Dual Opteron SFF PC Tested

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Posted by timothy on Saturday September 25, 2004 @07:20AM from the jeesharooni dept.

Steve writes "Back in May, IWILL announced the ZMAXdp (slashdot article), a dual Opteron SFF PC. Sept 23rd saw a further press release with more details of this intriguing system. At HEXUS.net, we've had the exclusive chance to get one of these systems in our test lab, obtaining pictures and specs along with our own analysys and benchmarks. The system runs suprisingly quiet and cool considering what's under the hood. This could become the system of choice for high-end workstation users who don't want a huge machine taking up their desk-space, or perhaps the toy of choice for those of us who hunger for so much power in such a small system."

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summary by pbranes · 2004-09-25 07:29 · Score: 4, Informative

Here's the quick summary:
It's disgustingly well engineered and it works incredibly well.
Here's a link to a single page that you don't have to click through.
My thoughts about this system by HoneyBunchesOfGoats · 2004-09-25 07:46 · Score: 4, Informative

I've been following this Iwill SFF for some time, as I'm very interested in it. Here are a few of the distinguishing features:

* It has a mini-pci slot on the underside of the motherboard, which is meant for a wireless card, and a removable antenna for said card on top of the case.

* It only has two RAM slots, and lists the maximum RAM as 2GB.

* The RAM is only connected to CPU0, so any data CPU1 requests will have to be requested through CPU0. This does mean there will be a speed hit, but it isn't major.

* The MSRP is $499.

I just hope they offer it in some other color than bright red.
Re:But... by jarich · 2004-09-25 08:11 · Score: 3, Informative

Does it run Windows?
yes. unlike Intel's Itanium, the 64 bit Opteron is completely backwards compatible... 32 bit applications run natively on them.
I'm running on a dual Opteron w/32 bit Windows XP right now. :)

--
Agile Artisans
Re:Cube by harlows_monkeys · 2004-09-25 08:23 · Score: 4, Informative

Although, personally, if I'm looking for power, quiet, and ease of use, I'd just get a dual G5 Mac at this point
Dual G5 Macs aren't quiet. This is a point of much consternation in Mac forums--with Macs seeming to be ideal for audio work, many are puzzled that Apple doesn't build a truly quiet machine for that niche.
For somethine really quiet, it looks like your best bet now is to build something yourself. Start with cases and power supplies and cooling from Zalman. Their external water cooling system looks particularly nice, and easy to install.
Speaking of dual Opteron workstations... by Fweeky · 2004-09-25 08:43 · Score: 3, Informative

Anyone have motherboard recommendations? Here's a few I've seen:

MSI K8T MASTER2-FAR - cheap as chips, but no PCI-X. Anything else it's missing? Someone I spoke to mentioned it lacks NUMA support; is that going to be important when looking at dual core chips next year, or am I likely to want to buy a new motherboard by then anyway?

Gigabyte GA-7A8DW+ - Also relatively cheap. Has a couple of PCI-X and a PCI/33 slot; bit anemic in this area, but has 4x SATA (good for my planned RAID-10 array), and actually has the nifty AMD64 heatsink mounting mechanism.

But then there's this Tyan Thunder K8W and similarly priced/specced friends; where's the AMD64 mounting system gone again? The layout of the board suggests seperate memory interfaces per CPU, which I guess will be important for dual core, but by then I'll probably also want PCI-Express and such too, so..

Suggestions? Plan is to run FreeBSD on it. Oh, a case would be good too.. am I going to need something special for EATX? Anyone spotted a tower case with 4x hot-swap SATA bays? ;)