Slartibartfast
Supreme [H]ardness
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- Sep 25, 2004
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I won't disagree that 4x4 is a gimmick, personally I see no value in it whatsoever.
As for quad sockets, I did consider it.
As for quad sockets, I did consider it.
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AMD Quad-Father 4x4 Details Update
- Thread starter pawstar
- Start date
Ockie said:
3% is a real speedup, but 3% is also within the statistical noise of most benchmarks based on real-world applications. Only (useless) artificial benchmarks tend to have results reproducible within +- less than 3%.
That is why I say 3% doesn't count to proof that NUMA is important.
If you study OS development you will also see that the memory allocation strategies for current OSes are entirely unable to make good use of NUMA because they always end up with the page in the "wrong" memory bank, unless they restrict the scheduler - which is even worse. The Linux people go completely radical with their page migration scheme, which means pages follow "their" processes through the system, getting copied from one NUMA bank to the another. Whether that is particularly effective total remains to be seen.
In any case, if you just run one, and only one, application on the box and it manually binds it's own threads to CPUs and then carefully places memory itself, then you see a speedup. Anything real-world has shown no real NUMA speedup so far. And "so far" means in all the years since the first Opterons came out (they had NUMA from start).
unhappy_mage said:Because Intel is on the upswingAMD didn't keep up their incredible upclimb, Intel came out with a chip they should have released years ago (Core Duo 2), and they fell approximately even for the first time in a while. Thus, people are turning on AMD in record numbers.
That said - if I want a dual-socket board, I want it server-grade. What reason would I have right now for an 8-core machine with no ECC? Most of the parallelized apps right now are server apps - web servers, SQL servers, distributed computing stuff, etc. None of which I'd consider running on a machine with no memory checking. Just that simple, as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps eventually, games will come out that use more than two threads, but until then it doesn't make sense to have a jillion cores.
There is no other way to secure all of the hours that we each invest in our systems, both in building and operating them, than to run those systems with ecc/registered ram. If you do anything else, you're foolish!! The next step in security is to run RAID1, 5 OR 6. You can always build hybrids of these. But at the most basic, one of these MUST be chosen. If you don't do this, don't shed one single tear the next time you have to reinstall your system.
But of course, for those of you running Windows, please just keep on crying. Windows 2000 (I'm guessing XP is no different) only allowed RAID0 if you didn't have a server edition. How pissed was I when I had a system go belly up because of that!! So I run Linux. Because it's the only intelligent thing to do. Linux provides you with security features Windows either doesn't provide, or charges you your firstborn child for. Spend your money on hardware, not software. Linux doesn't sing the blues!
Yes, I spent more than most, on a server board. But I have a Tyan s3992 with 16 DIMM slots, all of which are ecc/reg. And the prices are already falling on the Opterons (28)xxx series. I have a 2210, and the price has fallen @$40 [Newegg] since I got it a month ago. And yes I am hoping to get 8-cores on that board as soon as I can afford it.
But the one thing that ranks highest on my list of priorities, is stability. You can forget about it, if you're running anything without ecc/registered ram and RAID. DON'T run RAID0 on anything unless it is part of a hybrid RAID system. RAID10, RAID50 or RAID60. And even then, you're better of with RAID15 or RAID16. It's easy enough to set up.
RAID15: is mirrored RAID5. xxxx+r=RAID5
requires a minimum of one drive (r) for redundancy per stripe
/xxxx+r\
\xxxx+r/ These two lines represent RAID15
RAID16: is mirrored RAID6. xxxx+rr=RAID6
requires a minimum of two drives (rr) for redundancy per stripe
/xxxx+rr\
\xxxx+rr/ These two lines represent RAID16
Be the master of your world. Build a server.
Get fired up, and enjoy it!
LightningCrash
2[H]4U
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- Dec 29, 2000
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Any update on this?
MrGuvernment
Fully [H]
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check other threads for benchmarks
4x4 is , well, more or less useless compared to core 2 duo.
4x4 is , well, more or less useless compared to core 2 duo.
Arcygenical
Fully [H]
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visaris said:
For single applications then yeah a C2D kicks the QF.
For anything with a high thread count / IO performance, AMD's system's quite useful.
LightningCrash
2[H]4U
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Fee said:
part of the problem with having the memory controller integrated into the chip
/dev/null
[H]F Junkie
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Arcygenical said:
Hm, I thought the same until I saw $330'ish socket 771 quad core xeons based on c2d. I know what I'd rather have and only 1 of my boxes in the last couple years is Intel
LightningCrash
2[H]4U
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Shingoshi, you said Win2K Pro and XP only allowed RAID 0?
Funny because I've had a RAID5 array on both
LSI MegaRAID 1600 Elite FTW! ......which is now in the hands of unhappy_mage
Funny because I've had a RAID5 array on both
LSI MegaRAID 1600 Elite FTW!
......which is now in the hands of unhappy_magespectrumbx
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2003
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- 1,647
I always find that people that are very critical of Windows know nothing of it.
Anyway, if it wasn't for FB-DIMM, socket 771 would be my pick right now with quad core being of good price on it.
Anyway, if it wasn't for FB-DIMM, socket 771 would be my pick right now with quad core being of good price on it.
Shingoshi said:
As someone who has run Registered ECC memory and regular memory in his home machine I can tell you right now that the difference wasn't noticable. I didn't and still don't have crashing or lockup problems with either my Dual Opteron 254 system I used to use, and my Core 2 Duo system I am using now. For production machines, is it worthwhile? Yes. For home users, gamers or even casual work from home? No.
I agree with some of your points on RAID for redundancy and data, but I also would like to make the point that if you are really concerned about your data, a good backup strategy needs to be in place. RAID is not backup and can not be depended upon for safegaurding data. RAID will also not prevent you from having to reload your OS. I am not sure where you were going with that statement.
Shingoshi said:
This is where you really are out of your element. I don't know if you are thinking of software RAID through Windows or not, but hardware RAID is done in the hardware and Windows will recognize the volume as one disk and therefore what it does or does not do in software is irrelevant. BTW I've had RAID0, 5 and 1 on my machine all at once running Windows XP Professional. So this isn't right. I am pretty sure that soft RAID using Windows built in Storage management allows more than just RAID 0 as well, but I haven't used it in several years, so I'll be quiet about that.
Shingoshi said:
Good for you. Don't know that it's worth it for what you are doing, but then again, I don't know what you are doing so I can't say.
Shingoshi said:
RAID redundancy maximizes uptime. It does NOT make for a more stable system, or even safeguard your data. If you get a virus or data corruption occurs for any reason, that virus or corrupted data will spread through your RAID array just as it does on a single disk. Uptime, redundancy, and data backup are two fundamentally different concepts.
Not everyone can afford enterprise class hardware. Even when I was using my dual Opteron systems (I had multiples) I never ran my mouth like this. I've seen plenty of Intel based desktop machines that were as stable if not more so than some so called enterprise class machines. There is more to stability than hardware alone. Though it is of course, the most important factor. But you are kidding yourself if you think ECC Registered ram is automatically going to make your system more stable than a desktop unit that's put together correctly with quality parts and standard memory modules.
Shingoshi said:
I went the other way. I ditched workstation and server hardware for plain old high end desktop power. More performance, for a lot less money. I paid a ton of money for my Dual Opteron setup, and got nothing more out of it than I could have an Athlon X2 system.
It does look like you're only getting one processor in the combo. In the past with the nForce opteron chipsets, you needed to have both processors to use both PCIe x16 slots. I don't know if it's the same way here. You may need to have both processors before you can take advantage of all the boards features.
ND40oz said:
That's not a chipset issue, it is a mainboard decision issue. The makes for dual AMD64 board can decide which I/O device to connect to which CPU. With the Tyan K8WE for example you couldn't use GbE when running with one CPU. But the comparable board from Supermicro has all devices connected to the first CPU.
I have no primary info on what this board does (and I think it is a POS not even worth researching the question), but I have been told that it has all devices on the first CPU.
Of course, you lose 2 RAM slots.