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Dual Opteron SFF PC Tested
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."
I've been looking at this case for a good couple months now (before there were any pre-production versions available). The dual-processor aspect is definitely enticing; I'd like to run Gentoo on it with Windows installed on a virtual machine so I'm not up the creek when I need to use some Windows software.
What I have a harder time deciding is, do I want to go (dual) Opteron or (single) Athlon64. The market seems to favour the newer Athlon64s for desktop computers, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's what's right for me. If I wanted to use Opterons, this IWill case certainly presents the possibility attractively (tight package, quiet, etc.) but the price/performance/growth numbers are proving a little more difficult to get my head around.
Do these guys also have some association with Ferrari like acer has for one of their laptop models!?!
This box's awfully red and am sure'd hurt anyone's eyes
These people probably only care about Windows software.
The one thing keeping me from considering the dual G5 system a true workstation is the lack of ECC memory. I've found no indication it is supported by any current or recent Apple machine other than Xserve. If you looked at SGI, Sun, HP, Intel and AMD workstations, they all generally come standard with ECC memory.
Intel is adapting. They have a huge ace up their sleeve, the Pentium M (processor in Centrino laptops). It's basically picking up the P6 architecture where the Pentium 3 left off, and it's a fantastic performer, as well as being in the same power consumption range as VIA's C3 processors. Intel are going to continue to push the P4's Netburst architecture as long as people keep buying it, and when that takes its eventual nosedive, they'll have the P-M waiting. Intel isn't a company to rest on its laurels.
I'm pretty certain that my next system shall be dual-Opteron powered, but the price of the appropriate CPU's is gonna have me saving up money for much longer than is possible. Is there any real difference between the 1-series Opterons and the 2-series Opterons, design-wise? Or, perhaps, with the appropriate equipment and know-how, can a single-processor Opteron be made to work on a dual-Opteron board? I'm surprised I haven't yet heard talk of this. Please, point me in the right direction.
All the RAM is on CPU0, so if you need to access something on CPU1, you have to go over the HTT bus and wait for the other CPU to satisfy your request. While this is likely something that was due to it being a SFF computer, I find that disappointing.
Chip H.
I thought most of the cheaper Opteron boards only attached memory to CPU0. This reduces the number of board traces. The boards I've seen that exploit all memory channels for a 2P Opteron system cost $500 for the board only, and that's not counting the cost of a WTX/extended ATX case to house that board.
Futhermore, while the problem with heat does not seem to be so acute with Opterons as it is with P4s and Xeons, it must be said that Opterons seem to lose to Xeons in floating point performance. That was a great disappointment to me since I run floating point intensive simulations (or more precisely prototypes of simulations to be run later on real, supercomputer-grade hardware) and because most of the Intel's advantage seems to come from the compiler and not from the hardware per se.
The owls are not what they seem
Check this http://www.razorback2.com/?pageid=dontech http://www.razorback2.com/?pageid=gal P2P serveur a la Francaise. A dual opteron edonkey server project and one of the bigest (if not the bigest) on the internet with more than 600K users. Power to people! Liberte egalite fraternite and share those movies.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
I really considered an SFF computer to replace my aging one, but in the end opted for a really SFF with a built in display: A laptop.
The one big downside with a laptop is the slow spinning hard drives. The performance in that department is noticeably slower. I'll retain final judgement until I bump the RAM from 256MB to 1GB.
Other than that I'm very satisfied with mine, and like the portability. I have a Dell Inspiron 9100 (with 256MB of RAM Doom 3 was barely playable at 640 X 480)...
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
If you are considering a dual opteron with Gentoo and vmware because you still need windows, forget it!
Get two Socket 754 athlons (3000-3400ish) and put Gentoo on one, Windows on the other.
It's much more practical... you could load the Linux machine with storage (software Raid5 with SATA drives) and maybe put a Raptor in the Windows machine (which could be a SFF for LAN parties, if you like)
Thats what I do... a Gentoo AMD64 syste as a web/file server, a Winddows one for games. Both double as workstations.
You can either use a KVM switch or preferably go with Synergy if you have dual monitors.
The unofficial
The P-M is very, very impressive, but isn't it a dead end? Intel can't be banking on this thing to be their new killer chip.
Its not 64 bit (which is not a big deal now), its limited to 400 mhz FSB, the P4-M will not be as thifty with juice as the C3, etc. Its ability to do more with less clock cycles is going to hurt Intel's own branding and marketing strategy which is built on the megahertz myth. It is currently outperformed by the old P4 and the opteron.
Its neat and probably headed towards the desktop (if it isnt there already), but I think the opteron is going to hurt Intel for a while. Perhaps a long while.
Intel could really make inroads with the P-M/mobo as the basis for a quiet PC. Less heat, less fans, etc. Create some new form factor/standard which has ONE fan. Period. Or none, like Apple.
The desktop market could really use an industry leader pushing machines which aren't so loud.
Funny you say that. My dual G5 is the loudest machine in my office (barring the servers, of course!), and stays that way pretty often. I guess I'm using it "flat out" a lot. It *is* nice and quiet when I'm not using it. When processing audio or video, compiling, etc. it's a freakin' jet engine. Since I do a LOT of that, it's pretty annoying. And OMG, does it generate HEAT on my legs when I'm using it! The Dell under the desk is *much* quieter and cooler...
- Think of it as evolution in action -
Yes, the cheap (around $200) ATX dual 2P Opteron boards are not NUMA boards. We're not talking about a whole bunch of boards though. There are only 2 ATX Opteron boards that I know of (Tyan Tiger K8W and MSI's Master-FAR thing). Both send all memory access through CPU0. The performance hit isn't much except for in the extreme cases when memory bandwidth is a bottleneck.
Most of the normal EATX boards are actually around $400-430. Again, there isn't a lot of choice in the Opteron world, especially if you want workstation features like audio and an AGP slot. Tyan's Thunder K8W and IWill's DK8X are popular choices.
However, the current board of choice is IWill's DK8N, and it's around $500. It uses the nForce Pro chipset for Opteron just like this SFF case.
Believe it or not, many ATX cases will hold an EATX board. Most EATX cases just have more drive bays. The motherboard space is usually about the same. I hate large cases too. That's why I like the SFF dual Opteron thing. Power supply is another story though, you need an EPS12v style power harness (Tagan makes a nice Zalman-like EPS12v supply).
However, the limit of only 2GB RAM completely kills the deal for the SFF product. My dual Opteron 250 VMware workstation would be crippled with such a limit. I'll have to wait for the next version. I really, really want a SFF case though. Crappy, large, heavy, loud cases are so 90's.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
A month ago I did some performance testing of a J2EE application which is currently running on dual Xeons. The dual Opteron running Fedora Core 2 64 bit for AMD and Java JDK 5.0 RC1 was 2 to three times faster on our test suite. Interestingly, the tests which mainly did things involving CPU-Memory I/O were more than three times faster. See here for more details.