motherboards...

N

nathan

New member
i thinking of building a dual cpu "rig". i do alot of work with virtulisation etc. so need fair amount of power and ram. So a server based system would suit me very well.

Browsing around the net, i have 2 options. opteron or xeon. Does anyone have any recommendations on cpu's motherboards?
 
Your best option is what I've been thinking about building for a few months now. And I came sooooo close to buying everything for it last night.

If you want some raw firepower, that won't break the bank then Xeon is the way to go.

Pick yourself up a lower-end dual Xeon board, two dual core Woodcrest Xeons (built on Core architecture), and whatever else u might want. Quad core pwnage, total beastness.
 
The other thing you could if you want 4 cores, is wait for Kentsfield, Core 2 Quad, which will be out soon.
 
Someone rhetorically asked, why not build a dual core machine. I'd like to just throw something out there, in the event you don't know this or in the event that someone reading this gets lost in your logic when they see the difference in price and comes away with an inadvertently implied idea of equality.

Correct me if I'm wrong but there's a good reason to build a dual processor machine instead of a dual core machine. I think the biggest reason (imho, the only remarkable reason, anyway), are the "drawbacks" with dual-core architecture.

NOTE: let me apologize ahead of time for being unable to really make my point clear and concise because of a lack of jargon and overall "expertise".

With that being said, allow me to give an explanation for why I think a dual CPU machine is better than a dual core machine.

The first "drawback" with Dual Core architecture is: you take a noticable performance hit with a dual-core machine because it cannot benifit from another set of RAM but a dual-cpu machine will.

IN OTHER WORDS:

if a thread running in core1 needs to read from RAM but the thread running in core2 is reading from RAM than core1 must wait for core2 to complete the RAM-read and all RAM-READ-TASKS associated with RAM-ACCESS, all before core1 can perform its RAM-ACCESS request. I think most of you follow my logic without getting "tricked" but for those of you who are thinking, "this doesn't make sense," then allow me to note that obviously, i've taken into account the fact that core-x will not read from memory if its memory (caches/registers) contains the necessary data already. depending on the task and if the circumstances are right then cache can be seemingly non-benificial and thus the second set of RAM could easily come in handy.

SO?

well, now that you know that there *is* a benifit between the two -- what now?

funny you should ask, because it really all depends on the pricetag, your budget, your requirements, the expected spec bench of your tasks, and whether or not the higher spec (if any) warrants the price.
 
Are u saying, as an example, a 2 processor system owns a bank of memory each and a dual core single-item processor shares the available banks between them ? (roughly)

I didn`t know that tbh, and would *think* which of the 2 was better would be down to each of the mobos, it`s speed of accessing them and their system of prioritizing/allocating memory. If it happens that the single-unit dual core mobo handles it better, I guess it`s the winner. Interesting.
 
deff want dual cpu and not dual core, lot more grunt. to be honest i thought the opteron was going to be advised. i'll go for a hunt this afternoon with some prices and get back to you all.

or i could wait for the quad core as mentioned above and have 8 cores or even 16 if its a quad cpu motherboard :D hmmmm, folding...

How come these are sooo damn cheap? £175 for Intel Pentium Xeon 3.0Ghz Active 2mb Cache 800Mhz

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...m9kdWN0X3NwZWNpZmljYXRpb25z&product_uid=87853

frag, is the above a woodcrest that you speak of? i'm pretty rubbish when it comes to server hardware.
 
Check out the dual core opty prices on scan atm, you can run two of them in a dual CPU mobo afaik. = 4 cores, possibly cheaper depending on the opty u opt for.
 
Think i'll prob go for 2 of the following

Intel Xeon 5130 Active Socket 771, Woodcrest Core, 2.0GHz , 4MB Cache, 1333 fsb, Retail

at £230 a pop :s

Think this wil have to be a project that i buy a bit month by month.
 
nathan said:
Think i'll prob go for 2 of the following

Intel Xeon 5130 Active Socket 771, Woodcrest Core, 2.0GHz , 4MB Cache, 1333 fsb, Retail

at £230 a pop :s

Think this wil have to be a project that i buy a bit month by month.
Click to expand...

Why get the 5130's? The 5110's are probably going to be a much more economical option, and might even be able to be clocked up a bit. I haven't looked in to server clocking since Jim and I worked on clocking up the Dual LV Xeon rig that hosts OC3D.

But you definately found the right series of processors for your next build, totally monsterous.
 
FragTek said:
Why get the 5130's? The 5110's are probably going to be a much more economical option, and might even be able to be clocked up a bit. I haven't looked in to server clocking since Jim and I worked on clocking up the Dual LV Xeon rig that hosts OC3D.

But you definately found the right series of processors for your next build, totally monsterous.
Click to expand...

The 5110's only have a FSB speed of 1066 where as above 5130's they jump to 1333Mhz. I dont know if i would notice the difference mind you.
 
name='nathan' said:
The 5110's only have a FSB speed of 1066 where as above 5130's they jump to 1333Mhz. I dont know if i would notice the difference mind you.
Click to expand...

Hrmmmf, never even noticed that. The difference would probably be negligable (sp?) but I'd probably go for the 1333 as well. Why not right? If ya got the money, dooo it :)
 
name='nathan' said:
lets be honest, i never have the money!! but i still do it.
Click to expand...

Yeah I just pieced together a system for 2,899 which was totally sick... I sooo want to order it just to build and resell. I miss building computer and handling parts :(
 
just speced one up on scan.co.uk. with 4GB of ECC ram, 2 Xeon 5130 (1333fsb, 2ghz, 4mb cache), 3 500gb hdd, server case, supermicro board it came to.............................£2500, i'm sure it would be more £1500 in the US mind you. I havent that sort of money at the moment, but noticed on scan a little thing called FINACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! woooohooooo. works out to be about £80 a month for 48 months :S

Oooooooh the temptation, it's killing me!!
 
nathan said:
just speced one up on scan.co.uk. with 4GB of ECC ram, 2 Xeon 5130 (1333fsb, 2ghz, 4mb cache), 3 500gb hdd, server case, supermicro board it came to.............................£2500, i'm sure it would be more £1500 in the US mind you. I havent that sort of money at the moment, but noticed on scan a little thing called FINACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! woooohooooo. works out to be about £80 a month for 48 months :S

Oooooooh the temptation, it's killing me!!
Click to expand...

Do it, do it, do it!!! :D

If you do though, I wanna see all 4 cores F@H'ing it up for 43461! w00t w00t!
 
To my understanding the only the Optertrons each had their own memory, hence the reason that the the Intel 8-way systems don't scale well. Also if you look at 2 dual core vs. 1 quad core, I think you will find that they scale quite similarly, and from the benchmarks I have seen the Kentsfield scales about 85% efficiently.
 
name='Nagaru' said:
To my understanding the only the Optertrons each had their own memory, hence the reason that the the Intel 8-way systems don't scale well. Also if you look at 2 dual core vs. 1 quad core, I think you will find that they scale quite similarly, and from the benchmarks I have seen the Kentsfield scales about 85% efficiently.
Click to expand...

doesnt matter eitherway, these woodcrest xeon's are similar to the core 2 duo's so they should (i'll use that word loosly) at the top of performance.
 
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