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I know a lot of you are gonna be saying that there is no mobo with two x16 PCI-E slots so let me point out one right now:

Tyan Thunder K8WE - definitely the top of the line for dual-opteron mobo's right now IMHO.

Anyways, the reason this is a stupid idea is of course that as soon as someone 'upgrades' to this and squeezes out a refresh rate higher than our monitors can produce or our eyes can detect, we will have our next-gen cards and games.

Next-gen cards of course will have hardware features (read: steeped in the architecture) that no matter what you do, this generation of cards won't be able to support. For example, think of the GeForce 4MX versus the GeForce 3 Ti 200. As you may know, the 4MX does not have any shaders and the Ti 200 does. Even if I bundled up 4 4MX's, I would not be able to render reflective water in Far Cry or Half Life 2 (assuming the game in question allowed it with out inferior GPU first of all) simply because there is no dedicated hardware for volumetric per-pixel effects.

So then, instead of getting more GPU's (or spending money on a more expensive mobo just to be able to SLI) people should just wait until we actually need that extra juice - and now certainly is not the time. I recall that in one of the Unreal 3 Engine demos from a long while back, someone commented that the 6800's would run U3 like crap even on low settings (I think they said 25 FPS).

Integrated boards are okay sometimes, and you don't have to use the features provided.

Here's a link to an Nvidia based Athlon 64 solution that should be rock solid.

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tomcatk8e.html

Heh, note the ATI graphics controller on an Nvidia chipset board.

I've always built my own systems from components. Doing so may cost more than a pre-built unit, but the big advantage to DIY is that you get to pick every single component based on YOUR standards. You're not constrained by a group decision by some collection of profit-hungry BoD members.

When building any system, it is CRITICAL to match what you want in a computer to the components chosen, and there is a definite trade-off between system speed and stability.

Example: I have no interest whatsoever in 99.9% of the available computer games, but I also do some high-end EDA work (notably electronic schematics, circuit simulation, and PC board design). This calls for computing power that is at least somewhat comparable to systems built specifically for gaming. I also knew that stability (as in resistance to any sort of crashing, application or system) was critical to me.

Like you, I don't like a ton of extra stuff on my motherboards. With that in mind, I chose a Tyan dual-CPU board for the AMD Athlon MP chips, specifically the Tiger MPX. I kitted it out with two processors right from the get-go (Athlon MP2600's), and a full gig of ECC DRAM. The board itself comes with two serial, one parallel, two USB, and a 3Com 10/100 NIC all on board. Everything else is left to the end user. These days, that's about as bare-bones as I've seen any board get.

Tyan motherboards have a great reputation for stability in the face of all kinds of different configurations, but they're not very overclockable and, thus, not very popular with the gaming crowd. Tyan is the board you choose if you're building a serious server or high-end workstation, not something to game with.

One other thing that is absolutely vital if you're serious about DIY: Follow the CPU manufacturer's recommendations for motherboards, power supply, memory, and cooling. I cannot stress this strongly enough, particularly where the motherboard and power supply are concerned! Besides the Tyan mo-bo, I opted for Corsair memory DIMMs and a 550W power supply from PC Power & Cooling, all in accordance with AMD's recommendations for the MP series CPUs. A visit to their site will provide you with hardware recommendations for any of their CPUs, and it looks like Intel provides a very similar aid on their site.

The system has been with me for nearly two years now, and I've had ZERO trouble with it. Windows 2000 Pro (you won't catch me using XP, ever) has been solid as a rock on it, as have every single one of my applications.

Building your own system has a lot to say for it but, as others have pointed out, be prepared to pay more than you would for a pre-built box.

Happy tweaking.

I see lots of advice that say buy a motherboard with extra stuff and if you need to disable it in the bios. But many new motherboards are making a choice to go with a non-standard IO layout. While usually this means it comes with the ATX plate you need, there are those of us who bought into cases that use an older style of ATX back plate, non-standard size ATX back plate, or in even more rare and cheaper cases no plate what so ever.

For example... my case is an HP Vectra desktop with that Asus a7v333 motherboard. I'm odd I know. In order to get the provided plate to fit properly I'd need to cut the hole larger by about 10cm or so. Further, the audio jacks extend above the size of the hole making the top jack unuseable.

Umm... I think you're the one that is mistaken, I did look at the datasheet on the board- I looked at the block block diagram that Tyan has on their website- The 2050 is off of the secondary CPU, and the 2nd x16 and 1 Gb Lan port (page 2 of the pdf)- everything else is off of the the primary northbridge (2200). Which kinda messes up my idea of what SLI is- I thought the PCI-E cards could talk to each other directly- actually, they have to make hops over 3 different hypertransport links (PCI-E x16 to 2200 to primimary cpu over hypertransport, hypertransport to secondary cpu, hypertransport to 2050, 20 secondary x16 PCI-E.

I'll just extend on that...

The Athlon used an external bridge chip that connected directly to each processor (the 760, as used on the Thunder K7).

The Opteron processors connect directly to each other, and one (or more) of them also connect to the rest of the computer. It's glueless, like in this board. Good thing, too, because one chip that connected to 4 or 8 processors would have so many pins on it that it would be incredibly expensive.

Tyan offers a dual-Opeteron board with dual x16 PCI-Express slots. http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html

The tyan s2895 (thunder k8we)
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html

(just preordered one myself),

The Iwill DK8EW and DK8ES
http://www.iwillusa.com/product_2.asp?p_id=91&sp=Y

However, the Athlon-FX does not have enough coherent HT links for multiple cpus, so you will have to use the opteron 2xx series. As for dual 16x vs dual 8x, there is no real world performance diff.

Also, there are number of other mobo makers with similar boards on the way based on the nvidia 2200, 2050, and amd 8131/8132 chips.

I've googled, but can't seem to locate any commercially available AMD MBs supporting more than 4 sticks of RAM, or 4 gigs.

Some Tyan motherboards will take quite a lot of RAM. But this one means you'll need to have 4 CPU's to use all those banks.

I really like the specs on the Tyan S4882. Quad Opteron, 32GB RAM, and lots of stuff you probably don't want/need. It's a sweet motherboard, nonetheless.

No, it is not.
Just look at the diagram at ftp://ftp.tyan.com/datasheets/d_s4882_100.pdf. Those four SATA channels must share the bandwidth of 133MB/s with all other legacy PCI cards, USB and the graphics controller.
Also the Dual SCSI-320 and the Dual GB NICs share the same 533MB/s bus bandwidth.
This means, if you want fast I/O, you have to buy an extra PCI-X card for the other PCI-X bus.

There are a few possible solutions you might want to look at for a big-RAM server. Now, if you really want 64GB and AMD Opteron processors than you really only have one choice, the HP Proliant DL585. That's the only Opteron solution that I know of which supports 64GB of memory.

If you can get by with a bit less memory then you have some other solutions. Tyan carries quite a number of boards with varying capabilities. The trouble here is that the Opteron processors are limited to 8GB of memory per processor, so to get 16GB you're going to be looking at a dual-processor board (quad processor for 32GB). Since the memory controller is right on the CPU with the Opteron you will actually need a second processor in the socket to use this memory.

For this reason, you might actually want to consider one of Intel's new 64-bit Xeon chips. I know that Supermicro offers some boards that can handle up to 32GB with only a single Xeon processor. Something like the X6DHE-XB seems like it might fit you're bill reasonable well. Fairly inexpensive to get you up to 16GB of memory, though going to 32GB is quite expensive. Crucial has a list of compatible memory for this board, including some 4GB modules.

Of course, if you're not limited to x86 systems then there are other solutions that would work. You could get something like an IBM Power system or Sun UltraSparc system with pretty much any amount of memory you need (or can afford).

Hey, here is what I think is one of the awesomest Dual Opteron boards, from Tyan:
Tyan Thunder K8WE

Specifications

It supports only up to 16GB, but has like almost any other feature you could want - has an EATX footprint, and fits int an ATX case if you are a small business type or something, or if you want a rigged-out workstation (dual PCI-Express x 16, for SLI'd Quadro's!!!).

However, if you wanted something more powerful for a larger-scale machine, then this board is probably not it. This is probably it:

Tyan Transport TX46

Specifications

Hey, here is what I think is one of the awesomest Dual Opteron boards, from Tyan:
Tyan Thunder K8WE

Specifications

It supports only up to 16GB, but has like almost any other feature you could want - has an EATX footprint, and fits int an ATX case if you are a small business type or something, or if you want a rigged-out workstation (dual PCI-Express x 16, for SLI'd Quadro's!!!).

However, if you wanted something more powerful for a larger-scale machine, then this board is probably not it. This is probably it:

Tyan Transport TX46

Specifications

Hey, here is what I think is one of the awesomest Dual Opteron boards, from Tyan:
Tyan Thunder K8WE

Specifications

It supports only up to 16GB, but has like almost any other feature you could want - has an EATX footprint, and fits int an ATX case if you are a small business type or something, or if you want a rigged-out workstation (dual PCI-Express x 16, for SLI'd Quadro's!!!).

However, if you wanted something more powerful for a larger-scale machine, then this board is probably not it. This is probably it:

Tyan Transport TX46

Specifications

Hey, here is what I think is one of the awesomest Dual Opteron boards, from Tyan:
Tyan Thunder K8WE

Specifications

It supports only up to 16GB, but has like almost any other feature you could want - has an EATX footprint, and fits int an ATX case if you are a small business type or something, or if you want a rigged-out workstation (dual PCI-Express x 16, for SLI'd Quadro's!!!).

However, if you wanted something more powerful for a larger-scale machine, then this board is probably not it. This is probably it:

Tyan Transport TX46

Specifications

There is the Tyan Thunder K8WE, a 2-way Opteron motherboard with 8 memory slots for around $500-600 USD. There are probably others like this.

The biggest board I know of is the Thunder K8QS Pro (S4882). With 16 DIMM slots it supports 32 GB of RAM. But it is a quad processor board.

Most of the rest of Tyan's Opteron server boards do support 16 GB. Again they are dual processor.

Tyan's boards will run with a single processor installed, but only 4 DIMM slots (1 bank) will be active. All processors can see all the RAM installed, but because the memory controller is integrated into the CPU, the CPU must first be installed. Then it can pass access to the RAM to the other CPUs. Local RAM always being the fastest. (Linux with Opteron NUMA support tries to keep memory associated with the task running on a specific CPU local to that processor.)

The biggest board I know of is the Thunder K8QS Pro (S4882). With 16 DIMM slots it supports 32 GB of RAM. But it is a quad processor board.

Most of the rest of Tyan's Opteron server boards do support 16 GB. Again they are dual processor.

Tyan's boards will run with a single processor installed, but only 4 DIMM slots (1 bank) will be active. All processors can see all the RAM installed, but because the memory controller is integrated into the CPU, the CPU must first be installed. Then it can pass access to the RAM to the other CPUs. Local RAM always being the fastest. (Linux with Opteron NUMA support tries to keep memory associated with the task running on a specific CPU local to that processor.)

Ah. Didn't know he was doing video production. In that case, I'd spend the money for a dual processor Opteron 252 system with a Tyan Thunder K8WE SLI motherboard and 8 1GB DIMMs. Two real CPUs with their own integrated memory controllers makes more sense than a dual core P4, and the power requirements are probably similar. The Opteron 252's use the new 90nm Troy core with SSE3 support, which narrows the benchmark gap with Intel on creatively Intel-optimized code (and anything not specifically Intel-optimized is probably going to run better on AMD; heck, once you get away from synthetic/rigged benchmarks, AMD tends to dominate). HP sells a nice workstation that I think is based around this board, Monarch sells them too. Plus you can swap in dual-core Opterons later if you so choose after a BIOS upgrade.

There's a reason why SW:ROTS and Sin City were rendered on Opterons.

To complement your nice Tyan motherboard, get one or two (XXX check for physical sizes) of them realizm 800 from 3dlabs. They are the only 16 lanes PCIexpress videocards I know of. Not sure about GPGPU, but at 3840 x 2400, solitaire is bound to look amazing... especially if you can get some nice 9.2Mpixel displays as well: High end videocard without a matching display, what would be the point? Check for instance the IBM T221).

Anandtech reviewed the Realizm 800 here.

Mhhh... If you wanted the machine to be a server of some sorts, then I just wasted 10 minutes typing all this!

Also, it does use 2 nforce pro's... a 2200 and a 2050. Might want to check out the datasheet. Most definately a killer workstation board for years to come.

... should be interesting, there's at least a Tyan board (K7M that handles AMD's low power K7 chip. It's socket A with DDR333 memory.

This mobo is purely a microformat web/mail/office unit, no AGP or PCIe, but it could make a pretty slick little microserver or homebrew blade..

Tyan makes some very nice AMD-64 rackmount barebones systems.

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/matrix.html

There are quite a few motherboards that can handle 16G (or 32G) memory, they're mostly dual/quad Opteron boards. Tyan has a line.

If you also want PCIe x16, it's harder - Tyan lists this baby (Thunder K8WE), but I don't know if that one is actually available already.

I just found a number of boards within about 30 seconds. That's a new low for an ask slashdot.

Here's a few

Every board there except for the single processor ones supports at least 16 GBs of memory. Many have 16x pcie slots and at least one has 2.

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we_spec .html
Tyan does motherboards that will handle 16GB of RAM, and has 2 16xPCI-E slots, both running at full speed.

Any other large vendor (ie, SUN, etc) will quite happily sell you a system with >16GB of RAM, if you're willing to pay for it. I'm not sure about the 16xPCI-E slots however.

be happy

While Intel is still a long way away from selling this chipset, the Nvidia nforce4 Pro is already available(although right now its expensive and rare).
Not sure if intels solution also offers a firewall. The firewall dosent work in Linux(yet?). Not sure if the offloading engine will work in Linux.

Looks to me like they have something non-Beta, and have had subsequent releases since '03. You're not making much sense with that statement.

http://tyan.com/support/html/b_s2885.html

Thunder K8WE (S2895)

Thunder K8SRE (S2891)

Thunder K8WE (S2895)

Thunder K8SRE (S2891)

Memory as in on-die cache... yes, RAM... no:

1) Core based processors have more internal/embedded synchronization built in, especially related to on chip caching. SMP relies more heavily on the O/S for maintaining concurrency.

Not sure what this means. Cache snooping is hardware based and is not controlled manipulated by the OS unless the CPUs allow it to be turned off/on. Non-cache coherent systems are a bear and I don't know of anyone who would build such a system when the CPUs in question (in this case, AMD Opteron or Intel P4) have it built in.

2) Connection between processors is shorter and theoretically faster. The big gain here is that the MB components for SMP are all integrated on the CPU, so everything is simplified and compressed.

Because the logic is built on-die does not necessarily make it more simple. It can be basically the same logic, just moved from the external chipset onto the die.

3) Cache in SMP is separate to each processor, core-processors share the cache between the processors. SMP must maintain cache concurrency... this the basis of threading headaches and this takes process cycles to do so. However, sharing the cache in a core processor is often a problem (Intel) if the cache isn't big enough. AMD currently does this better.

Except in the cases we are talking about (AMD Opterons and Intel P4s), neither have a shared cache at any level. There may be later versions of the CPUs that have it, but we won't be seeing them this year (or maybe next either).

4) SMP means higher license costs for multiple processors, core based processors are considered one processing unit (at least to MS).

Yes, this is purely artificial. There's functionally no difference between a dual core and a dual CPU (SMP) machine.

The main thing about multi-core vs. multi-chip SMP (both are SMP, btw, just different implementations of it) is computational density. With multi-chip, you have to have a socket and traces for each CPU on the motherboard. This takes area and having a bunch of CPUs makes you have a big motherboard. Two CPUs = 2X the area on the motherboard, for example. A dual core CPU takes the same space as a single core one. With multi-core, you cut the number of sockets and traces down, thus making the thing cheaper to make.

Have you ever seen a dual socket microATX board? A dual-core microATX machine is very doable because it's really not much different from the single socket board.

Single Opteron motherboard
Dual Opteron motherboard
Quad Opteron motherboard

With dual-core CPUs, that single board turns into a dual, that dual turns into a quad and that quad turns into an octo? as if by magic. Basically, this gives you 2X the computational density by using dual-core CPUs. Similar calculations can be made using quad core CPUs to show 4X the computational density.

Memory as in on-die cache... yes, RAM... no:

1) Core based processors have more internal/embedded synchronization built in, especially related to on chip caching. SMP relies more heavily on the O/S for maintaining concurrency.

Not sure what this means. Cache snooping is hardware based and is not controlled manipulated by the OS unless the CPUs allow it to be turned off/on. Non-cache coherent systems are a bear and I don't know of anyone who would build such a system when the CPUs in question (in this case, AMD Opteron or Intel P4) have it built in.

2) Connection between processors is shorter and theoretically faster. The big gain here is that the MB components for SMP are all integrated on the CPU, so everything is simplified and compressed.

Because the logic is built on-die does not necessarily make it more simple. It can be basically the same logic, just moved from the external chipset onto the die.

3) Cache in SMP is separate to each processor, core-processors share the cache between the processors. SMP must maintain cache concurrency... this the basis of threading headaches and this takes process cycles to do so. However, sharing the cache in a core processor is often a problem (Intel) if the cache isn't big enough. AMD currently does this better.

Except in the cases we are talking about (AMD Opterons and Intel P4s), neither have a shared cache at any level. There may be later versions of the CPUs that have it, but we won't be seeing them this year (or maybe next either).

4) SMP means higher license costs for multiple processors, core based processors are considered one processing unit (at least to MS).

Yes, this is purely artificial. There's functionally no difference between a dual core and a dual CPU (SMP) machine.

The main thing about multi-core vs. multi-chip SMP (both are SMP, btw, just different implementations of it) is computational density. With multi-chip, you have to have a socket and traces for each CPU on the motherboard. This takes area and having a bunch of CPUs makes you have a big motherboard. Two CPUs = 2X the area on the motherboard, for example. A dual core CPU takes the same space as a single core one. With multi-core, you cut the number of sockets and traces down, thus making the thing cheaper to make.

Have you ever seen a dual socket microATX board? A dual-core microATX machine is very doable because it's really not much different from the single socket board.

Single Opteron motherboard
Dual Opteron motherboard
Quad Opteron motherboard

With dual-core CPUs, that single board turns into a dual, that dual turns into a quad and that quad turns into an octo? as if by magic. Basically, this gives you 2X the computational density by using dual-core CPUs. Similar calculations can be made using quad core CPUs to show 4X the computational density.

Memory as in on-die cache... yes, RAM... no:

1) Core based processors have more internal/embedded synchronization built in, especially related to on chip caching. SMP relies more heavily on the O/S for maintaining concurrency.

Not sure what this means. Cache snooping is hardware based and is not controlled manipulated by the OS unless the CPUs allow it to be turned off/on. Non-cache coherent systems are a bear and I don't know of anyone who would build such a system when the CPUs in question (in this case, AMD Opteron or Intel P4) have it built in.

2) Connection between processors is shorter and theoretically faster. The big gain here is that the MB components for SMP are all integrated on the CPU, so everything is simplified and compressed.

Because the logic is built on-die does not necessarily make it more simple. It can be basically the same logic, just moved from the external chipset onto the die.

3) Cache in SMP is separate to each processor, core-processors share the cache between the processors. SMP must maintain cache concurrency... this the basis of threading headaches and this takes process cycles to do so. However, sharing the cache in a core processor is often a problem (Intel) if the cache isn't big enough. AMD currently does this better.

Except in the cases we are talking about (AMD Opterons and Intel P4s), neither have a shared cache at any level. There may be later versions of the CPUs that have it, but we won't be seeing them this year (or maybe next either).

4) SMP means higher license costs for multiple processors, core based processors are considered one processing unit (at least to MS).

Yes, this is purely artificial. There's functionally no difference between a dual core and a dual CPU (SMP) machine.

The main thing about multi-core vs. multi-chip SMP (both are SMP, btw, just different implementations of it) is computational density. With multi-chip, you have to have a socket and traces for each CPU on the motherboard. This takes area and having a bunch of CPUs makes you have a big motherboard. Two CPUs = 2X the area on the motherboard, for example. A dual core CPU takes the same space as a single core one. With multi-core, you cut the number of sockets and traces down, thus making the thing cheaper to make.

Have you ever seen a dual socket microATX board? A dual-core microATX machine is very doable because it's really not much different from the single socket board.

Single Opteron motherboard
Dual Opteron motherboard
Quad Opteron motherboard

With dual-core CPUs, that single board turns into a dual, that dual turns into a quad and that quad turns into an octo? as if by magic. Basically, this gives you 2X the computational density by using dual-core CPUs. Similar calculations can be made using quad core CPUs to show 4X the computational density.

These days, we are splitting the difference between rolling our own and buying. We used to be a pretty heavy Sun/SPARC shop (SPARC iron still claims the majority in our data center), but with Solaris 10 for AMD64 coming out, we're buying a lot of Opteron boxes and just running Solaris 9 on the them in the meantime (or Solaris 10 for some experimental stuff).

That said, check out:

Tyan Transport Barebones Systems

Tyan, of course, have been making excellent motherboards for years. These are simply the motherboard and a case, integrated together. Just add disks, procesors and memory.

They've been working great for us.

Of course, if you shun AMD, then I can't help you: most probably you will need to go the Xeon way then. Tyan has quite a lot of MP boards. Look at the Tiger family, that's what I have: Tyan Tiger 2466MPX.

I just put one together. Up to 16GB of RAM, 4 SATA, 2 ATA133, 2 SCSI u320.

Tyan K8S Pro

Seems pretty good, but two things seemed rather out of place. It has only USB 1.1, not 2.0. And it has double Gigabit Ethernet plus a separate 10/100 Ethernet connection, but no Firewire. I'd rather have had Firewire than the silly Ethernet port.

No audio other than the case speaker.

Graphics is pretty limited. But on the other hand, both these would almost certainly be upgraded by most people, so no point in putting much on there.

But the 1.1 USB and silly Ethernet port seem, well, silly.

For the truely needy speed freaks, there's the quad Opteron Thunder K8QS Pro (S4882).

Here's a motherboard and a 2U server that use 4 processers. Pricewatch lists a few places that sell the motherboard.

Here's a motherboard and a 2U server that use 4 processers. Pricewatch lists a few places that sell the motherboard.

Yeah, I think we're in agreement there: I'll assume that there will be problems in upgrading to Win64, and, when they day comes, if there aren't any problems, so much the better.

The other option is to go with something older, like the Athlon MP/760MPX series of boards (such as the Tiger MPX S2466N-4M, http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigermpx.html).

But AMD seems to have utterly abandoned the 32-bit Athlon MP line, so those platforms are pretty much a dead end, in that they offer no hope whatsoever in terms of future upgradeability. Plus, they're stuck at a 266 MHz FSB.

I suppose there's Intel, but, quite frankly, I'm not in much of a mood to give them any of our money.

Here's our big dilemma: We're looking at making a big investment in new AMD x86-64 hardware, especially the new line of 940-socket motherboards from Tyan.

Compare e.g. the S2880-S2885 line (http://www.tyan.com/products/html/matrix.html) - I don't think we'll be able to afford the S4880 range.

So here's my question: If we invest in this hardware, what do you think the chances will be that, when Win64 finally starts to appear next year, it will be able to run on this platform?

I've got this foreboding sense of dread that we'll spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on hardware, and thousands of man hours getting everything up and running, only to discover, a year from now, that Win64 won't be stable on that platform.

Any thoughts on this, or any gossip? At this point, I'd take any information I can get my hands on.

Thanks!

PS: This WOW [Windows on Windows] software emulation crap may be the kiss of death for Win64. The whole purpose of x86-64 is to be able to run 32-bit programs at hardware speed.

Software emulation could very well be the straw that breaks the camel's back - it certainly sank the Itanic.

after posting some hardware sugs, i forgot about the driver issue:most of the newest 64bit driver work from the
major manufacturers appear to be for Windows(ech). ( Here's a review that came out today.)

The latest Linux drivers from nvidia aren't too old; their last nForce3 update was in Dec 2003 and the gpu drivers in Jan 2004

Tyan have a page of drivers, as does Highpoint, and Adaptec

Look into the suse amd64 message boards - they seem to be having some success...

What the ...?

Alright, now I see where I went wrong. It wasn't a quad-board with two sets of memory sockets, it's a dual-board that only has memory sockets hooked to one of the processers, the K8W.

I could swear that some company was showing off a quad-Opteron board that will fit in an ATX form factor - achieved by leaving the memory slots off of two of the processers. Halving your memory bandwidth to save some real estate is a tough compromise for me to accept, but I guess there are applications where you wouldn't incur much of a performance penalty.

steve

Tyan's got a good-looking quad Opteron board (if only it had an AGP slot!). One of these days, I'm gonna get my hands on one of their 2P boards.

Hopefully, this announcement will drive down the price of the 246 and 248, so that 1GB RAM per proc. will cost less than $1,000...

Of course, I've considered waiting for the dual cored Opterons to come out in 2005. Then again, AFAIK the dual core should still look like a single core to the motherboard.

Gee... all this talk is just making me want all of this stuff more.

The board they used only had memory off of one of the CPU's in the dual Opteron systems. I wonder how much this effected performance in the compute intensive benchmarks, or even memory bandwidth benchmarks.

A benchmark with a Quad Opteron, like the Tyan Thunder K8QS would be interesting. It has memory hanging off of each of the four CPU's. (Which opens a lot of questions about how that memory is managed.. Is there some sort of memory affinity per processor? What is the performance hit if one CPU needs memory off another?)

Also, you have the 32 bit vs 64 bit stuff. It would be interesting to compare the best 32 bit optimized app against a 64 bit optimized version. Maybe something like MPEG2 compression of an HD stream.

That being said, a KVM is awfully handy if you need control over a machine during the early boot stages -- you can't get to the BIOS settings display using X forwarding. :-)

Get a mainboard that supports serial console redirection, like the Tyan Tomcat i875P, and hook the (first) serial port up to a multi-serial board in another box, or get the excellent (but expensive) Cyclades TS-Series console server.

We just picked up four of them as firewalls (in 1U cases from Chenbro) as well a backup server, and the redirection works like a charm.

Have you looked into Server class boards?

For example, Tyan's S2707 is a real nice P4 board with onboard video and dual gigabit LAN. No IDE Raid, though it may be an option.

Pretty fast, but more of a server board than a workstation.

I don't know what boards you're looking at for large memory configurations, but 24GB, 20GB both use a maximum 2GB sticks for those. (Having more DDR slots than PCI slots is kinda strange looking)

Now, you could argue that these aren't standard motherboards, but then again, what 64 bit CPU motherboard is? For next year or two, I don't expect to be hitting the 20GB memory limit... ;)

To be honest I've got a separate computer for games and anything that requires more mainstream hardware.

The Opteron system is basically an expensive exercise in running memory bandwidth/CPU/harddrive intensive work-related projects (i.e. prototyping selected computational physics code) at home.

It has been built around Tyan Thunder K8SPro (with the SCSI option) that does not have AGP and only has one legacy PCI-slot. This pretty much disqualifies it as a gaming machine. However, on a more positive note I'll probably be able to make it tax-deductible.

Some drawbacks: with the two CPU fans, two 15krpm SCSI drives, the heavy-duty EPS12V power supply and the two IDE drives it's also rather noisy. Furthermore, I'm sorry to see that, just like in my Alpha days in the mid-1990s, there is still plenty of badly written software (i.e. casting pointers to int) that won't compile out of box. Any other disadvantages? Well, now I'm rather bankrupt, too. ;-)

Quite frankly, I don't think the 64-bit desktop is quite there yet. I'm sure you've grown fond of the responsiveness of your dual PIII (that's why I mostly buy only dual CPU computers these days). A dual Xeon or dual Athlon MP will probably serve you better than any of the present 64-bit CPUs.