Let's get ready to rumble! Tomorrow, Opteron will be here. Will it be the paper launch many of AMD's recent top-end offerings have seen? Unlikely. Distributors listing Opteron parts on their websites (as "not yet available", here and here, for example) have popped up in recent weeks. AMD extended the launch deadline quite a bit from their original roadmaps.
All of these factors should give Opteron a nice send-off. Still, as of tomorrow there will not be 64-bit Windows support. All Opteron users will have to either use a version of Linux, write their own operating system, or run under the 32-bit versions of Windows out there. But that's one of Opteron's strong points. While 64-bit versions will obviously see speed-ups due to new architectural enhancements, Opteron will still run very well with existing 32-bit software. Initial offerings will be at 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz for single- or dual-processing only. Their model numbers will be 240 and 242, and are expected to arrive at US$340, up to $900 or so for the faster models.
article from
ieXbeta
Apr 21, 2003, 06:17 PM
