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Cheaper SMP AMD Motherboards?
[RNP]Venom asks: "With AMD prices as low as ever, it leaves several of my co-workers and I asking some common questions. With some 50+ Dual, Quad, etc.. Intel-based Motherboards/Chipsets, why is it we've not seen an influx of Dual-AMD equipment? I know we have at least 4 AMD Athlon cpu's sitting around the shop here that would be great to have in an SMP setup, however short of spending $200-$500 on a Tyan Product, or around the same mark for one of the few other products with dual-Athlon Support, what can one do? Where are the $50-$100 Dual-AMD CPU boards that Intel users enjoy? A Google search reveals little but Tyan and more Tyan. I thought their 'exclusive' was only 6 months? I figure the Slashdot readers would be the best to query on current or upcoming 'affordable' products in this area."
This is conjecture, and I don't necessarily agree with the opinions:
Most SMP machines are bought by large companies. They still view AMD chips as 'merely compatible' with Intel. They feel there may be incomplete compatibility. They are a lesser product. So, no interest, so nobody builds boards.
Also, there are no games that take advantage of SMP (that I know of) so the gamer rags won't be interested. That pretty much leaves small companies and Linux/*BSD tinkerers. Heck, I'd like one someday, but I'm only one person.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
You're AMD CPUs lying around probably wouldn't work in a dual setup anyway. You need Athlon MP cpu's to work.
My view on why this hasn't taken off is that a single Athlon 2200 with DDR333 ram and other slick hardware will be nearly as fast as a dual Athlon MP2100 with DDR266 ram and cost fantastically less. The board isn't even the biggest problem. The chips themselves cost way more than their single cpu bretheren.
We have dual systems at work because we're developing server software and need dual machines to test on, but for most users they're very hard to cost/justify. I miss the old PGA celeron 366 days, when you building a dual system actually saved money.
One thing AMD could do to fight the battle with Intel would be to make all their CPUs dual capable. It's not so much a matter of cost, they just don't want to massacre their server market margins.
ASUS (A7M266-D) and IWill (MPX2) also make dual Athlon motherboards, though I'm not sure how much they cost. I think Abit and Gigabyte have announced if not released dual Athlon motherboards. Yes, they are not as cheap as the dual Socket 370 (or even Slot 1) motherboards on the Intel side of things, but part of the cost disparity is the complexity of the 760MP/760MPX chipset (the chipset requires two sets of traces to the two processors since the EV6 bus protocol is point-to-point rather than shared like the AGTL/GTL/GTL+ used by the Intel processors) and the 64-bit PCI slots.
I'm guessing that a lot of the dual P3 processor motherboards are only 4-layer whereas the dual Athlon boards are more likely to be 6 (or even 8) layers due to the enormous number of traces and the power comsumption required for all of the components.
BTW - You can run a dual Athlon setup with a ~430W power supply, just make sure that it is one of the AMD (or motherboard manufacturer) recommended ones and can reliably provide enough current across the necessary voltage rails.
ASUS A7M266-D
Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW and GA-7DPXDW-C
MSI K7D Master
The problem with these boards is that they aren't really any cheaper than the Tyan boards (last I checked.) I think the reasons for the high cost are the AMD 760MP/760MPX chipset and the fact that AMD processors suck a lot more juice than the P3s and Celerons that worked on the cheapie Intel dual boards.
Ian
So you spend 200 bucks on an MPX motherboard and 150 each for a pair of 1800mp CPUs. (2*1533mhz)
Or spend 100 bucks on a Dual Pentium III motherboard and 150 each for a pair of tulatin Pentium IIIs that are not performance comparative. (2*1133mhz)
The first Dual Pentium 4 motherboard starts at $400 and $200 each for the processors... at the same performance level that AMD provides for $500
$400 for the crappy intel.
$500 for the AMD
$800 for the good intel, that performs no better than the AMD, so you just want to pay $300 for the name.
Their absolute top end systems perform comparatively MP 2100+ vs. Intel Xeon 2.4GHz
$1400 for the Xeon, $700 for the AMD MP.
Don't forget the Rambus Tax that doubles the price of any memory you purchase for the Intel system. No, there are no DDR solutions for the Xeon yet.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Dual CPU systems are a pretty ordinary item these days - any reputable vendor that sells them should be fine. There, you have a choice of AMD or Intel. As the submitter of this topic points out, though, if you're specifying parts yourself (even if someone else is building them for you), at the lower end you'll find the Intel solution can be quite a bit cheaper overall, because of the low cost and wide selection of dual CPU Intel motherboards.
So if you're looking for a low cost, high performance dual CPU setup, Intel is the answer. But if you must have AMD for whatever reason, find a vendor who'll sell you something similar to the Ars Technica God Box. The Tyan Tiger MPX motherboard is excellent.