Attached Link: Link

"NewTek, Inc., announced today the creation of the first 3D animation modeled, animated and rendered entirely in a native Windows 64-bit environment. Using Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and the beta version of LightWave 64 on a 64-bit AMD Opteron TM with 32GB of RAM" --------- Uhm...THIRTY-TWO Gigabytes of Ram? Holy Cr*p Batman.... See entire story at link. Also, has movie and still image downloads. AgentSmith

Maybe they meant 3.2GB...? If there is a board that will support more then 10GB of ram I want it now...But then we would have to own a company like NewTek...

A LOT of boards support huge amounts of RAM. The wait has been for windows to allow this bandwidth. http://www.tyan.com/products/html/opteron.html http://www.tyan.com/products/html/xeon.html The mac G5 can hold up to 8GB and use all of it, windows x64 now allows that for windows boards. In theory, 64-bit boards can adress something like 16 billion terabytes of RAM versus the 4GB limit of 32-bit systems. Memory is still fairly "large" as it stands, so it will be very hard to cram more than 16GB into a normal box-type system, and will make the biggest advances in workstations and cluster applications in which size is a lot less of an issue.

Remember that the processor must be a 64-bit processor to use this amount of RAM. Anything other than an opteron, G5, or AMD 64 running windows x64 or OSX or a 64-aware version of linux will NOT be able to use more than 4GB, so if you don't have this processor/OS combination putting more than 4GB of RAM in will be a huge waste. Also keep in mind that windows XP cannot fully adress 4GB as it is. The maximum amount of RAM you can put in a 32-bit wondows box wiuthout wasting money is 3GB. 4GB in a windows machine is only able to use about 3.2GB, so is the extra 200MB worth the extra gig of RAM?

http://store.orbitmicro.com/commerce/catalog/spcategory.jsp?category_id=1016 You'll have to call for the price

http://store.orbitmicro.com/commerce/ccp3087-tyan-tiger-k8w-s2875-dual-amd-opteron-socket-940--s2875anrf-102130.htm http://store.orbitmicro.com/commerce/ccp3083-tyan-thunder-k8s-pro-s2882-dual-amd-opteron-socke-s2882g3nr-102126.htm Looks to be about $450 for the low end of 16GB

Quad processing for $1800 :) http://store.orbitmicro.com/commerce/ccp3081-tyan-thunder-k8qs-s4882-quad-amd-opteron-socket-9-s4882ug2nr-102124.htm

Giddy with fantasy dreams of building my own "HAL"

And not to forget my mac allegiance:
Mac G5 dual 2.7Ghz

Mac G5 deal 2.7Ghz

and then get four of these: 2GB memory pack at $250 each and for $3500-$4000 you get a dual 64-bit system with 8GB RAM. as you can see the Mac 2.5Ghz is about equal if not slightly faster than the opteron 252 in processing power, and the opteron system costs about $1200 more: The 2.7Ghz model will undoubtedly perform even better.

Message edited on: 04/29/2005 20:19

Nice to see Mac's getting some sort of price break over a PC for once. (and, I don't even use a Mac) Yet another sign of the end of days... AS

(grins at AgentSmith!) Aye, it's nice to finally see the G5 rendering anything faster than an AMD. Maybe it IS worth the extra dough, after all these years! (note the sarcasm, my friends!) But honestly, when I read the topic title I thought you meant 32 MB, not 32 GB! That's just intense, and I'm really looking forward to 64-bit OS's....

I'm looking at an AMD 64-bit 3000+, just because its an inexpensive option right now, but I won't probably be building a new PC for a few more months. AS

Aye, I'm still using a series of Athlon 2000's, non-64-bit, under XP Pro... Quite happy with them, but I'm gearing up towards some 3000's early this summer... Hopefully I can get a deal on some 64's. Funny how catch-phrases really help with marketing. Remember the Commodore 64? The Nintendo 64? (grins)

So how long before the 128's?

5 years.

Currently looking at a dual opteron box myself. 5 years eh (hey I'm Canadian, have to throw that in every now and then, it's the law here!) I remember a cartoon in a tech mag, it was of two storefronts, side by side. One a bakery, the second a computer shop. In each window was the same sign "Day olds - half price!"

Actually, you can run a form of Linux on the 128bit PS2.......but what good is that unless your a code monkey.

Did anyone notice that little blurb..."The final rendered animation was completed in one render pass". One render pass?! Holy moly!!