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[Matt]

I was listening to some music music tonight on headphones and kept hearing ticks.

I tinkered around with a lot of things until I found that AMD's Cool'n'Quiet was the cause.  It creates a slight tick in the audio each time it switches the CPU multiplier.

Drivers, buffer settings, ASIO vs DirectSound, etc. don't seem to have any effect.  It's at the hardware level.  This is with an M-Audio Audiophile 2496, but it probably applies to other cards as well.

Anyway, something to keep your eye out for.  It's a bummer, because Cool'n'Quiet is a nice way to save some power, heat, and noise.

[JONCAT]

I had considered C&Q as the last tweak on my DFI 250gb NF3 board a year or so ago, but the was too much ambiguous information of the DFI forum regarding working BIOS fixes etc. The consensus was DFI didn't have their act togther but that C&Q was great on the boards of theirs (NF4?) it worked on. Maybe I'll look again for some developements on this front, or not, actually, considering what your reporting. If I find the time maybe I can try it anyway and reproduce the interference.

DC

[jgreen]

More 'splaining, please.  Any of this affect AMD laptops?

[cncb]

I guess it's a good thing I mainly use s/pdif out.  Although I do use analog out to watch tv quite a bit and never noticed this.  Maybe it is just a case of how your motherboard implements it?

[glynor]

I've definitely had C&Q enabled on my ASUS RD580-based board (A8R32-MVP) and my Gigabyte nF3 board without any similar issue.  I have seen it cause other issues though (particularly with Linux, but sometimes in Windows too), so I generally don't enable it.

On laptops' motherboards, they generally spend a lot more time on the BIOS implementation of it (since it actually matters there a lot more) and they are generally more stable.  If you're having trouble, it's always worth looking for a BIOS update for your motherboard to see if it helps.

[Listener]

Matt,

Thanks for your warning.  I'm about to buy a PC for playing music with MC 11 so the information is very relevant to me.

Any info on the correspding Intel technology for reducing power use?

My goal is to have a solid player that never skips or stalls.  I intend to use MC 11 to play music to in several rooms including one with a high-end audio system.  I think that a guide to setting up a PC for this purpose would be useful to the MC 11 user base and would help prospective users see how MC 11 might benefit them.

Bill

[glynor]

Most of the problems I've seen reported about AMD C&Q apply equally to Intel's Power Management systems.  My recommendation?  Don't buy a cheap, no-name motherboard.  Tier 1, high-quality chipset, and you should be set.

Oh, and if it's a desktop/tower system.... Don't enable the processor throttling.

[hit_ny]

I'm about to buy a PC for playing music with MC 11 so the information is very relevant to me.

My goal is to have a solid player that never skips or stalls. 

I think that a guide to setting up a PC for this purpose would be useful to the MC 11 user base and would help prospective users see how MC 11 might benefit them.

This would be fantastic to have, but so many variables...

m$ got the lead here with the term media-center PC...

..just get whatever hardware's  certified to work with M$ media center, its bound to be even better with MC

ignore the OS part of m$ media center, its XP all right but with active directory neutered, the hardware specs are whats important.

[Matt]

I wanted to mention that even without Cool'n'Quiet, an AMD X2 still uses much less power than comparable Intel chips. (and so makes less heat and noise) 

I couldn't actually see that much difference when measuring with a Kill-A-Watt, because the AMD uses so little power at idle regardless.

It looks like Intel worked magic with their upcoming Duo chips, so this may be changing, but we'll save that discussion.

[Listener]

<Glynor>
> Don't buy a cheap, no-name motherboard. 
> Tier 1, high-quality chipset, and you should be set.

Could you define Tier 1?

I've been browsing motherboards at newegg.com but I'm not sure that I understand how to relate those brands to your "Tier 1" term

<hit_ny>
>> I think that a guide to setting up a PC for this purpose ...

> This would be fantastic to have, but so many variables...

> m$ got the lead here with the term media-center PC...

> ..just get whatever hardware's  certified to work with M$ media center,
> its bound to be even better with MC Smiley

> ignore the OS part of m$ media center, its XP all right but
> with active directory neutered, the hardware specs are whats important.


I didn't state that I'm primarily interested in audio not video.
Just what part of the hardware do you think would be better in a M$ Media Center PC?

  I took a quick look at Microsoft' website and didn't find any detailed recommendations for H/W, configuration or recommended / not recommended applications.  I'm certainly not going to buy a packaged HP or SONY system just to get a $M MC approved configuration. I don't see the point of your advice.

I think that Windows setup and application issues can be killer for running a real-time application in a PC.

A few weeks ago, I learned on this forum that the anti-virus s/w I was running was a likely cause of playback glitches.  Good advice that helped me.  I'm looking for more good advice.   

Bill

[glynor]

For Tier 1 motherboards I'd look at:

Asus
Gigabyte
MSI

Also, brand new ABIT boards are worth considering (but basically anything newer than Intel Conroe boards or their very newest AMD Socket 939 -- like the ATI RD580 -- boards are okay, but the older stuff -- back to Pentium 3 stuff when they were primo -- is junk).

While they aren't strictly Tier 1 I'd also look at DFI.  They've been putting out some extremely quality boards lately.  DFI boards do tend to perform near or at the highest (especially when gaming or overclocking), but they tend to take a lot of configuration work.  Luckily, they have a forum almost as active and dedicated as MC's at http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/index.php

First of all.... If you're going Intel, go Conroe (and wait at least a month or two or you'll pay early adopter prices).  Don't even mess with the Pentium 4 or D processors.  They're really junk.  If you're going AMD, wait until next week.  On or around the 24th AMD is planning to slash (by as much as 54%) their processor prices.  They haven't (of course) officially announced this, but it's widely reported.  They have to really, as finally Intel's new architecture has caught up to (and really surpassed) AMDs (it took them long enough).  Of course, this is compared to AMD's older generation.  AMD has a new generation of processors coming next year, and supposedly it will be pin compatible with the current/brand-new Socket AM2 (meaning working on the same motherboards assuming they support the current standard as they should).  Personally, for a completely fresh build, I'd probably wait a week or two and go with a Socket AM2 AMD board, for the potential of AM3 further on down the line.  If I wanted a Laptop, I'd wait 2 months and go with a Core 2 Duo system.... Probably an Apple that I'd throw Windows XP on via Bootcamp.

If I already had some DDR memory that I could re-use, I'd look at a Socket 939 AMD Athlon64 (or Opteron 165 really) based system.  The ASUS A8R32-MVP ATI RD580 board is spectacular (supposedly ABIT and DFI made nice ATI based boards too).  The ASUS is what I'm writing this to you on though.  For nVidia based systems, I'd look at DFI, Gigabyte, and ASUS.  I'd only look at one that supported 2x16 channel PCIe slots though if you think you might ever go SLI (dual video card).  If not, just look at an nForce4 Ultra.  Don't go lower than an Ultra.

Just decide if you want an nVidia video card, or an ATI.  If you want an ATI, I'd look at the ASUS AM2 RD580 board when it comes out (be careful though, there is currently a Socket 939 board that won't work with a brand new AM2 processor).  The AM2 ATI board aren't out yet, but are coming soon (I'd also check the offerings from DFI and ABIT).   Do not buy any of the older ATI RD480 or SB450 based boards as they have problems.  Only an ATI RD580 with either the ATI SB600 (for AM2) or the ULi south bridge (for Socket 939) are worth considering on the ATI front.

Though I haven't read any reviews of the new generation of nVidia boards, the DFI nForce4 (socket 939) boards couldn't be beat with tweaks and the ASUS nForce4 2x16 PCIe board was primo without tweaks, so I'd look at those brands.  I also hear the ABIT board is killer (but only the 2x16 channel PCIe board).

For Intel boards I'd go with an Intel chipset.  The others (VIA and nVidia mostly) just aren't up to snuff (the new ATI RD580+SB600 based boards should be nice but I haven't read much on them and I'm not sure they're even out yet).  Again, for Intel, consider nothing but Conroe (AKA Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Extreme).   Their Pentium 4 and Pentium D lines are dead, and seriously underperform the AMD offerings.  Conroe whomps ass, but isn't out yet, and who knows what pricing will be... The shipments on them are rumored to be slow and few.

Make sure to check reviews, but at a variety of places.  So many review sites are biased, so I always check a bunch of them:

http://www.anandtech.com/
http://techreport.com/
http://www.beyond3d.com/
http://www.driverheaven.net/
http://www.firingsquad.com/
http://www.xbitlabs.com/
http://www.hardocp.com/

As far as Video offerings (TV tuners), I like the ATI 650/550 Pro based cards, particularly Sapphire branded ones.  They are simple.  Junk free.  Cheap and good.  I'm somewhat of an ATI fan boy though.  I just don't like the drivers on nVidia cards (they confuse me), and I like ATI's often superior video quality (for A/V type playback rather than game-focused).  For nVidia, I'd probably look at BFG.

Hope this helps.  I had a lot of wine tonight (and rum punch and tequilla shots -- okay, only one of those), so if I made any bad typos or anything, just ignore me.

Have a fabulous night.

Goodbye.

[hit_ny]

I didn't state that I'm primarily interested in audio not video.
Just what part of the hardware do you think would be better in a M$ Media Center PC?

  I took a quick look at Microsoft' website and didn't find any detailed recommendations for H/W, configuration or recommended / not recommended applications.  I'm certainly not going to buy a packaged HP or SONY system just to get a $M MC approved configuration. I don't see the point of your advice.

Why limit yourself to audio only ?

if i was buying a PC, its got to be good for at least 5 yrs, having good video as well surely can't hurt. Note that i'm talking about A/V type video as opposed to gaming video.

In fact i'm still on a P3 700 & 256MB RAM on XP, i plan to upgrade in a yr or 2, when vista is out and fairly well understood. Not that i want to migrate towards it, but the option is there if needed.

I was talking about looking at the specs for whats recommended for a m$ media pc, then match or exceed with any other independent vendor. Type of CPU, motherboard, video card etc.

[glynor]

More sober Glynor has to agree with hit_ny on this one.  Of course, basically any modern computer that you buy or put together yourself is going to be able to handle video (even low end models).

I just wouldn't skimp on the RAM.  hit, I can't believe you deal with only 256MB of ram in Windows XP (2 GB boy here says).... That would make my eyes bleed and my brain hurt.

If you're building a new machine, I wouldn't go with less than 1 GB, and 2 would really be better (for the eventual expectation of playing with Vista after the first Service Pack comes out).

On another note, I looked through my previous posting and was pretty shocked at how coherant it is overall, considering my state when I wrote it.  Funny what you can pull off....

[hit_ny]

I just wouldn't skimp on the RAM.  hit, I can't believe you deal with only 256MB of ram in Windows XP (2 GB boy here says).... That would make my eyes bleed and my brain hurt.

More RAM would not hurt but at the prices asked for yesterday's tech, its just not worth it. I use a RAM Manager and it tells me i have like 80MB+ to spare so i'm not so sure more memory would make things any faster, not for this rig. It def makes life more bearable.

Everything is on internal HDs as well, @UDMA-4 or 66MB/s.

I've stopped all but the most essential services in XP. I have a 30k mp3 file library and MC gives a response time to queries of < 5s. With more complicated ones it can get as long as 30s, so i don't run those very often. This might be highly annoying if you're used to sub-second response times i have to admit.

It's just MC running on this box. Are there any fancy graphics, no, all i need is the cover art viz.

This is what i would call an audio only machine.

[glynor]

Ahhh... For that purpose you wouldn't really need much more than what you've got.  To actually try to use other applications though....  That explains it.

If you're in the market for a new PC, start paying attention.  AMD and Intel are poised to get into a price and performance war again, which they haven't really been doing for the past 2 years (AMD has been dominating performance-wise).  Conroe is about to change all that....

End game is... It's about to become Very Good To Be A Consumer^TM.  We should start seeing prices plummet and performance skyrocket -- especially this "Back To School" and Holiday seasons.

[hit_ny]

Yep thx for the heads up.

[newsposter]

fast disk, fast disk, fast disk, repeat after me, fast disk

The disk drives are the slowest part of any computer.  I am constantly amazed at the amount of $$ that people put into cpu speed and ram and still buy 5400 rpm ATA100 drives.

The diff between a 5400 rpm ATA100 drive and a 10k rpm ATA133 drive is a few 10s of dollars.  Don't cheap out.

Yes, I still like ATA133 over SATA.  The parallel data paths offer a very high percentage of the theoretical speed of SATA and at the same time give a lot more thought to error correction and data integrity.

[Mr ChriZ]

fast disk, fast disk, fast disk, repeat after me, fast disk

There is a lot in what you say. I've just put a Maxtor ATA133 drive in a machine,
with a only a 1700 processor/512 ram, and I think it's possibly the fastest XP SP2 machine
I've ever seen return from hibernate.

Our uni machines are all hi-speed Pentium 4's, some with duo processors,
most now with 1 gig of memory, but all with absoloutley rubbish HD's,
and they're dog slow for everyday tasks. (To be fair uni also piles all sorts of crap on them too)

[newsposter]

The 'problem' is only going to get worse with the Core2 and (in November) Core4 CPUs from Intel and the multi-cores from AMD.

A Maxtor 6L300R0 300Gb drive (16 mb cache, 7200 rpm, ATA133) with a 3 year warranty costs under $100 these days.

At some point, it makes a lot of sense to get an intelligent disk controller card to front-end your disk drives.  Smart controllers with even more cache are suprisingly cheap, sometimes as low as $20 but usually around $50- each.

In my raid servers I buy full ATX boards that allow me to manually force-set interrupts on each PCI slot.  I then add controller cards and put one drive on each PCI slot, the boot flash-drive in IDE0 and a cheap cd-rom in IDE1.  Pretty fast.  If I need to add capacity I can put up to 4 drives onto each PCI slot but usually restrict myself to a max of 2 drives per slot.

[hit_ny]

fast disk, fast disk, fast disk, repeat after me, fast disk

Can you say 3x250GB PATA @ 7200RPM ..all under $100/piece (some time back now)..the magic price point.

SATA-1 isn't worth it imo, my next upgrade would be 500GB SATA2 in a cpl of yrs...should help lots with video.

You also get more speed with a bigger drive if your OS partition is on the outer partition, since that part moves faster than parts nearer the centre, also its packed in denser so faster reads. All this means stuff loads up maybe 10-20% faster, but once its in memory its a function of CPU+bus bandwidth+memory.

[Mr ChriZ]

You also get more speed with a bigger drive if your OS partition is on the outer partition, since that part moves faster than parts nearer the centre, also its packed in denser so faster reads. All this means stuff loads up maybe 10-20% faster, but once its in memory its a function of CPU+bus bandwidth+memory.

Ah, but did you take into account that the space is allocated for this very reason edge to centre?
Hence the first partition naturally should be on the outside and it gets slower the more you use up?

There is a free bench mark you can use which graphs this, but i can't remember which one.

[Listener]

Glynor and others,

Thanks for the advice on choosing a system.  This will be my 13th personal computer but I hadn't been following the market for several years.  The list off review web sites added to my reading list.

I had decided to wait to build a new PC until the Core Duo 2 and compatible motherboards were available or until AMD rediced prices on their processor chips.  The 35 W TDP chips look like a reasonable alternative for a Core Duo chip.

I agree that 1 GB is a minimum for a new system and 2 GB is better.

Bill

[hit_ny]

At some point, it makes a lot of sense to get an intelligent disk controller card to front-end your disk drives.  Smart controllers with even more cache are suprisingly cheap, sometimes as low as $20 but usually around $50- each.

Wihtout getting into RAID, how does an intelligent controller card improve performance, even with a larger cache.

The only need i've had for controller cards ie Promise is to add more HDs, when the onboard controllers are full or for backups to external HDs.

[glynor]

Speaking of AMD.... It looks like the rumors might be true.

According to a report in The Globe and Mail, the board of directors at AMD has allegedly approved the takeover of Canadian graphics firm ATI Technologies. The reports said that the information was released by an investment banker that was part of the discussions. According to other sources, AMD executives were also seen at ATI's headquarters in Thornhill, Ontario. The report indicated that AMD is considering a $5.6 billion takeover bid for ATI.

Yeah... It's all about to get very interesting.  Imagine, a GPU that can plug into a AM2 CPU socket on the motherboard.  No more worrying about bus speeds and interconnect bandwidth (and dongles or bridges for dual-GPU operation).  Just wide open serial hypertransport 2.0 between the CPU and the GPU, direct access to cache and system RAM....

Mmmmmmm.... F-A-S-T.

[newsposter]

You also get more speed with a bigger drive if your OS partition is on the outer partition, since that part moves faster than parts nearer the centre, also its packed in denser so faster reads. All this means stuff loads up maybe 10-20% faster, but once its in memory its a function of CPU+bus bandwidth+memory.

I think you've got that inner/outer partition thing backwards......

The time it take for a drive to deliver data is goverened more by the movement of the head/arm assemblies than the rotational speed of the platters.  Data transfer speed is closely coupled to the speed of the platters but time to first access is critical.

If you're going to tune the physical placement of your data, it needs to be put into places that require the shortest possible head movement.  That is the inner tracks.

NTFS (Windows) complicates this a lot by making it nearly impossible to place your data adn then make sure that it stays there.  The various Unixii and Linuxii filesytems (in particular IBM JFS1/2 and SGI XFS) make it easy.

Intelligent disk controllers have fast processors running sophisticated and adaptive read/write ahead programs.  Couple this with read caches of 128Mb and more (I personally don't trust write caching more than 16 Mb without full battery backup, but that's just me) and a decent controller is **always** reading disk and adjusting the cache contents based on recent access patterns.  So the CPU and OS just need to ask for data and more often than not, it will be there.

If you are lucky (smart??) enough to have purchased a mobo that doesn't share the PCI slots and interrupts with other devices (connecting each PCI slot individually to an advanced Northbridge chip plus a BIOS that lets you force-set the ABCD interrupts) you can get sustained 100 mbps and burst 133mbps speeds out of connected disk drives.  This speed is pretty close to the nominal max speed of pure platter / head / interface data transfers.  It's nice to get all of the performance out of a system that you think that you've paid for.

Another thing a decent controller lets you do is to turn off read/write caching at the OS level.  This gains you a lot of CPU and system ram performance.

Anything other than simple disk mirroring at home is a waste.  I know of no one who runs striped raid sets at home who has practiced the necessary raid recovery scenarios.  Just run mirrored disk and don't worry about striping.  If you don't practive a disk recovery from a failed stripe set, there is no way that you'll be able to do it 'for real' when the time comes.

As far as prices (ebay) go, you can get a 64 Mb Promise controller for about $125, a 128 Mb 3Ware controller goes for $300.  Both Promise and 3Ware recently improved the throughput of their controllers by about 33%.  These prices are for current models.  If an older controller (still pretty fast when compared to a dumb controller or NTFS alone) suits you, the n-1 generation cards can be had for about 2/3 the price of the new ones.

[glynor]

Yep.  The rumors were true.  This should be interesting...

AMD (NYSE: AMD) and ATI (TSX: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) today announced plans to join forces in a transaction valued at approximately $5.4 billion. The combination will create a processing powerhouse by bringing AMD’s technology leadership in microprocessors together with ATI’s strengths in graphics, chipsets and consumer electronics. The result: A new and more formidable company, determined to drive growth, innovation and choice for its customers, particularly in the commercial and mobile computing segments and in the rapidly-growing consumer electronics market.

Also, those price cuts I mentioned earlier?  They've taken effect.  Newegg hasn't dropped yet (probably when the sun dawns over California), but Monarch Computers is already showing the new pricing.

[hit_ny]

So we wait how long (?)...to see the products of this marriage.

it takes them 18 months to put out new products right (?)

and that's when there aren't any corporate integration issues to deal with.

[glynor]

ATI's product refresh cycle is about 10 months.  One reported goal for the combined company is to accelerate the CPU refresh cycle from the current 5 years to about 12 months (by the end of the decade).

This goes along with the current industry shift away from massive general purpose cores towards a system more like Sun's Niagra (many small, simple, "dumb" cores all operating in parallel).  Most of Intel's current "5 year out" product development is in this area, and one would assume AMD's is as well.

Interesting article about all this here in th'Inq.

That said, AMD/ATI announced today that they expect the first "fruits" of their new collaboration to appear in Q1 2008 (hmmm... right around the time they previously announced AM3 and Torrenza would appear).

One problem many "pundits" see with this technology is that current discreet graphics cards have direct access to ultra-high-speed GDDR4 RAM built into the boards.  Even though Hypertransport 3 could provide a very high speed link directly to the system RAM, current DDR2/3 speeds would still limit bandwidth to far less than what is available currently with GDDR4 built into the graphics board. I see this as very short sighted for a few reasons...

1) Who's to say they won't incorporate GDDR4/5 onto the motherboard as part of the chipset?  If you plunked down 512MB of uber-fast GDDR "graphics cache" on the mainboard, and could also access the still-pretty-darn fast DDR3 system RAM (much like a hard drive "swap" partition) when needed, I think that would go a long way towards alleviating those concerns.  Just look at what ATI/nVidia have been doing with their low-end chips lately (using system RAM over the PCIe bus).  Hypertransport is certainly much faster than PCIe.

2) Who cares about high-end performance?  The dollars are ALL in low-end "mainstream" integrated graphics.  The vast majority of graphics products shipped are all integrated (mostly Intel-branded).  If AMD/ATI could bost vastly improved graphics and video processing (ala AVIVO) with their "cheap" mobile and desktop chipsets (with the potential for at least one future "upgrade").... That's a huge rock to toss at Intel's VIIV initiative.  HTPC and Laptop graphics (which are where the industry is heading) are all about low-power, low-heat, integrated chips.

[hit_ny]

so we a get a stronger AMD to compete with Intel.

But we lost the competition between ATI & nVidia.

Since ATI will mostly work better on AMD and nVidia forced to bolster Intel.

[glynor]

Since ATI will mostly work better on AMD and nVidia forced to bolster Intel.

While this seems obvious initially, if you look at AMD's past actions, this is less likely than it initially appears.  AMD has historically built it's brand by cooperating with partners in the tech industry, as opposed to Intel (and to a slightly lesser degree nVidia) who tries to dominate them.  For example, even back when AMD did offer their own chipsets, they remained completely open and supportive to third party chipset vendors (at that time VIA and eventually nVidia and ATI).  AMD has a very good reason to continue to support nVidia's chipset solutions equal to their own -- that their brand has been built by offering customers choice (as opposed to the competition).  Besides, while ATI's current chipset tech is very, very good, they couldn't hope to ramp up to produce the quantity of chipsets required without nVidia.  While they will have the ability to start using AMD's old 80-90nm fabs (once they switch CPU manufacturing over to 65nm) for chipset production, those kinds of changes won't happen overnight....

It's far more likely that AMD will smartly continue to support and encourage nVidia chipsets in the "prosumer" space and the "pro" space (the nForce 5xx and nForce Pro chipsets), and not give themselves any unfair advantages there.  I think they'll focus the assets from the acquisition on areas where ATI is historically strong (and nVidia comparatively weak)... Mobile chipsets and HTPC Small-Form-Factor designs with integrated graphics.  That's not to say that AMD/ATI will stop competing with nVidia in the discreet graphics market (AMD has already said this isn't the case).

AMD/ATI can't afford to "write off" the huge percentage of the discreet graphics market that uses Intel chipsets and CPUs -- not by a long shot.  So they can't just cede that market share to nVidia.  As counter-intuitive as it may feel, it's quite likely that you could buy a Dell or HP in the coming months with both Intel and AMD inside.  And they certainly won't segregate the market like you describe.  That's something you can only do if you have monopoly power (otherwise they'd lose all kinds of sales from all the people with Intel CPUs).  We're just so used to these hardware tech firms weilding monopoly power that it seems like the obvious answer to what they'll do next!

I think this merger is mostly about low-end parts and HTPC uses.  Integrated graphics chipsets, mobile chipset design, low power HTPC designs, AVIVO.  These are all areas where a large share of the market will be centered in the next 3-5 years, and they are all areas where AMD was weak and Intel was strong.  This changes all of that.

The potential for high-end graphics to be dropped into an AM3 slot (or combining GPU and CPU functions on the same die) is icing on the cake, but certainly not the reason for the merger.

Conversely, Intel doesn't need nVidia.  Intel is already the worlds largest supplier of graphics chips and chipsets.  If they wanted to build their own high-end discreet graphics parts, they could do so themselves.  Quickly and more cheaply than they could buy nVidia, and without all the trouble of integrating a very different corporate culture.  Also, apparently, anyone who knows nVidia well knows that they wouldn't react well to a buyout at all (it's apparently very much a cult-of-personality CEO driven company).

So... Yes.  We get a much stronger AMD to compete with Intel.  We also get to keep getting nVidia and ATI graphics cards, for both Intel and AMD platforms.  And, we get the little added bonuses of:

1) screwing Intel's Conroe some.  Intel had been planning on supporting ATI's Crossfire platform on their own chipsets, and promoting it as Conroe's big dual-GPU solution (since nVidia wouldn't play nice with them) -- this likely won't happen now, but it's too late for Intel to jump ship and switch to nVidia or their own dual-GPU solution.

2) potential for great Torrenza-enabled GPU drop-ins in the future.  The potential for price-performance advances in the graphics market for this tech is huge.

3) Maybe, just maybe AMD/ATI will have enough power to push a unified dual-GPU solution.

[glynor]

Newegg just dropped AMD's CPU prices...

The Athlon X2 3800+ (Socket 939) was $289 this morning, and now it's $169.00