Eric,

I find your recommendation for the engineering systems you outlined quite biased towards AMD. You make statements that 'spending extra is worth it in the time saved' but then turn around and recommend a low-priced system that is not truly optimal (or complete). I am in the process of purchasing many high-end workstations for our company currently. I wanted to go with AMD based systems (due to performance and cost) but can not for several reasons:

1) No dual processor support. Regardless of the improved performance of a K7 over the P3 (and I disagree it's 50% - with proper optimized code it's closer to 20%) a dual processor P3 will still outperform a K7 in many of the mainstream engineering applications run on a workstation of this class. Until AMD releases the 760MP this is not going to change. The issue of the 760MP being a viable solution due to power requirements and heat generation of two K7's is also a question - it may not be until the Palomino core comes available that we actually see a viable dual system. If we do see dual processors based on the existing K7 core expect the motherboards to be very pricey due to additional power layers being required due to the current required by two current generation K7's. Also expect to see larger (or dual) power supplies required and a higher level of systems-engineering then any of the DIY systems offer. It will need a proper engineered solution to function reliably.

2) Existing single processor K7 boards may advertise 1.5Gb of RAM support but this is not really the case. Only 256Mb PC133 dimms are widely available that will work in a VIA 133 based motherboard. I tried to purchase systems with 1Gb of Ram from Sterling Harris at Monarch and he could not supply this due to compatibility problems. 768Mb is the maximum and this doesn't cut it for many application. Even 1Gb is tight for some applications. With Intel I can go to 4Gb in either SDRAM or RMDRAM with a P3 without issues.

3) The 760MP chipset will also only support 3 DDR DIMM's. At this time 256Mb is that largest DDR DIMM available. 512Mb will become available in Q3 of 2001 - this is almost a year away still and too far in the distance to wait for. When they become available they will be priced in RAMBUS pricing territory! This doesn't work in the workstation and server channel where 2Gb+ will be the norm by that time.

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