Investigating Dual Processors,

[Cowboybooter]

I am interested in building a dual processor machine;

a> to have a desktop rig for testing stuff, but

b> Primarily for running FaD!

I have read the stuff here about Xeon / AMD and performance.

So, what, in you guys opinion is the best thing out there at the moment?

TIA

:)

Bob

[Xaotic]

It depends on what you're doing more than anything else. I prefer Xeons for high intensity IO and server roles, due to PCI-X slots and improved chipsets. Also, for cases where money is not in very short supply. The AMD XP/MPs are good choices for inexpensive duals that have good overclocking potential and general performance is likewise good. The problems are that the chipset is dated, boards are now out of production and the new Bartons and probably Thortons are coming from AMD in a locked condition. If you can find a good board, you can mod a Mobile Athalon XP to get SMP operation and wire trick the multiplier for a good performance unit. I prefer the Xeons, but no need to pauperize yourself to get good performance.

[Cowboybooter]

Okay, I hear that!

I'm not into overclocking, and price is not an issue!

It's primary purpose is to crunch FaD, it may be used occasionally for the odd scan / copy document, or for my small one to access Cbeebies website ( but even he prefers a laptop )!

Do I deduce you prefer Xeons?

:)

Bob

[Xaotic]

Definitely, but I've heard that the MP/XPs are a bit more efficient for the price for DC projects. There's a good guide if you want to read it here:

http://forum.oc-forums.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=221503

It covers setting up and modifying an inexpensive AMD dually. If you don't want to mod chips and things like that, just substitute MP chips and you'll be good to go. One reason to mod them is that you can still get unlocked chips and mod the multiplier and FSB for around 2Ghz clock levels on 1700+/1800+ Tbred Bs. This creates a very responsive system that crunches like mad.

The Xeons are the other school. Many boards have no potential for OC and costs are generally higher. If you go this route, I recommend staying away from onboard SCSI. I have a bad channel and have had some strange behavior from the onboard U320 chipset. the stock cooling will work, but is loud. I prefer the Dynatron skivved copper heatsinks, but their fans suck. I replaced them with 70mm TMD fans and they run fairly quiet. Watch the FSB when buying processors. Some boards will limit the DDR to PC1600 speeds when using 400Mhz FSB chips. Needless to say you'll be buying registered ECC DDR for these boards. You'll also need an EPS power supply and depending on the mainboard you may need a larger case.

All told there are ups and down to each. I do SCSI RAIDs and high lvels of IO and perfer the PCI configurations offerred in the e7505 Xeon chipset, but it's overkill for most people.

[Cowboybooter]

Okay, that sounds good!

But I really don't want to go down the O/C route, I have too many paranoia's already! :D

I want quiet, to run it 24/7 in a bedroom!

I want efficient in Crunching FaD,

I don't need Hi-Res Graphics, or sounds!

I need a PCI port for wired or wireless NIC!

And that's It! Is Xeon the best that is out there? If so, I will price it up and get moving!

:)

Bob

[Xaotic]

The Xeon boards e7501 or e7505 chipsets will typically come with onboard single or dual gigabit ethernet. The e7501 chipset is more for servers and has onboard graphics and no AGP slot. The e7505 has 8X AGP and usually have onboard sound, more of a workstation board. If you're planning to use regular PCI cards, watch the positioning of the slots and also use the manuals to determine which PCI bus you may be impacting, if you put it into a PCI-X slot. Yes, these boards typically have more than 1 PCI bus. Mine has 2 PCI-X, 1 PCI 32/33 and the 8X AGP. You can truely go nuts with IO cards if you want. There are other chipsets, but I'm more familiar with the Intel ones.

[Cowboybooter]

Okay, although one sided this is definately sounding cool!

I am a HUGE fan of Intel chipset boards, since they have given me ( an intermediate level system builder with older systems ) much less trouble!

So, what would be you 'ideal' build ?

:)

Bob

[mickwish]

Just a FWIW from me - for running DC's, Athlons of any description are better than Xeons due to better handling of floating point calculations. So I'd be looking at a dual Athlon MP system if price where not an object. :cool:

If, however, you are skint like me :o a dual Athlon XP system would be the go. You need to do some fiddling to get the XP CPU's to run on a dual, but as they are half the price or less than the same rated MP CPU's, it's worth it. I believe the Snowman was gonna be trying to make some XP CPU's SMP happy, so it'd be worth asking him if ya wanna go that track.

Otherwise, Athlon MP over Xenons for DC's everytime!! :D

[Xaotic]

I'd probably go with a Supermicro X5DAE(the board comes with HSF if I remember right, but you may want to upgrade them), a pair of 2.4Ghz 533FSB Xeons, at least a GB of PC2100 reg/ECC memory, a civilized video card, good case and a 500 watt or larger EPS power supply. Needless to say, if the budget is larger, go up on the processor speed first, then the RAM. To keep the OS snappy, add a decent U160 SCSI controller with a 15K SCSI drive.

Without the video, case and SCSI, somewhere in the vicinity of 1200.00 using generic pricing from pricewatch. Not too bad considering the prices when they first came out.

[smokin]

I agree about AMD. I run a dual AMD 2000+ rig on DC and it rocks! Way better crunching power than an Intel. If money is no object..look at a dual AMD64 setup. The AMD64 proc is supposed to just rip through DC. Also there is the dual AMD Operton which runs at lower speeds...but wild throughput. As for modding the XP to MP..pretty easy. I posted about it a while back in this forum.. Food for thought..
:)

[Cowboybooter]

Okay again, listening to Xaotic and Mickwish!

1. I have shedloads of Bad Experience with AMD Procs' But things must have improved,

2. The budget is around £1000.00 ( give or take )

3. I want quiet, fast and efficient!

I am being serious ( for once in my life ) If you, ( experience and all ) were me, what would you buy ?

:)

Bob

[mickwish]

Hmm, if this box is gonna be mainly for FAD, then SCSI ain't required, nor is truckloads of RAM. THINK only really uses the CPU to crunch with, so provided you have enough RAM to keep the OS happy, and your HDD has a decent enough throughput, then it will crunch well. :cool:

Of course, if ya wanna experiment and play with stuff, Bob, then SCSI is a must!! :D

If I were looking with an open chequebook I'd be leaning towards a Tyan thunder8W with a couple of Opteron 2.2.G CPU's. :cool:

I dunno much about the Athlon 64 CPU's though, so they'd be worth checking out to see if there are any SMP boards for them yet. ;)

edit: I dunno if you could get a Tyan Thunder and 2 x Opteron for under 1000 pounds. :eek: With a lower budget, I'd be leaning towards the Tyan TigerMP series and either Athlon MP's or looking to see if Athlon 64's can run SMP. Like I said, it's only really CPU speed you need for FAD, so the fancy server stuff is optional, really. ;)

[Mntsnow]

Truthfully I love intel systems as thats about the only thing in our data centers and they are rock solid! But I will say that clock cycle for clock cycle the AMD will put out more FAD work units in the same amount of time. But know this...You will not get a "quiet" system with a dually setup. You Will get a more quiet system with an Intel at the same temps and I like that Intels with throttle back and save the cpu even without a heatsink in place where as the AMD's WILL go up in smoke with just losing the fan!

You will get a dual XP/MP system for about 1/2 the cost of an Xenon system but I will be honest if this system is mainly for FAD then go AMD but if your like me and looking for the best system for overall and willing to put down that much cash then go Xenon!

I have modded many an XP cpu for guys to use as MP's and I personally have a pair of modded XP-1800's and XP-2400's running along with my Genuine MP-2000's so if you want to go that way it's pretty simple

[BBA]

I played a little with a dual opteron 1.6GHz system running WinXP Pro 32 bit. It's cpu performance more than smokled the P4 2.8 Xeon dualees.

I would say the opteron route is the best way to go. The faster ones do cost quite a bit more, but they are more than worth it in speed.

[mholtum]

I know I am going to date myself here, but the best duel I have ever ran was a Duel Pentium Pro Machine. Runs great for a server and NT loves it.. Never had a peoblem. Parts are hard to find but cheap.

[smokin]

LOL mholtum..I still run a dual PPro 200 as well as a dual 500...the PPro runs my mp3 server and the 500's run my web server..
Linux loves them too
:)

[mickwish]

I actually have a quad PPro machine here. :cool: It has been one of my best DC crunchers, always!! :D

I would still trade it for a dual Athlon MP or Opteron, though. They would crunch so much nicer!! :D

But I doubt I'd get enough money for it even if I tried to trade it to get myself a dual Opteron. :p It ain't worth what it used to be, that's for sure. :o

[smokin]

I hear you..I'm still looking at my dual XP/MP thinking...hmmm..do I upgrade the procs that are happily crunching at just under 11 million keys/sec (rc5).or do I add to the herd with an opteron setup..lol..
I think Dad needs a new toy..and one of the kids gets this one...wonder if I can call it an Xmas present....lol
:)

what OS you running on your quad mickwish?

[mickwish]

Got win2k Advanced Server ATM. Just changed from NT Server. It's only a 3 month eval edition of win2k Server, so I'll decide if I stick with winders or move to a *nix before I look for a full version. That'll depend on whether I want to run an FAD queue server on this still, or whether I stay standalone for each cow. And that'll depend on the next FAD client, to see whether it is more network friendly or not. :rolleyes:

[Carl D]

im pretty happy with my dual pentium III 800s.......i only paid 50 for the board and 80 for both of the cpus........dual 933s will be better, if i get another 933...and of course those two 800s will need a board->computers became too addicting



my next smp system, if i win the lottery, will be, intel based........xeons or whatever is out in 2049

im more of a gaming guy and as for gaming.....single cpus seem more supported (doom 3 comes to mind), and i see a athlon 64 in my future

[NDC]

My vote goes to AMD MP duallies as well if you're using this as a cracker box. AMD duallies really give you a good bang for your money without a doubt...

However, my opinion differs if you're going to use this duallie as a work horse such as Graphics, A/V, etc box. Because of the SSE2 support on Adobe products, my dual Xeon 2.4Ghz/533FSB literally flys.

My previous graphic workstation was a Dual MP2000+ on a Tyan S2466N-4M which was a great workstation as well, but I would have to say my dual Xeon not only runs faster, it's also runs much cooler...


Here are the reviews I wrote some time back if you are interested..

TYAN i7505 (S2668AN) (http://www.xtremepccentral.com/modules.php?s=&name=Sections&sop=viewarticle&artid=44)

TYAN Tiger MPX (S2466N-4M) (http://www.xtremepccentral.com/modules.php?s=&name=Sections&sop=viewarticle&artid=27)

[davidw]

CBB, did you get my last PM?

[smokin]

Yeah NDC..from what was posted though..AMD wil do the deal.when it comes to DC i think without bashing Intel..the AMD rules on floating point..
again..it comes to preference..strict DC..there is no other choice
;)

[Cowboybooter]

Okay, thanx all, gonna be looking around in the new year!

:)

Bob

[NDC]

I totally agree, smokin. AMD processors are very fast indeed! But as mentioned above, Intel is more reliable for professional working machines.

Another good example of incompatibility as you might say (?) would be that under some professional applications such as Maya, 3D Studio Max, etc., AMD based systems seem to have glitches. This is something I've seen on other AMD systems in the past as well with other applications...

This was the case with a system I was working on yesterday where system would render 3D images inproperly. I went through the process of trying two different motherboards, CPUs, video card, reinstalling Windows along with all drivers and just Maya to reslove this problem. The problem was still there. Later, this person decided to just go with Intel and it worked like a charm.

I couldn't say if the processor is the problem or the motherboard design. However, even if it was the motherboard design, it still cannot be ignored since AMD processors are used on AMD motherboards which makes up the system...

This also seems to be the case with numerous AMD64 systems regardless of motherboard used for the build. I believe it may have something to do with the memory controller being directly on the processor itself rather than having it controlled via chipset?

Anyhow, AMDs are great processors and very fast. But for a mission critical system, Intel seems to still hold its place in the professional workstation market as well as the corporate market so far....

[Cowboybooter]

Your saying that just reminded me of something, NDC.

I have a game ( one of a few :) ) called Airport Tycoon 2. It will setup, but not run on either of the Duron Lappies! On my wife's Celeron M, it runs like a dream! I just put it down to a game glitch!

:)

Bob

[NDC]

That is an interesting one there, CBB... I wonder if it has more to do with your other hardware on that particular system. Maybe the video card or its driver?

Although I've seen glitches with AMD on complex application, I haven't seen it on games. But then again, who knows?

[SoopaStar]

If you want more info, www.2cpu.com is a great forum and has good deals in their "user to user" selling forum.

[Cowboybooter]

Nice link, SoopaStar!

Thank you!

:)

Bob

[smokin]

I agree NDC..once again..lol
AMD is an "enthusiast" chip as far as I'm concerned..it all depends greatly on what you want out of your cpu(s)
:)

[SoopaStar]

I don't think it will be an enthusiast chip for much longer. Esp. since they have joined teams with Sun for 64bit servers.

[mickwish]

I think the "glitches" you sometimes see on complex software are to do with software coders "optimising" their code for the lack of floating point calculation power in Intel processors. :rolleyes:

AMD processors are definitely more capable of mathematical calculations than Intel ones - no question of it. To get around some of the limitations and speed up their code, programmers have been know to "optimise" it to suit Pentium instruction sets process better. And sometimes that causes problems for other instruction sets. :eek:

Or so I've heard. ;)

[NDC]

SSE2 is what AMD lacks... On the XP and MP processors that is...FX51, AMD64, and Opteron have the SSE2 instructions but kinda early to jump on the AMD wagon for 64bit processing in my opinion... I think it will take some time before the chipsets that support these processors to mature...

[Carl D]

well if you dont hate dell you can try getting one of these > http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2776775720&category=51131&sspagename=rvi:1:1

i would if i had the money, as its a good deal, and would be a excellent cruncher........

:rolleyes:

if only id win the lottery....