The ultimate SLI setup is right here

LOL good theory.. but thanks that helps me so much... :rolleyes: now the combinations would be trycky... as to what buy first.. MORE ram.. or the second cpu :p

would you advice for someone who .. basically never games.. to go for this option or.. for a regular cpu?.. i do heavy apps though.
 
I've owned many duals, and currently own plenty more. My gaming rig is not a dual, no games really take use of it. If you do a lot of apps and such, they help a lot or if you use apps that are written for them. It all depends on what apps you use. Todays high end cpus can handle quite a few apps under heavy load just fine. Unless you have the spare cash and nothing better to do with it, or a huge need, you'll probably never need them.
 
OriginalOCer said:
p.s. Does that Optie board support NUMA? If it does, it completely owns everything.
Click to expand...

Obviously you really don't know anything about SMP platforms. NUMA is Non uniform memory architecture, which multi-Opteron has to be since the memory can be split between processors and its not uniform. So basically every dual/quad/8way Opteron board supports NUMA.

Also it says that this only supports Opteron/FX socket 940, not exactly gaming friendly with the requirement for ECC Registered RAM. This is not a gaming motherboard, simple as that.
 
I usually dont chime in too much, but I have been keeping my eye out for a new gaming board. Specifically a dual SLI / opteron board. I noticed everyone missed the small print on the specs for the DK8ES which states:

Two PCI-Express x16 expansion slots ( one in PCI-Ex2 mode )

Note the 'one in PCI-Ex2 mode'. And also note the 'EPS' power supply, and more importantly, the EATX form factor (12"x13" board size). Its another headache at that. Plus this board has been 'coming soon' for quite a few months.

Now with that said however, there is something that looks quite promising from Abit (WN-2S+), which sports SLI natively, dual opterons, and the Nforce4 chipset. And it does not require ECC or registered memory as well. If I can get my fingers on one, I'll report back what I find.

Why SMP? remember, you have background tasks running, and when a game is running, it will be hogging up as much as possible (with the exception of the other processes that have a higher priority, and have the same affinity as your game). Granted they rarely grab more than 1-3% (depending on your hardware) but add in some HDD loads etc, and it can rise some. The real benefit is not having to restart your computer because some app crashed or ran away with the lion's share of the thread load. I've always associated the dual processor to the 'control-alt-delete' in NT kernel based OS's.. It lets you get out of a bad situation, versus a single processor is much like win95/98/me... Ctl-alt-del MIGHT get you out of a situation, but the likelyhood is pretty poor.

If you've never experienced Numa, you probably wont really care. Does it boost things.. sure! I run a Quad 848 Opteron for a workstation (win2003 Enterprise svr for OS), but no PCI-Express (tyan S4880), so all i have is PCI. But when I'm encoding HD mpeg-4 content, all 4 of those CPUs are screaming for mercy, and that NUMA comes in REAL handy from the amount of data I'm moving around. But again thats a workstation thing. However, developing in Doom 3 on it is great until I have to do a 3d run, then its 'welcome to the Radeon 9200 nightmare'... Its like putting a v12 into a ford escort... You're only going to twist the frame if you stomp it.

Everyone in here (including myself) is always looking to remove some bottleneck by changing something out, and my opinion is that a board like the Abit board could be one hell of a rig to game on.

--OBWANDO
 
Interesting...

so is this gonna be like that dual operon sff box they announced over half a year ago but nobody ever saw it in a shop? lol

For todays game i don't see ANY games that uses SMP. for tomorrow's game... well -- i guess here's hope for SMP support... heh Oh and it would really suck if that ultra-expensive dual 940 pin system you just built, BARELY outperforms a single-processor system costing less than half as much! Yeah it's good for multi-tasking, everyone knows that... How important IS that to a hardcore gamer thou? I mean honestly would you be ripping a dvd in the background as you play doom3? And why would you want to? lol I think this board has much more to do with the size of one's e-penis than anything else...

At any rate I have my doubts that this thing will even come out -- it's an intriguing concept thou, iwill just have to convince all the game companies to start making games that can utilize SMP -- and to convert all the older games that doesn't, to that. lol

cheers,

yass
 
starbuck8968 said:
Obviously you really don't know anything about SMP platforms. NUMA is Non uniform memory architecture, which multi-Opteron has to be since the memory can be split between processors and its not uniform. So basically every dual/quad/8way Opteron board supports NUMA.

Also it says that this only supports Opteron/FX socket 940, not exactly gaming friendly with the requirement for ECC Registered RAM. This is not a gaming motherboard, simple as that.
Click to expand...
whether NUMA is supported is a good question. most ATX opteron boards out now (the tyan and msi ones) don't have the seperate memory banks required for NUMA. looking at the pic indicates that it does have NUMA support as it has 2 seperate banks of 4 slots each. i think that any new motherboards will be made to support NUMA because it is worth the real estate.

it does require 4 DIMMs to get full speed, though. so basically to get NUMA you have to be on the edge of where windows likes more memory (windows dislikes more than 2gb, usually - makes it slower after that for regular usage)

on the topic of PCIe stuff:
IWILL product information said:
Two PCI-Express x16 expansion slots ( one in PCI-Ex2 mode )
Click to expand...
only one real x16, with an x2 ( :eek: )
i'm gonna wait for the asus or tyan opteron SLI boards, thanks. or the DK8EW (which should have 2 real x16s, like the tyan) i think the asus only has a pair of x8s, but it adds a x1 and x4 too. and probably overclocking. the tyan is nice because it has a bunch of pci-x and two nf4 chipsets as well, indicating two x16s. but the tyan probably won't have overclocking capabilities... and the asus doesn't need registered memory.
with that in mind, i'm leaning towards the asus at this point. the iwill is still nice, though. be interesting to see how well they work.
 
Yassarian said:
so is this gonna be like that dual operon sff box they announced over half a year ago but nobody ever saw it in a shop? lol
Click to expand...

Those went into production in the end of December. I've had one sitting under my desk for a day. Had dual 246HE's, 2gigs of RAM, and a GeForce 6800 GT. Was extremely nice, should see them out in retail within the next month I've heard.
 
LittleMe said:
Those went into production in the end of December. I've had one sitting under my desk for a day. Had dual 246HE's, 2gigs of RAM, and a GeForce 6800 GT. Was extremely nice, should see them out in retail within the next month I've heard.
Click to expand...

pics?
 
not sure if this was brought up already....but wouldn't a dual processor setup be useless (FOR GAMING) if the game didnt support it? i mean...yea obviously dual processing is great for workstations and such like that....but this thread is specifically about gaming
 
ScHpAnKy said:
pics?
Click to expand...
I wish, but alas, it was probably the most powerful system I've used as a workstation to date. Now, if they could just figure out a way to move it to the nForce4 chipset with dual x16 slots (ok ok, dual x8) for some dual 6800ultra lovin'. I'd sell my left kidney for it.

EDIT: Oh yea. Nope, no pictures. It was over my christmas vacation from work and my camera was locked in the building at work with all the alarms and such. Pretty stupid because I needed that camera several times and I didn't even have my camera phone yet.
 
LittleMe said:
Those went into production in the end of December. I've had one sitting under my desk for a day. Had dual 246HE's, 2gigs of RAM, and a GeForce 6800 GT. Was extremely nice, should see them out in retail within the next month I've heard.
Click to expand...

!!! Where did you buy it and how much?? I'm really interested in getting that actually... lol

cheers,

yass
 
Yassarian said:
!!! Where did you buy it and how much?? I'm really interested in getting that actually... lol

cheers,

yass
Click to expand...

Didn't buy it, somebody I know has a pre-production sample (final specs though). IWill has a press release that in mid December saying they were going to start full production in 1 to 2 weeks I think. You can already buy them in Japan (seen them on akiba) which means they should be here in like a month or so right?
 
starbuck8968 said:
Obviously you really don't know anything about SMP platforms. NUMA is Non uniform memory architecture, which multi-Opteron has to be since the memory can be split between processors and its not uniform. So basically every dual/quad/8way Opteron board supports NUMA.

Also it says that this only supports Opteron/FX socket 940, not exactly gaming friendly with the requirement for ECC Registered RAM. This is not a gaming motherboard, simple as that.
Click to expand...

Opterons do not require NUMA. They *support* it. The mobos also have to support it, and the OS has to support it. It sure as hell isn't required. Please don't snap someones shorts unless *you* know the facts. Thanks.

Rumor are that the newer Opteron cores are also giving up the requirement for ECC Registered. We will see if that pans out or not.
 
Anyone know of any stores outside of the one link posted, for socket 940 + sli goodness?

Rob
 
Steel Chicken said:
Opterons do not require NUMA. They *support* it. The mobos also have to support it, and the OS has to support it. It sure as hell isn't required. Please don't snap someones shorts unless *you* know the facts. Thanks.

Rumor are that the newer Opteron cores are also giving up the requirement for ECC Registered. We will see if that pans out or not.
Click to expand...

What i mean was that NUMA is built into every Opteron. So in a way it is required. And about ECC, currently Opteron requires ECC registered and if they do make an Opteron that doesn't require it, it will have to be a different socket, ala S939 or some other socket type.

So please stop this discussion for using Dual Opteron workstation for gaming, that's as preposterous as using dual xeons for gaming. While yes you can use it that way, its a horrible waste of money and your not gonna get much more out of it than a single FX or P4.
 
mashie said:
Interesting, did just refresh my knowledge in how the AMD Hypertransport works.

With three HT links per CPU you can in theory add one northbridge for every CPU so with a quad box it could be really interesting, 4-way SLI anyone? :cool:
Click to expand...
The MCPs do not share PCI-E lanes, so no 4-way SLI for you. Check Anandtech, they have a preview (or something like that) of the nForce Professional.

And guys, you all say how much dual systems suck for gaming (which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard), but what about game developers? They may actually have a need for SLI Quadros and Dual Processor systems, thus making this a winner.
 
Tim said:
Iwill's implementation is actually two nForce4 chipsets on one board, so it actually IS 2x16 slots.
Click to expand...

Who cares? Those gpus hardly use agp 4x speeds so it really honestly doesn't matter.

~Adam
 
Sykil said:
The MCPs do not share PCI-E lanes, so no 4-way SLI for you. Check Anandtech, they have a preview (or something like that) of the nForce Professional.

And guys, you all say how much dual systems suck for gaming (which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard), but what about game developers? They may actually have a need for SLI Quadros and Dual Processor systems, thus making this a winner.
Click to expand...

Yes this is great for developers, but they don't have to pay for their computers. Gamers on the other hand work hard at McDonalds, Best buy, or wherever to build their gaming machines. Spending $500 on a motherboard, $1000+ on CPUs, $500 on memory, $1000 on 2 SLI cards for a 10-20% improvement is not the best way to spend your money.
 
Hm, I'm a gamer and I work hard at a professional IT job.

I also use 64-bit unix
the board rawks.

Rob

starbuck8968 said:
Yes this is great for developers, but they don't have to pay for their computers. Gamers on the other hand work hard at McDonalds, Best buy, or wherever to build their gaming machines. Spending $500 on a motherboard, $1000+ on CPUs, $500 on memory, $1000 on 2 SLI cards for a 10-20% improvement is not the best way to spend your money.
Click to expand...
 
Here is some more info you guys should know. *At least I think this info is correct:

People running newer mmorpg games should get a boost from dualcore/smp. Why? Those games use threads to load graphics in real time.

Multi processor amd64 computers might require a OS upgrade. I don't think windows XP supports NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access).
 
How are we going to cool all this?

2+ Dual Core CPU's
2+ GPU's

Atleast 4 HS if you want to air cool, but what about water cooling? 4 Water ciruts? What about VapoChill, or TECing?

This just kind of pisses me off. I want to extreme cool the system and OC the hell out of it, but, to cool all that, not to mention the ass load of money.... It's like ripping my heart out. I guess I gotta save up now and pray I have enough when it all comes out....
 
EQTakeOffense said:
How are we going to cool all this?

2+ Dual Core CPU's
2+ GPU's

Atleast 4 HS if you want to air cool, but what about water cooling? 4 Water ciruts? What about VapoChill, or TECing?

This just kind of pisses me off. I want to extreme cool the system and OC the hell out of it, but, to cool all that, not to mention the ass load of money.... It's like ripping my heart out. I guess I gotta save up now and pray I have enough when it all comes out....
Click to expand...


You don't have to do anything. a single dual chip itself will be more than enough.

~Adam
 
Haha, whatever, waste another grand, far be it from me to give a shit.

~Adam
 
CleanSlate said:
Haha, whatever, waste another grand, far be it from me to give a shit.

~Adam
Click to expand...


Reading a thread , wrought with the tech and know how of the enthusiast community = intelectually stimulating

Reading a concise and unabashed statement of sefl-awareness amidst a sea of rationalization= precious
 
Moloch said:
Dua cpu is worthless in games..
Click to expand...
Dual CPUs offer more performace improvement for all games than SLI :)
Your game will get 100% CPU time from one CPU and the other CPU will run all of the other windows services, etc. (running windows 2000/XP) It works for all games and you don't have to wait for updated drivers for future games.
 
starbuck8968 said:
IT != Developer
Click to expand...

What I was trying to say is 1) some hardocp'ers can afford that that board and 2) It's usefull for a gamer who is NOT a developer. 64-bit unix flies on a board like that.

Rob
 
As it currently stands, I'd rather have dual cpu's than dual gpu's. Overall performance will be better (as in folding proteins, dvd authoring, photoshop, etc.) even if you lose some fps in games. Besides, few games can saturate a single top of the line graphics card, while MANY games are CPU limited. Just my 2 cents.
 
Yassarian said:
!!! Where did you buy it and how much?? I'm really interested in getting that actually... lol

cheers,

yass
Click to expand...

I'm sure you noticed the front page. zmaxdp's are out, you can pick one up now, for a nice chunk of change.
 
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