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Dual processing? Pffft! Try quadruple processing!!! Holy moly!b

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spldart said:
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.
 
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.
 
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 ;)
 
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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
 
blackjackel said:
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:
 
@md0Cer said:
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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