Xeon Question for you guys

[Cuper]

Hey,

I Have searched the forums and have come up with very little. I was wondering if you guys could help me out with a couple of questions I have.

1) Is the Supermicro board a decent board?? Don't want to overclock. (link to site below)

http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/M...500/P4DME-M.htm

2) what is DDR-200 Ram?? Is it DDR 2100??

3) The board has 6 slots for memory. How many do I have to fill to get the board to work? I copied this from the link which makes me think that it takes 2 to work?

"Two-way interleaved memory banks provide outstanding memory performance. (must use a pair of DIMMs for memory to function)"

3) Are there any other things that are necc. to make Xeons work?? I know all the basics (Power, floppy, OS, ect. ) just wondering if there is anything special to Xeons??

Thanks

Brad

 

[Jon]

SuperMicro makes great dual platforms...can't say you can really go wrong there.

DDR200 is simply PC1600 DDR. 2 slots will need to be filled for it to work, just as it says in the quote.

Everything else you'll need will be pretty standard other than heatsinks, they can be difficult to find (decent ones, anyway) if you don't buy retail chips.

 

[Cuper]

Thanks!! How much will the DDR1600 hamper the performance?? I am going to be using the machine for video editing and would like something fast but don't feel like spending $400+ to get a Xeon board with RD Mem. And then spend more for the ram. Would the system be faster than a XP2000 with PC2100??

Thanks Again!!!

 

[Henry Rollins II]

The board you mentioned is designed for server use, It has no AGP slot and is therefore useless as workstation. Right now there is only one AGP chipset for Xeon and it is RDRAM based. There is a new chipset with DDR/agp for xeon coming but I have no clue when

 

[Cuper]

You couldn't use a PCI???

 

[Henry Rollins II]

Sure you could use a pci vga card but then you are limited to the slow PCI bus(slower than AGP 1x). GeForce 4 mx420 is available in both pci and agp; the agp version is about three times faster.

You will experience 3D performance at about the same level as a Celeron 300 Mhz with voodoo2.

 

[SP]

There is a new chipset with DDR/agp for xeon coming but I have no clue when

Placer should be officially launched on Monday. In fact, some retailers may already have the boards listed on their sites.

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=28250

Anyway, for video editing you probably do want either an I860/rdram board or one of the newer E7505 (Placer) boards. The main reason being that the E7500 boards generally didn't perform as well as the I860/Rdram boards in terms of memory bandwidth and for applications like video editing this will be important. Placer is expected to do better but whether it will be better than I860/Rdram will remain to be seen. It should be close to I860/Rdram and since it will support the new 533Mhz Xeons it may even be slightly better when the FSB is running at 533Mhz with dual channel DDR266. So as you can guess those of us in the Xeon camp are eager to see just how good it will be. The good folks at www.2cpu.com have promised us reviews of some of the new Placer boards and when we see those reviews it should answer our questions as to how much better Placer will be. Due to Non-disclosure agreements they haven't been able to publish those reviews until Nov.18. So, you might want to visit the 2cpu website come monday morning.

 

[64026402]

Sure you could use a pci vga card but then you are limited to the slow PCI bus(slower than AGP 1x). GeForce 4 mx420 is available in both pci and agp; the agp version is about three times faster.

You will experience 3D performance at about the same level as a Celeron 300 Mhz with voodoo2.

Actually a GeForce 4 mx420 would rip any Vodoo card on any speed machine to shreds. Been there done that.

The PCI does limit card choices but it only limits video power on extreme high end graphics and gaming. When Vodoo 3 was tested in PCI and AGP4x there was no difference in performance.

Since the extreme high end cards have no PCI counterparts a similar test is not possible now.
If you don't have to have the highest 3dMark scores, a good pci video card for your purpose is available.

The ATI 9000 64ddr comes in pci for resonable.
For work station graphics the Quadro 4 NVS 400 64MB DDR PCI goes for $377.

The performance is not much different than the RDRAM except in memory bench marks.
You can do a lot with this board. Newegg has them refurb for $209.

 

[Henry Rollins II]

There is no point in buying a motherboard without AGP slot unless its gonna be a server. Using a PCI graphics card not only gives lousy video performance, it also slows down the entire PCI bus by stealing most of it´s 132 Mb/s transfer speed.

 

[Cuper]

Henry Rollins II - I don't really need high-end graphics tho. This isn't going to be used for Gaming or 3D rendering or somthing like that. I don't game and have been using PCI for a long time which has been fine for me.

Thanks for everyones input!!!

 

[Colin]

I have to agree with the AGP comments. Unless the Placer board is screams, an RD Ram based board would better suit your needs.

 

[64026402]

I have to agree with the AGP comments. Unless the Placer board is screams, an RD Ram based board would better suit your needs.

Rambus is pretty much dead. Dual channel DDR has it beat performance wise for a lot less.
AGP is nice but not a neccesity unless you are shooting for a dually 3D mark record. Thats for kids anyway.
If I had time to play games more often I might feel different.
A Quadro card for a work station should be plenty.

 

[Henry Rollins II]

Why would he need a quad card - is he going to use 4 screens?

 

[64026402]

Why would he need a quad card - is he going to use 4 screens?

Hardee Har Har

 

[Henry Rollins II]

Hardee Har Har

?? The quadro 400NVS that you have mentioned here has four vga outputs, hence the question.

 

[SP]

Rambus is pretty much dead. Dual channel DDR has it beat performance wise for a lot less.

With Placer and 533Mhz FSB, that may indeed be the case. However, I860/Rdram has been shown to outperform E7500/ dual channel DDR. In this review of the Iwill DP400, you can see how the I860/Rdram combinations compares to E7500/ Dual channel DDR in things like video encoding where memory bandwidth can make a difference.

http://www.2cpu.com/Hardware/iwill_dp400/index_6.html

See also the pages that are linked to in this thread showing memory benchmarks from I860 and placer.

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?threadid=28022

It would seem, based on the results on one of those pages that even Placer doesn't quite offer as much memory bandwidth as I860/Rdram. However, it should be noted that is with 400Mhz FSB Xeons and the meory running at DDR200. The real strength of Placer will be that it will allow you to use the new 533Mhz Xeons and at 533Mhz FSB and DDR266 it should gain the advantage. Of course we can only wonder how well an I860E/ PC1066 Rdram solution would have been. No doubt if Intel had seen fit to release an I860E chipset, it would have been the performance king.

As for AGP, I personally would want it, but if you application doesn't require it then you may be fine with a PCI video card. One thing to note about these dual Xeon systems is that they have multiple PCI buses. So, that means the comment that was made about a PCI card having to share bandwidth with all the other PCI devices might not be relavent here. You could configure the system such that your PCI video card would be on a PCI bus without any other devices or at least with few other devices on that same PCI bus.

 

[Henry Rollins II]

As for AGP, I personally would want it, but if you application doesn't require it then you may be fine with a PCI video card. One thing to note about these dual Xeon systems is that they have multiple PCI buses. So, that means the comment that was made about a PCI card having to share bandwidth with all the other PCI devices might not be relavent here. You could configure the system such that your PCI video card would be on a PCI bus without any other devices or at least with few other devices on that same PCI bus.

That is true, but in most cases you dont even have choice. The particuar board mentioned has two PCI bus interfaces - but the other one is PCI-X. It isnt even physically the same as 32/33 PCI slots. This also goes for boards with 64/66 slots. Some 32/33 cards will fit in those slots but most won´t.

 

[Cuper]

Why would he need a quad card - is he going to use 4 screens?

Funny you mention this b/c I do Currently only 3 are hooked up to one computer with the 4th connected to a MP3 server

 

[SP]

That is true, but in most cases you dont even have choice. The particuar board mentioned has two PCI bus interfaces - but the other one is PCI-X. It isnt even physically the same as 32/33 PCI slots. This also goes for boards with 64/66 slots. Some 32/33 cards will fit in those slots but most won´t.

Yes. I'm aware that the E7500 boards have PCI-X slots. So, do the new Placer boards and I860 boards have 3.3V 64 bit 66Mhz slots. However, my understanding is that PCI-X is backward compatible and therefore a 32bit 33Mhz card can be used in a PCI-X slot as long as it supports 3.3v signaling and is keyed as such. Most modern 32bit 33Mhz cards do support 3.3v signaling and are keyed to work. I've used a few such cards in the 3.3v 64bit 66Mhz slots on my P4DC6 and the cards I've tried have no problem as long as they're keyed to fit. The purpose of the keying is to ensure this and make sure that only cards that will work will fit. Therefore if a manufacturer keys their car to support 3.3v signaling it should work fine in one of those slots.

 

[Henry Rollins II]

But still, of my pci cards only one is compatible with this slot. And my cards aint that old. A Promise Fasttrack100 raid controller, Gainward GeForce4 mx420 and Happuage WinTV Nicam. All stricly 32 bit. The have to share the same bus - and my Soundblaster audigy is alone at the 64/66 bus which it also slows down to 32/33. I can asure you that this not a very good perfomance solution.