View Full Version : Dual processing? Pffft! Try quadruple processing!!! Holy moly!b
blackjackel
05-18-04, 07:05 PM
I just saw this just now in an advertisement.
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8qs.html
Excuse me while i catch my breath
edit: just checked price, $600 ??????? HAHAHA
You can get 4 NF7-S's for $400
Spl Engineering
05-18-04, 07:13 PM
yeah that is a bit pricey
hrm, $600 + 4 x 4xx opterons + huge psu + alot more!
AFIsoldier
05-18-04, 07:24 PM
20gbs of ram!?!?!?!?!?!? God, I wish I could have one of those filled with 2gb dimms of pc3200!
wquiles
05-18-04, 09:34 PM
Expensive, but it does look like it would be a pretty fast and powerful system :-)
Daewood
05-18-04, 09:50 PM
wow i have only a gig of ram and that is almost too much ram but 20Gig dang that is awesome
spldart
05-18-04, 10:18 PM
What slot would you use to stick a decent video card in that sucker :confused:
ookabooka
05-18-04, 10:50 PM
Originally posted by spldart
What slot would you use to stick a decent video card in that sucker :confused:
the PCI-X slot. . .supposedly the new standard, i think it will take off because so many manufacturers are forcing it. Thing u have to take into account with 4 comps is hardrive,cdrom, ram, cases, etc.I think its safe to say that this gives u more processing power per $ in the end.
This is a server board, not a workstation board. That's why it has the onboard RAGE XL graphics. You could use a PCI graphics card in the 32/33 slot or some management adapters are PCI-X. Either way, forget about high end gaming.
The PCI-X specification is not the new serial signalling method for replacing the PCI bus. That is PCI-Express or PCI-E. PCI-X refers to a 64 bit 100 or 133Mhz, that has bandwidth up to 1GB/s. PCI-E is a serial method of signalling and bandwidth varies by the width of the bus. There's a lot of confusion between these two.
The pricing on the board is actually quite reasonable, when you consider what OEM quad solutions cost. You can count on having to buy a proprietary case and PS, as well.
Did you notice the asymetrical RAM distribution? CPU 1 has 4 slots, while the remainder have 2. I would have expected at least a three way multiple peer PCI-X bus, but this may have been a design compromise. SATA or SCSI as options, with possible RAID, though the SCSI would require a ZCR RAID controller.
All told, it doesn't look bad for a system that's more customizable than OEM suppliers make. As an added benefit, it'd be much easier to work on than many of the OEM solutions. 3U quads get exceptionally painful to work with.
Arkaine23
05-19-04, 08:45 AM
Lame, only 20GB ram max. Think I'll hold out until they have a board that can do 32GB. :)
Seriously though, that's one hefty server board. I don't have much use for the extra CPU's, but its nice to see maximum ram going up little by little.
@md0Cer
05-20-04, 12:22 PM
Sorry to spoil the party, but boards similar to this are nothing new. Most of them have been for Intel Xeon MP's though.
If you think this is badass, wait for AMD's dual cored Opterons.
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=293225
Oh, and I beleive the Opteron 8XX's are capable of 8 way processing. We have yet to see an 8 way board though.
Now that is something to think about, 8 CPU's all dual cored, meaning up to 16 CPU's :D
I would not mind taking one of those :D One for a webserver, one for music, one for browsing the internet, and one for typing essays on :) All folding of course :D
And of course one of these:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8w.html
as my gaming rig, so I could put an x800XT in it. Of course with 90nm dual cored Opterons as well :D
*me slaps self out of dream mode to go get the link for the dual cored Opterons*
EDIT: I got it in there.
Now that I am thinking a bit better, for the same price, you could probably build 8-10 systems with XP Mobiles overclocked to high heavens for the price of one of those. Remember, an Opteron 848 costed $4000 last time I checked. That is for each processor, not for all 4 ;)
Xplos!ve
05-20-04, 01:06 PM
guys, it cost me 148,000 uk pounds about 200,000 dollars to buolt a eight-truple (8 cpu's) opterons 248's the highest ones availble, 20gb of ram, 10 15,000 rpm cheetahs etc etc the best of everything u can think of, sell your house, your car and everything you own, you mite be homeless but it would be worth it for one of these MONSTERS :D :D
Midnight Dream
05-20-04, 01:20 PM
Originally posted by blackjackel
I just saw this just now in an advertisement.
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8qs.html
Excuse me while i catch my breath
edit: just checked price, $600 ??????? HAHAHA
You can get 4 NF7-S's for $400
While that is a good point, you also must consider the fact, that you cannot use the power of 4 processors in 1 system. I would pay the extra for a quad-proc system, if I needed it, but even with the extremelly taxing art that I do, it would never need that much power. :cool:
Originally posted by @md0Cer
And of course one of these:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8w.html
as my gaming rig, so I could put an x800XT in it. Of course with 90nm dual cored Opterons as well :D
That looks nice, but *whew*...with present-day prices and available opterons, it looks like you'd be spending around $1600 JUST for the mobo and processors (and that's with 1.6 Ghz cpus). Throw in that x800XT, and you'd be well over two grand without even looking at ram, hard drives, etc.
I think a system like that will have to wait til I win the lottery. :)
Forget about AGP or PCI-Express, this is a server board and does not support video other than the onboard 8MB Rage or PCI graphics. Definitely not a gaming machine.
blackjackel
05-21-04, 11:44 AM
yeah no agp on this thing, best thing you can get is a PCI vidcard...
what is the best PCI vidcard out today anyways? They dont make 9800pro for pcI do they? =P
The important thing to remember is that you can't run a gaming OS on this. W2k, WXP... these only support 1 or 2 CPUs. If you have 4 or more CPUs, you have to use server-level OS, which of course costs a lot more and is a lot less capable in regards to playing games. Indeed, I was unable to run much in the way of games, beyond simple ones that could run on a 486 just fine. The OS simply wouldn't ALLOW you to run them.
Additionally, not many people get use out of their dual systems as it is, since so few programs are written with multiple CPUs in mind. About the only use we can claim so far is that the computer runs a little smoother. Whoopie. 4 CPUs is going to be just as useless, nay, moreso. You can fold real good with it, or run a server with it, just don't expect to do anything "USEFUL" with it.
NovaShine
05-28-04, 10:33 AM
Imagine one of those things at a LAN party... :eek:
hehe yeah not a gaming machine, it i s a server machine not ment for the whole gaming community, but powerful none the less, windows2k3 would probably used here or a linux based os, either one wouldnt game well on this.
ToiletDuck
05-28-04, 12:20 PM
win2k3 games great and windowsXP can see up to 32 processors. So you could still run it.
win2k3 games great and windowsXP can see up to 32 processors. So you could still run it.
XP Pro can handle 2 processors. For 4, you'd need NT Server, 2000 Server, 2003 Server(not the Webserver version, only 2 processors). The only Windows OS that can handle 32 processors are Datacenter versions of 2000 Server and 2003 Server. These are not available retail boxed and are sold only by OEMs with qualifying hardware.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/datacenter/evaluation/business/overview/default.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/overview/datacenter.mspx
Wow...4 CPU's is pushing it...imagine the heat that thing would put out.. :drool:
Nightingale
05-28-04, 02:59 PM
just wait until the new dual core chips come out and you can have 8 effective processors using the same hardware.
spldart
05-28-04, 03:41 PM
There are times I have 16 smp aware apps running at once on my dually. I walk away and come back in several hours. I COULD use 4 processors on numerous occasions to speed up my work.
I'm just to poor for that so spending hours and hours waiting on dual bartons at over 2300mhz at 100% is unavoidable for now.
ToiletDuck
05-31-04, 09:12 PM
in WinXP pro when i hit ctrl+alt+del i right click on a process to set its affiliation and it shows 32.
Siphilon
06-01-04, 10:15 PM
here's a pic to salivate over:
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20040501/image/nqod1.html
_Siph
CandymanCan
06-02-04, 12:09 AM
Me wants....
The GUI has allocated spaces for 32 locations in that section. The code is reused for all of the 2000/XP OS. The XP Pro OS supports only 2 processors.
Softgod
06-02-04, 04:17 PM
I have a quad P3 700 with 2 megs cache on eaach chip. It has Windows XP Pro installed on it and runs fine.
Also I have a Quad P3 550 with 1 meg on each chip and it also has XP Pro on it.
(Last one I promise)
I have a quad NEC server with 4 P3's 550's in it with Win 2003 Enterprise and it runs fine.
When I say P3 I am refering to Xeons. Just so no one comes on here and throws a fit because I did not explain it.
It will run on the machine, but if you check your Task Manager under Performance, you should see 2 boxes to represent the 2 processors that are actually being used on the XP boxes. Server 2003 Enterprise will support up to eight real or virtual CPUs.
ToiletDuck
06-02-04, 04:44 PM
lol softgod that would suck just now finding out that you were only using two chips hehehe. Can I have one of the quad boards? I'd love to use it for video encoding.
LOL, i bought a quad proliant off him a while back, good stuff for the price. i still havent put it to good use lol
That looks nice, but *whew*...with present-day prices and available opterons, it looks like you'd be spending around $1600 JUST for the mobo and processors (and that's with 1.6 Ghz cpus). Throw in that x800XT, and you'd be well over two grand without even looking at ram, hard drives, etc.
I think a system like that will have to wait til I win the lottery. :)
You price is a bit off... for a quad, you need the 8xx (no such thing as 4xx series) series of Opterons, which are very expensive( yet still much cheaper than the Xeon MP's).
Take a look at THIS (http://www.atacom.com/program/atacom.cgi?SEARCH=SEARCH_ALL&KEYWORDS=CPUX_AK8S) page for some 8xx series pricing, $800 for the slowest 1.4GHz model, $2200 for the 1.8GHz model. And you need 4 at those prices :eek:
KOXC2003
06-03-04, 05:40 PM
"what is the best PCI vidcard out today anyways? They dont make 9800pro for pcI do they? =P"
It has a PCI-X, try ATI X800XT Platnium.
Voodoo Rufus
06-03-04, 05:42 PM
I saw that yesterday. Dang.
One powerful and big server board.
MisterEd
06-03-04, 09:03 PM
"what is the best PCI vidcard out today anyways? They dont make 9800pro for pcI do they? =P"
It has a PCI-X, try ATI X800XT Platnium.
PCI-X is not the same as PCI-Express. They are competing standards. PCI-X has been around for awhile while PCI-Express is new.
Standard ........... Bandwidth
-------------------- ------------
PCI 33 MHz 32-bit .. 133 MB/sec
PCI 33 MHz 64-bit .. 266 MB/sec
PCI 66 MHz 64-bit .. 533 MB/sec
PCI-X 66 Mhz ....... 533 MB/sec
PCI-X 100 Mhz ...... 800 MB/sec
PCI-X 133 MHz ...... 1060 MB/sec
PCI-X 266 MHz ...... 2130 MB/sec
PCI-X 533 Mhz ...... 4260 MB/sec
PCI-Express X1 ..... 500 MB/sec
PCI-Express X4 ..... 2000 MB/sec
PCI-Express X8 ..... 4000 MB/sec
PCI-Express X16 .... 8000 MB/sec
KOXC2003
06-03-04, 09:11 PM
Well I f***ed up lol. Sorry for the Inconvenience, thanks MisterEd for pointing out my mistake.
lol softgod that would suck just now finding out that you were only using two chips hehehe. Can I have one of the quad boards? I'd love to use it for video encoding.
A couple of years ago, there was a know-it-all kid on the forums for the game server I help run... he had a duallie P3-800 system he thought was awesome. Not only did he make the mistake of believing that 2 800 mhz processors is the same as one 1.6 Ghz processor in any application you run...but he was using Windows 98, which doesn't even recognize dual CPUs. :D
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