Dual Opteron Motherboards?

[iC4]

I would go with this mainboard

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/server/svr/pro_svr_detail.php?UID=484

and you won't find a mainboard which supports pc3200 ram, since the opteron only uses 2700

[GXAlan]

The Opterons all have memory controllers on the CPU itself so all motherboards will be able to "unofficially" support DDR400.

Please see the system I just built:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/building_gaming_opteron_2003_Part1/

[Thalaxis]

This company is selling a dual Opteron barebones, as well as the
Arima HDAMB motherboard, and a dual Opteron workstation:
NTSI (http://www.ntsi.com/)

[MadMax]

The best board out there with the most features is the Tyan K8W.

4 PCI-X slots, 8x AGP, 4 SATA (Raid) ports, up to 16gb ram, gigabit ethernet ports,

you can get them as low as 475.00

The Opteron chips, actually pretty much all chips are dropping a lot this week I noticed. the lower end Opterons are going to go below 200.00 by next week, and the high and mid range chips are starting to fall into an attractive price zone.

[MimikOctopus]

my understanding is that using 400mhz ram on a system that maxes out at 333mhz actually performs less than if the ram speed matches the fsb.....

[Thalaxis]

The only difference between memory that's been underclocked to
the appropriate clock speed and memory that was spec'ed at the
appropriate clock speed is the price of the memory :)

What you're probably thinking of is when you run the memory at
a higher speed than what the system bus is capable of; in that
case, you are running the memory out of sync, which does have a
negative impact on performance in most cases.

[allawy]

Thanks Guys;

I changed my mind really, I'm going for Dual Xeon 2.8 with 2G DDR 333 with that ASUS Motherboard PC DL Delux something I guess...

I use XSI and from what I have been hearing, XSI works better with intel than amd, it seems it more optimized for intel.

Thanks guys!

[Emmortal1]

How much money were you looking to spend on that setup with the dual Xeons?

Emmortal

[allawy]

1500 USD that doesn't include a HD,CDROM,DVD, and VCard, I have a SATA 120G and I will use my old Radeon 7500 (I will sell my 9800 pro - which is a wondeful card)

My other question (which propobly will not afftect my purchace) is that I have a P4 2.4HT FSB 800 with 1G of DDR400, would the dual Xeon at 2.8 FSB 533 with 2G DDR333 compisate the FSB drop? I have a friend that say that my dual would even be faster, but I'm not sure.

[Emmortal1]

The dual 2.8 Xeons will definitely be faster than the 2.4 at 800mhz.

Emmortal

[allawy]

I ment a software that doesn't use multi-cpu, or windows performance.

[GXAlan]

"my understanding is that using 400mhz ram on a system that maxes out at 333mhz actually performs less than if the ram speed matches the fsb....."

That is definitely true for some cases. The catch is that the Athlon64 and up series do not have a "front side bus" anymore. In the past, the RAM didn't work out right because it was CPU -> motherboard chipset -> RAM. If the CPU was 333, the extra megahertz.

The Opteron, Athlon64, and Athlon64 FX have the memory controllers on the CPU itself. So it's not a problem at all. The memory controller on the AMD64's are limited to 400MHz DDR at this time though.

[allawy]

Well, I'm not sure if I'm going to keep this DDR400, I think I will replace it with DDR333 maybe I will pay little more money extra and get a good trade for 2G DDR333.

I have seen PCs that don't have page files, and they work much faster and have high response than with page files, I made a test with my PC, and with Cinibench my render score went about 10 point more, it not much, but prove that it increase the performance.

one last thing is that I think even if I use my DDR400, with 333 speed it will be ok, been there before.

[FreeQ]

Know VIA, No Peace!
No VIA, Know Peace!

[Thalaxis]

Right now, the Via K8T800 chipset is outperforming nVidia's
nForce3Pro-150 quite handily, and has shown impressive
stability. Maybe they <b>finally</b> figured it out.

As for nVidia... I think that the nForce3-250 will be very desirable.

[FreeQ]

I mean Southbridge compability and reliability things, not about performance. As you and everybody knows stability is the first issue for real workstations.

For i.e. nforce has unstable SATA issue and not good in linux support yet.

Current core logic engineers has very cooldesign about nortbridge. But southbridge is still in darkages! But I apprecate it's very though work.

Athlon64 chipset from ALI has best performance in the current timeline. But I don't know PCI Latency, USB or Firewire ISSUE.

Dear Thalaxis, VT8237 has most crap IDE/ATA controller in the world. Just in case.

Cheers

[MadMax]

Originally posted by Thalaxis
Right now, the Via K8T800 chipset is outperforming nVidia's
nForce3Pro-150 quite handily, and has shown impressive
stability. Maybe they <b>finally</b> figured it out.

As for nVidia... I think that the nForce3-250 will be very desirable.

I guess if your idea of "quite handily" is the near even matches between the two, or figures far too small to detect without a benchmark.

As for stability, don't count on it. Those machines are not configured with any pro hardware at all. Take a generic VIA box and not do anything with it and it will give the impression, however false, of stability.

Put a PVR in it. Or a Video Toaster. Or a DPS Velocity, or any DPS product, or Audio studio card, or select SCSI controllers and a list of others to numerous to recall off the top of my head.

Then see how stable you think they are.

VIA has pretty much ALWAYS been able to fool reviewers. No reason to think anything has changed. In fact, I would be VERY suspicious of their design drift away from the AMD reference design.

[allawy]

ok last 3 posts, very good, but we are not Opteron interested anymore :)

No! No1 No! I'm Joking, you most welcome :)

I would appreciate if anybody know a bug or a bad thing about PC DL Deluxe from ASUS since I'm paying for it tomorrow maybe, the Xeon Prices seemed droped, is this true? my dealer said so, but he is not sure how much...

Do you know how much a Xeon 2.5 FSB 533 and later would cost? I think I would really feel good (and safe if I can jump above the 3G)

Still I really need more info about ASUS PC DL Deluxe if you have.

[Emmortal1]

Lowest I've seen for the 2.66ghz 533FSB Xeons is 266$, just did a quick search, might be able to find cheaper if you dig.

Emmortal

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