First Multi-cpu rig build, need final advice ( 2 Views )

no kitty!

Hi! I am starting to build more and more computers everymonths for friends/clients and today i have a nice request from a guy who works in the CG industry who wants to do occasional gaming and basic 3d rendering/photoshoping. He wants a dual cpu rig, less then 1000$CND.

It would be my first dual cpu so thats why im posting it in case i misunderstood something.

2x AMD® Opteron™ 146 (Socket 940) [ATBOX] Retail Box w/ Heatsink and Fan
$258

ASUS K8N-DL EATX NFORCE4 Pro 2XS940 DDR ECC Reg PCI-E16 PCI-E 2PCI SATA Sound GBLAN 1394 Motherboard
$289.56

OCZ Server Series PC3200 1GB ECC Registered Memory CL3-3-3-8 184PIN DIMM Low Profile Memory
$150.24

eVGA E-GEFORCE 6600GT 128M DDR3 PCI-E VGA DVI HD OUT VIDEO CARD
$159.99$

Enermax All In One EG565P-VE Fma ATX12V V2.0 20/24PIN 535W 2FAN SLI Ready Power Supply
$105.80

total:963.59

Questions:

Would it be better to have 2x512DDR ECC instead of 1x1024 ? Is s940 fully support dual channel ?

This powersupply says it supports EPS12V, is that the name of the 8pin connector needed?

any toughts?

I am happy to build my first dual-cpu rig because i am planning to build my own in the following year for dual opteron dual core, i will take that as a learning exercice.

(GÖKHAN, Christmas Island)

1.) opteron 146 will not work in SMP, the 1 signifies the number of them possible in an smp config. You need at least a 246.

2.) I recommend a sparkle/fortron 550 eps12v power supply over the enermax. It's slightly less expensive and a totally reliable PS. I run my dual 246, 2 gig ram, gf6800, 5 harddrives, and several case fans and it doesn't break a sweat.

3.) Personally, I wouldn't go with OCZ because I've had bad luck with their ram in the past. Otherwise, if the customer is happy with it, it's all good.

4.) socket 940 in general supports dual channel, so 2x512 will give slighty higher latencies but much higher bandwidth. Opterons need bandwidth.

Looks like a decent system the only really glaring issue is using 146's instead of 246's. It won't work with 146's.

(senem, Barbados)

You are sure dual opteron 146 isnt possible? is there cheap opteron 2.xx s940 ?

(ömer, China)

You cannot run opteron 146's in dual operation. No one has yet to find a hardware hack around it. You will need at least 2xx series.

You can find opteron 246's on pricewatch for cheaper than the 146 series. Not sure why, but you can.

(alev, Palestinian Territory, Occupied)

whaddya know? :)

http://www.flickerdown.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9

you need at least 2 x 512mb on the board; 4 x 512mb would be recommended.

dave

(osman, Maldives)

Have you thought about cutting costs by running single proc dual core?

(inci, Syrian Arab Republic)

Quote:

Originally Posted by defakto

You cannot run opteron 146's in dual operation. No one has yet to find a hardware hack around it. You will need at least 2xx series.

AFAIK, the die doesn't even have the 2nd HT link on it, or it doesn't work (assuming 1xxs are 2xxxs that didn't make the cut during QC).

To the OP, you need to figure out what type of CG work he does exactly. If he's doing some serious 3D work or the similar, he needs a card designed for that purpose. Something like Photoshop work however...will very happily scream on a X2 or Opty 170 as well. (There's a Photoshop benchmark thread here). In this case, you should consider the need for scratch disks and stuff as well (I think it's overrated here...but then again, I just Photoshop "O RLY" on birds.)

And no offense, but if he's doing some really mission-critical work...he might be better off with a high-end workstation that's got premium support, etc attached to it. Just a thought.

PS: dave, might be looking to grab a few 265s/275s soon :)

(oguz, Syrian Arab Republic)

cool....

got some 285s too!

dave

(Ünal, Belize)

Quote:

Originally Posted by dave_graham

whaddya know? :)

http://www.flickerdown.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9

you need at least 2 x 512mb on the board; 4 x 512mb would be recommended.

dave

You can trust this guy!

(vildan, India)

I would rethink the PSU, sent you a PM.

(büþra__, American Samoa)

Thank your for your input! Ok so one thing i learned and i feel a bit dumb about that, im new with socked 940, is tht opteron 1.xx doesnt work in dual cpu solution, we will get opteron 246 eventought i know opteron 2xx doesnt overclock as great as 1xx. I also changed the ram to 2x512 crucial ECC, i tought the OCZ 1gb ram was 2x512mb, the indications on the website are misleading a bit.

I strongly advised the person im building the comp for that this rig is not the optimal solution for what he needs. I advised him that getting a single opteron dual core s939 with 2gb + a x800VIVO that we can flash in fire GL would be the best bang for the buck he can have for his system. Unfortunatly the guy saw som bechies

and he thinks benching is proving that im wrong. Because it is not my money and also because i will still have fun building this comp as a preparation for me to build my first dual cpu rig in the future, i did not insist.

After building some computer (about 1-2 per month or so, most of them gaming rig) i understood something. When youre not building something for yourself, its better to do what the "customer" is asking without arguing too much, and everyone will be happy.

What do you think?

(hilal, Bouvet Island)

how much better(or worse) is a multi cpu system than a dual core system?

(emin, Reunion)

it depends on the applications, on 3dsmax Its about 5% difference, dont know for others. The thing i know thought is that a dual cpu is very more expensive because you have to buy ECC ram + an expensive board = not worth if you are not going for dual opteron dualcore.

(BAHADIR, Holy See (Vatican City State))

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shogo

it depends on the applications, on 3dsmax Its about 5% difference, dont know for others. The thing i know thought is that a dual cpu is very more expensive because you have to buy ECC ram + an expensive board = not worth if you are not going for dual opteron dualcore.

what i wanted to hear ;)

(selim, Costa Rica)

It should be stated, though, that a TRUE dual-opteron box will indeed be faster than a single dual-core opteron box. On a dual-core box each core shares the memory bandwidth of one cpu socket where on a true dual-opteron box each cpu has its own bandwidth. Furthermore, on a dual-socket box you can run NUMA which gives boatloads more bandwidth. The offset, of course, is cost. But if the funds were around, I would go with a real dual-socket as opposed to a dual-core.

(BURAK, Poland)

Well, it might be better to get a single dual-core 265, and as much ram as he can afford. That way he's got the opportunity to add a second dual-core 265 in the future for a seriously speedy 4-core box.

(kadir, Czech Republic)

yes i think its better to have one dual core opteron to start with, the reason is that non-ecc ram is way cheaper, and you can overclocking it, boards are really cheaper, (cheapest s940board is the one i have chosen and its 287$ cnd, when i can buy an asus a8n-sli for 139$ cnd. + if you want special coolers, its twice the price. Seriously having 2 cpu with only 1gb of ram istead of having a dualcore at the same speed but with twice the amount of memory is pointless BUT- BUT - BUT if thats what the customer wants its ok, personally i would have spend the extra money for dual opteron dualcore, it has a certain "coolness' factor that i cant explain but im pretty excited about building a comp with cpu in it :P

this is the board with a 6600 but not mine.

My questions:

-because cpu 0 has 2 ram slot and cpu 1 has 4 ram slot, i will be running 2x512 in dual channel, i need to feel the 2 first slots of cpu0 for my board to boot right?

-because its 2cpu, with their own on die memory controller, would it be better to run 1stick on each cpu?

-there is 2 sata controller on this board, Nvidia controller for raid 0,1,0+1, and Silicon Image SiI3114R controller for raid 0,1,0+1 and 5, Right now, we only have one 250gb seagate HDD, on what controller should i run it?

- is overclocking ecc ram is a big no-no? i am not really trusting this board, i know that this board isnt ment for overclockers but it still has overclocking option for fsb and dram ratio 1:2, 2:3, 5:6, 1:1. Anyway i dont even think this board can support 215mhz fsb, (quote from hardwarezone.com review) *We also did a little overclocking with the motherboard by pushing the CPU bus speed up to 216MHz, giving us a slight speed boost of up to 1.728GHz* (they were overclocking opteron 242`s (1.6ghz stock, nasty)

i think i wouldnt gain any performance out of an extra 150mhz, compared to the loss of my 200mhz DDR ram suffering from a 5:6 ratio would underclock them to 180mhz (a little bit over PC2700 speeds) what do you think?

Sorry for all those questions, i am just not as well informed on s940 as i am use to build on s939.

-Ouch, tight fit between the chipset fan and this 7800GTX, if the 6600GT touches the fan, we will do some modding :P

(mert, Madagascar)

coupla of thoughts

the benchmark your friend looked at doesn't even have any dual core cpus listed. those are the single core a-64s not x2 processors listed in the benchmarks. for some applications the x2 will be faster than 2 seperate opterons depending on the steppings of the cpus involved as the newer on die memory controller in the x2 and later opterons is faster than the older one used in the 246 and 248's. which is why i suspect they are cheaper than the newer 146 opterons with the newer steppings (also may be the 146 overclocks higher so the steppings may be the same).

you may actually get faster performance out of an x2 setup than an equivalent dual opteron setup at same clocks/memory. however the money you save on dual core x2 lets you buy extra ram which photoshop loves, also the ram is cheaper on x2 than opteron as you don't have to buy ecc registered dimms. in this case when on a restricted budget you get more for your money going x2 especialy with the low budget of 1000 cdn as you'll get more speed out of x2 than dual opteron in that price range. nothing you can buy in dual opteron will beat the x2 4800 taht would come under your budget. also you get to save money on the psu as the more common x2 capable mobo don't require $100 psu's.

(eyüp, Guyana)

wetaware, i agree with you 100%. Eventought if this person still wants it, i am not gonna refuse to build him this computer even if i know that he can get better for cheaper.

Check my previous post, does someone know some of the answer of my questions?

ANd i have another question again (sorry)

Socket 754 have only one memory controller ondie, Socket 939 has 2 memory controller ondie wich allows it to do dual channel. But dual socket 940, is it like having two socket 754 on the same board and dual channel is possible because the 2 cpu are interconnected via fsb? or, each cpu has 2memory controller each?

i am asking that because i saw this pic:

and it looks like this computer is working with cpu0 slot not populated, and cpu1slot populated.

thank you

(zeynep gülbahar, Mauritius)

That board with the uneven # of slots between processors could never, ever be conisdered remotely a "certified" Opteron solution. IIRC, that board (like the K8N-DL) actually "routes" memory traffic through CPU0.

The combo I'd plan to go with is 2x Opty 265s or 275s on a Supermicro H8DCE with 4 1GB sticks of RAM, 2 per CPU. (Slots 1A and 1B, 2A and 2B). Current AMD dual scoket of choice is 940. Your client *should* go with, to start at least, maybe 2x 254s or so. They will provide more memory bandwidth than a single dualcore proc.

(baris.cagin@hotmail.com, Saint Lucia)

it routes memory traffic to cpu 0? so it means that in fact tehre is no cpu0 cpu1 memory controller but all memory is controlled by cpu0? So thats why the guy on the blue tinted photo was able to boot?

(bahadýr, Tunisia)

oh i am mistaken, slot A1 and A2 are not the 2 top ones, here is the board architecture:

I only have 2x512, and if i want them to run in dual channel, it need to run them on the same CPU, so slot A1 and A2. BUT if the second cpu does not have any memory, will i suffer performances? IF i use 2x512 on cpu0 and 2x512 on cpu1 (lets say im buying another gb) i will have the benifit of quad channel memory ?

(yasemin, Estonia)

here is a quote from the k8n-dl manual

• When using two DDR DIMM modules, install into
DIMM_A1 and
DIMM_A2 slots only.

Look at the architecture of the board. A1 and A2 slots are black and blue slots, wich means its not dual channel. So im pretty much screwed right?

and here is the discussion on another forum:
---------------
If it were me, and you only have 1-"A" slot and 1-"B" slot for processor 2 and the board is capable of NUMA, I would populate the slots as follows:

A1+B1 for CPU1

A3+B3 for CPU2

Have you tried this configuration? Now that "assumes" logical board construction, but that's not always the case!!

-------------------
Yes I tried this configuration and the CPU and the Memory are not recognized. I did however switch the CPUs and again only one worked. After this and talking to the tech from where I both the board made me believe the board was bad. I was even having problems changing the settings of the CMOS. So I returned the board.

Thanks,

Fabio
------------------------------

(ceren, Estonia)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shogo

it routes memory traffic to cpu 0? so it means that in fact tehre is no cpu0 cpu1 memory controller but all memory is controlled by cpu0? So thats why the guy on the blue tinted photo was able to boot?

(qwes, Cuba)

that asus board is not an efficient memory design. you'd be much better off with a discrete memory board (i.e. memory tasked to specific processor).

dave

(servan, Uganda)

You should really only be considering the H8DCx line from Supermicro. Best dual Opty boards atm, choose the H8DCE if PCI-X doesn't matter to you much, the H8DC8 if it does, etc.Check out their A-Plus products page.

(serra, Ecuador)

Quote:

Originally Posted by movax

You should really only be considering the H8DCx line from Supermicro. Best dual Opty boards atm, choose the H8DCE if PCI-X doesn't matter to you much, the H8DC8 if it does, etc.Check out their A-Plus products page.

Agreed, but for work station performance, the ASUS board isn't a bad design. Not the best for sure either. I wouldn't mind replacing my Tyan S2882-D with one. That would allow me to use a PCI-Express video card and make that another box someone could play games on, rather than just a server. The ASUS board is also really in-expensive too. For an Opteron board anyway.

(nurittin, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan_D

Agreed man. You can't really beat 200 bucks for a dually board that has PCI-Ex16. Personally, sometimes I wish i doled out more money for a Tyan/Supermicro (twice as much), but the Asus is fine for what I do.

(kahramanasker, Rwanda)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Volkum

I just want a dual Opteron board that will let me overclock. Just not at the expense of SLI. Which the ASUS board doesn't support.

(xxbüþraxx, Rwanda)

I've seen reports from both views..."H8DCE OCs well, K8WE doesn't" and "K8WE OCs well, H8DCE doesn't". Would love some solid proof/expierence from these both.

(kader, Albania)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shogo

Socket 754 have only one memory controller ondie, Socket 939 has 2 memory controller ondie wich allows it to do dual channel. But dual socket 940, is it like having two socket 754 on the same board and dual channel is possible because the 2 cpu are interconnected via fsb? or, each cpu has 2memory controller each?

This is incorrect. The Socket 754 Athlons have a 64-bit single channel memory controller. Not two memory controllers. No AMD CPU has dual memory controllers. In socket 940, you have two processors each having a dual channel 144-bit memory controller. The extra bits are for ECC functionality. The Opteron more closely resembles a socket 939 Athlon than it does a socket 754 Athlon. Actually though, the socket 940 Opteron pre-dates S939 Athlons and Opterons, and came out about the same time as the S754 chips, but had higher end features targetted at the server market.

Opterons each have one memory controller. So when two S940 Opterons are present on one motherboard, each CPU gets dedicated memory. They can use something called NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) to double bandwidth to nearly double the Athlons memory bandwidth.

(ERDAL, Netherlands Antilles)

First Multi-cpu rig build, need final advice ( 2 Views )

Related Topics ... (or search in 1.720.883 topics !)