We shall restrain ourselves from revealing the emotions and making any denunciations. These tests were run in a beta-version of the operating system, with an emulation applied to a "black horse" CPU... So we’ll just bring the facts to your attention.
The tested Itanium 667MHz platform also included the following hardware: Intel 460GX mainboard, Dual Socket M, 512MB PC100 SDRAM, ATi Rage 128, 2 HDD 18GB Ultra160 SCSI, Whistler Advanced Server 64-bit (Beta 1, Build 2296). The testers used FlasK MPEG, STREAM, distributed.net RC5, some chess program, TestCPU, SiSoft SANDRA, SysMark, WinBench, 3DMark, and Quake 3 to measure the performance of the 32-bit Itanium block. It appeared somewhere between Pentium 75 and Pentium 200, and the work of the last 5 of the above listed tests was utterly unstable.
We repeat it once more: the CPU sample used in the test had lower clock speed and the current version of the operating system - Whistler - was inapt to work with the new processor, to put it mildly. Anyway, the fact is evident. Itanium’s hardware 32-bit orders emulation unit is not a success. It is too early to draw any final conclusions yet, but it sounds pretty likely that the new CPU is absolutely unable to work with old software.
Well, it is no disaster, actually. Itanium is Intel’s first trial in the sphere of 64-bit processors, besides it is not meant for Quake3. However, ideas of the kind don’t shatter the disappointment.