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QwertyJuan

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Aug 17, 2000
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New server -

1 x GA-7DPXDW-P Motherboard (5 Star rating @ Newegg)
2 x 2800+MP
4 x WD 120GB IDE 8MB 7200RPM Drives (Raid 0+1)
2 x 512MB Kingston Reg ECC 2100 Ram
1 x Intel PWLA8391MT 1000Mbs NIC
1 x ANTEC case PLUS1080AMG

QwertyJuan
 
Looks good, but i'd ditch the kingston ram for some crucial brand stuff. I've got 6 boxes at work with that mainbord and 2400+ processors with absoultly no problems (execpt for the 2 that I tried to build wiht kingston ram.. never doing that again)
 
What PS are ya gonna use with that? Ive got the same motherboard and I love it. Just switched from an asus board.
 
I'm using unbuffered unregistered Kingston RAM (CL3 - ValueRam) in my new Dually (Gigabyte) and it worked just fine. It was PC3200 and I didn't have to boot it with PC2100 and change the RAM from AutoDetect to get it working at the lower speeds. I can't say anything about the ECC & Registered RAM though.

Since it is a playing workstation and not doing anything super critical, I just overclocked some 2400+ mobiles (35watt) and am running them at 2.4GHz (1.7volt pin modded too) and it is so far running stable. So far my crashes seem to be only from using Gigabyte's temp / voltage / mobo monitoring utility... I love the board. :)

BTW, for my PSU I went with a Vantec Stealth 520. I'm not sure how well the included Antec PSU can handle it, but I just went with this to be safe.
 
QwertyJuan said:
New server -

1 x GA-7DPXDW-P Motherboard (5 Star rating @ Newegg)
2 x 2800+MP
4 x WD 120GB IDE 8MB 7200RPM Drives (Raid 0+1)
2 x 512MB Kingston Reg ECC 2100 Ram
1 x Intel PWLA8391MT 1000Mbs NIC
1 x ANTEC case PLUS1080AMG

QwertyJuan
Click to expand...

Am I the only one using a dual proc for a gaming rig?
 
Nope :]

I was using a dual 1800+ box with a geforce 4 TI for the longest time before my PSU killed my mobo. Now I'm stuck with a dual pentium III 1.0....oh well...
 
been using dual or quad systems since 98
started with a dual p2 233 system
moved to a compaq quad p-pro 300 (1mb cache) system
then to a dual p3 933
then to the current dual MP2800's
next is the quad opteron tyan system

most games do not support MP
but it still gives you an advantage from being able to isolate the OS and other things running in the backround to proc 2 and the game only to proc1

if your using xp/2000 get bored and play with the afinity settings they can make a big difference in some apps
 
Frosty_axe said:
Looks good, but i'd ditch the kingston ram for some crucial brand stuff.
Click to expand...
No sure if I'd agree with you on the Kingston RAM - I'm using a pair of HyperX 1GB PC3500 with my dual Xeon and they work just fine... Very aggressive timing and all. Absolutely no complaints. :) However, I've never seen them in action in a dual-Athlon rig, so I may be wrong.
 
spikegifted said:
No sure if I'd agree with you on the Kingston RAM - I'm using a pair of HyperX 1GB PC3500 with my dual Xeon and they work just fine... Very aggressive timing and all. Absolutely no complaints. :) However, I've never seen them in action in a dual-Athlon rig, so I may be wrong.
Click to expand...

Well, I've used kingston ram a total of 3 times.. Once back in the day for my original pentium box, once for my celron 300A and then again for one of the dual boxes. The first two times i did ok, the pentium never had a probem, but the celeron flaked out after a few years. With the dual box both dimms were bad right out of the box. Of course the problem only started intermettently, had the first crash about a month after the box was bult, and got more frequent after that. Crucial on the other hand has been used for the last 9-10 boxes i built (not counting the one kingston trial) and i have yet to have a single problem with any of it.
 
I would think hard before buying the Gigabyte. My experience with that board was a nightmare. Also, any help from them is nonexistant. I rma'd it in 2002, and haven't seen a replacement yet. I wrote it off, and bought an MSI.
 
^eMpTy^ said:
Am I the only one using a dual proc for a gaming rig?
Click to expand...

nope i will be doing it in the near future, just need the scratch for the second cpu.

but then again this computer is what i use everything for.
 
I game on mine (new main rig now :D). 2400+ Mobile Barton AthlonXP (35 watt) @ 2.4GHz (133x18) / 1.7v. The same Gigabyte motherboard. Kingston 512MB PC3200 RAM (Unbuffered/UnRegistered). And Radeon 8500. I think it undervolts a bit, but anyways...

So far I only seem to see issues when Gigabyte's Board Temp Monitor program & Prime95 ( & Mozilla & Windows Media Player & Outlook & ...). I don't run it anymore because most of my crashes appeard to have come from that temp monitor program.

For a while I had one or two cases with Joint Ops Demo & sound crapping out on me along with Battlefield Vietnam (when running a dedicated server on processor 0 with full bots, client on processor 1), usually followed by a crash. But I think that is a thing specific to the game because if I exit it and open up Windows Media player, the sound works fine (usually). I think playing with processor affinity (Win2K) fixed those issues, but I tossed in another soundcard to be safe. I'm not sure if this issue has been fixed for sure or not yet though. Maybe upping the voltage to my processors will iron this out -- although I passed P95 (1 instance per processor) for an hour and a half.


I've only had one case of (small) data corruption, but that was when I used a Known Bad stick of RAM. It was crucial, but I'm not holding anything against them because I knew full well that this stick of RAM was bad before I put it in.


Only time will tell if I will have more issues to fix, but for the most part I'm doing great on my system right now. I just have to tighten RAM timings and such and make sure that everything is as it should be as I work on reinstalling everything.



I have also heard that someone in my area uses this (Gigabyte) motherboard and MP processors to do satelite imaging and forest growth prediction work. My guess is that they'd only keep using it if it was stable enough for them, so depending on your use this board may work out. I use it as my main machine and game rig.
 
I game on my new rig.
Dual 250's, Dual 74gig Raptors, Nvidia 6800GT, etc, etc.

Now the only thing I need to find are some new games I can play single handed.

Luck......... :D
u=Tigerbiten.gif
 
Tim_axe said:
For a while I had one or two cases with Joint Ops Demo & sound crapping out on me along with Battlefield Vietnam (when running a dedicated server on processor 0 with full bots, client on processor 1), usually followed by a crash. But I think that is a thing specific to the game because if I exit it and open up Windows Media player, the sound works fine (usually).
Click to expand...


the 8500 has issues with modern games. upgrade the card.
 
alienb said:
Nope :]

I was using a dual 1800+ box with a geforce 4 TI for the longest time before my PSU killed my mobo.
Click to expand...

thats too funny, same EXACT thing happened to me :mad:
 
Not funny man. It ran most stuff faster than my current Barton 3200 system. I was very sad to see it go...
 
alienb said:
Not funny man. It ran most stuff faster than my current Barton 3200 system. I was very sad to see it go...
Click to expand...

I agree my 1800 mp system was extremely fast, the 2500 barton I have now doesnt compare.
 
just received everything and was surprised... the PSU says the 12+ is actually 26A.... did they change the specs or something?? Cool anyhow...

QwertyJuan
 
yes it's all built, and it ROCKS!! :D

Only little thing that ticked me off was the fact that the onboard RAID only supports 2 drives... had to put my old TX2000 controller in and use it to make my 4 drive 0+1 array... was hoping I could use it elsewhere....

Any benchmarks you guys want me to run??

QwertyJuan
 
Take a run of clibench on the CPU benchmarks. ( http://clibench.daemonware.ch/index.php?seite=home ) Download my results ( http://files.timaxe.com/blog/july04/benchmark dual 2.4.cb3 ) and do a File -> Compare, and give us the numbers :) BTW, even for the same tests, these numbers do not actually correlate too well with the numbers SiSandra gives for the same tests... :confused:

I don't know of any other tests that take advantage of SMP (SiSandra does, but I don't care about those numbers) so that is all I have to ask.
 
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