The 2.2GHz P4 on Linux and Win-XP
Source: The Register
Whether Intel's new 0.13-micron Northwood P4 is a good buy for Linux or Windows users I won't be able to say until I compare it to a similar high-end system by AMD later this week; but for now I can definitely say that, paired with the 850 mobo and 512M RDRAM, it's fast on both operating systems, if not spectacularly reliable.
On re-boots, regardless of which OS I'd been using at the time, and on cold startups into both the Windows and Linux HDDs installed singly, I've experienced intermittent boot failures. There's no error message, no POST panic. The thing just sits there quietly with a blank screen every now and again. A subsequent cold boot usually meets with success; but on a few occasions it's happened twice on successive attempts, though never more than that. All CMOS parameters are set to Intel's defaults. I'm not using SCSI, RAID, USB or any BIOS-dependent boot device like a PCI disk adapter, so this is a bit of a puzzler, and a bit of a disappointment.
