit supported nor ever will be supported...so until I upgrade to HD (which probably won't happen for awhile), I'm stuck using 64bit processor in 32bit windows. ohhhhh well. ;)
Click to expand...

Well the 64 still comes with a lot of benifits even in 32 bit legacy mode.
 
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