Alpha? Sounds fun!

[PhoenixMDM]

I've been hearing alot about Alpha chips outperforming both P4 and AMD. Where can i get one, how much are they??!? LOL!!

Anyone know anything about them, like who makes them, stuff like that?

[Cy]

Wow! This makes me feel really old. :(

Cy

[Sir-Epix]

Originally posted by PhoenixMDM
I've been hearing alot about Alpha chips outperforming both P4 and AMD. Where can i get one, how much are they??!? LOL!!

Anyone know anything about them, like who makes them, stuff like that?

Alpha chips are made by Compaq, and are expensive, because they were made for servers. I heard Intel bought them though, not sure if that is true or not.

[ElvishArcher]

yes, Intel bought them

[TC]

Alpha was originally created by DEC (Digital Equipment Corp) It has by far one of the most powerful integer units of any chip design. The Athlon architecture borrows heavily from the Alpha, including the bus architecture which was licensed. DEC was bought out by Compaq which was a shame, as they let the development and marketing slide to a degree. Intel recently purchased the Alpha division from Compaq, presumably to help bolster their server line of cpu's.

Be ready to fork out upwards of $7-10,000 for a current Alpha workstation. However you can find used and refurbished DEC parts on Ebay. A 533MHz 21164A will crunch about as fast as an 800-900MHz P3.

[Yodums]

Holy thats fast TC. Although too expensive :p

Yodums

[TC]

Originally posted by Yodums
Holy thats fast TC. Although too expensive :p

Yodums Well the older stuff like the 533 is not too bad - usually $500 for a fairly complete system. I had two for a while but I got bored with them. You can't do much with them now days unless you use linux. It's a 64 bit cpu so you either use NT 4 alpha or some version of *nix.

[Sir-Epix]

Originally posted by TC
Alpha was originally created by DEC (Digital Equipment Corp) It has by far one of the most powerful integer units of any chip design. The Athlon architecture borrows heavily from the Alpha, including the bus architecture which was licensed. DEC was bought out by Compaq which was a shame, as they let the development and marketing slide to a degree. Intel recently purchased the Alpha division from Compaq, presumably to help bolster their server line of cpu's.

Be ready to fork out upwards of $7-10,000 for a current Alpha workstation. However you can find used and refurbished DEC parts on Ebay. A 533MHz 21164A will crunch about as fast as an 800-900MHz P3.

Not only bolster their server line, but to hit AMD hard as well. AMD was using the chip to aid them with the integration to 64 bit architechture. Gee now that Intel owns them I wonder if they will still be able to use the chip for help. Smart move by Intel though.

[PhoenixMDM]

Correction: DEC changed their name to Digital when some loser became the head of the corp and made them lose a ton of money. After Digital was nearly bankrupt, a just-emerging company name Compaq bought them, and we got the Compaq we got today. Lol, both my parents used to work for DEC/Digital/Compaq before i was born and they told me alll about it...

$500 for a complete sys? And they're nearly made for linux?? It just gets better... :p

I think i'll do some more research on these things, see if they use IDE, SCSI, or some proprietary thing, if they're compatible with my spare stuff, etc.:D