Hen's teeth - two of 'em!

For my next trick, I'll produce two each Intel Xeon MP 3.0Ghz processors, the seriously heavy little doobers with 4Mb L3 cache. Picking them up, they feel like they're made of depleted uranium! Evidently, the extra onboard cache makes them considerably more dense than their Xeon DP cousins.

These were the pinnacle of the Socket 603/400Mhz front side bus generation of processors, and were intended to play with others in batches of 4 or more per server. I just wanted two for insertion into my IBM Intellistation M-Pro 6850 workstation (one of 150 machines left over from the Lord of the Rings lease), and so that's exactly where they went!

They don't look much different than the 2.8Ghz/2Mb L3 cache processors I sourced and pictured earlier, but I can tell a definite improvement in performance, as well as an increase in heat output via the operation of the thermostatically-controlled fans in the Intellistation. A Koolance Exos water-cooling system is on the short list, as a matter of fact. Regardless, that's it for processor upgrades in this particular machine, because it cannot transition to the newer Socket 604/533Mhz FSB. That's fine, because the next IBM workstation I get is going to be a 64-bit beast. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the ride, and cannot resist taunting folks with pictures of expensive semiconductors: