Dual boards are all flimsy and buggy

like the dual opteron worksation board, but it's got to be said dual amd board are dribbly motherboard efforts in any sense.

the processors went up form 0.5Ghz to 1.5Ghz in about one year, and now it's slowed down heckloads. maybe Nvidia would have the forsight of making a dual channel memory and cpu board...

all the dual boards i've ever heard of crash and burn. when ou try to run a mix of programs on them. essentially workstation boards just mean that they are too buggy to do much with.

with all the development going into Overclocking, where is all the motherboard research going to when it comes to high end real world dual boards? i guess the motherboard makers are too busy making peripherals like asus cd'r super gpu's.
R'n'D, only reliable old single chipsets. essentially motherboard shops just buy little cd factories and print transistors onto chipsets and that's all. meanwhile via is ailing because i little dual memory system is choking it up. oh well.

all the time the market for a 250 dollar base unit going at 3-4 ghz because all computers are actually "workstations". essentially games are fun "CAD" high power programs, and everyone is liable to run a defragmenter while opening and closing windows and copying files around. my computer is still overloaded at times and i press lots of buttons but it stays blocked...a chipset from AMD that is something that you can call "a good old chipset" that simulates some kind of real dual channel emulating software would sell twice as much opterons and athlons to the overclocker market.

evil intel will make tons of slower but faster ripoffs deals till the most distant point in the horizon as things go at the moment.

Was there any point to this other than a rant in general?

(btw, I know a bunch of people with dual AMD boards and they've had nothing but praise for them..)

they may have nothing but praise but the truth is that all your drivers and multemedia will crash twice as often on a dually. naa i just felt like writing about how unreliable the dually boards are... there has never been a hit chipset.

dinno a rant or an opinion, maybe i'll try and get anandtech to ask them about the dually gaps in the market and bugs at the oem forum there.

Hmm in some ways I agree with you, but I run dual xeon's and have had experiance with dual MP's. I would agree that Athlon MP's dont seem to hold up too well, and I would agree to some degree that they are buggy and abit dodgy in places, but the xeon boards are top notch, well most of them any way, and I have never had any real problems. But these dual boards are only needed in servers etc, your not going to need one at your home computer.

i just think that tons of enthusiasts who could buy dual processors with a cost effective rig would actually really like the possibility, especially if they already find themselves waiting for ever with the current cpu's...

it's up to the chipsets really, surely making a stable chipset for 2 processors is as easy as the principles in hyperthreading?

half the people here would get a dual rig here if it was easy and sure.

wish via would do something for power users.

Most of problems I've ever seen are to do with crummy drivers from people like creative, and it happens with all dual processor machines intel or AMD..

yes, but if you get the right equipment, you can normally get a gd setup which works perfectly.

the whole point in a multimedia system is that you can handle lots of driver interactions on it, and that the chipset is well researched to avoid common problems. the state of duallies is ineffect "problems", just like the nforce1 had... jsut there is no one there to do anything new with it.

I don't really get your point.

If your unsatisfied with AMD dually's (tho you sound like youve never even owned one TBH) then just buy a pair of Xeons....?

I would agree that AMD is less tried and tested, tho not neccesarily unstable. But intel is the market leader in servers and workstations (for good reason) and it'll probably stay that way for the forseeable future.

I buy AMD @ home and Intel @ work. Dont really see any good business case for going AMD on a large scale at work.

Butuz

Quote:

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Originally posted by viet cong zombi
the whole point in a multimedia system is that you can handle lots of driver interactions on it, and that the chipset is well researched to avoid common problems. the state of duallies is ineffect "problems", just like the nforce1 had... jsut there is no one there to do anything new with it.

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But there are the same problems with *all* dual chipsets with stuff like the creative drivers, it's nothing to do with the motherboard chipset quality, it's due to the fact creative can't code decent soundcard drivers for toffee..

If you have a "multimedia" aimed system then you are better off for the most part with a uniprocessor machine anyway, simply because nothing much will use SMP.

Workstations and Servers do use SMP and run software geared towards it's useage, it's a case of using the right tools for the right job.

Places like http://forums.2cpu.com/ are a goldmine of useful info for setting up successful SMP solutions.

;) I think the main problems are that...

* AMD don't have the market share to invest heavily in R&D for dualie's.
* Since AMD are the cost effect dualie choice many people skimp on RAM , PSU, case, cooling etc and it is that which makes them less stable.
* Many people use AthlonXP (often modded) instead of the certified but pricier AthlonMP.
* AthlonMP used Pally cores for a long time and these boys ran HOT even when there was 1 to a case.
* Unlike AMD Intel make many of their own mobos and chipsets and it's very profitable for them (esp the way they switch to a new one).
* There's more profit and demand there for Intel primarily because business buyers are dumb and just buy the 'brand'.
* AMD dualie's often fall into the hands of the average Joe whose interest and enthusiasm may just outstrip their knowledge, abilities, research and budget.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Butuz

I buy AMD @ home and Intel @ work. Dont really see any good business case for going AMD on a large scale at work.

Butuz

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I dont know about there - there's a fair few people buying into operton severs now, so they must be pretty damn stable. I would have said before: intel/intel (cpu, chipset) for uber stability, but now i recon AMD/AMD is probably coming up to just as good - they need to develop drivers though, but what do u expect if the chipset is as new as.

Can't speak for AMD servers, but i've got about a dozen dual processor machines ranging from dual p3 500's, through to dual p3 1.4ghz and my baby dual 2.4ghz Xeon with 2gb of ram.

They are by far and away the most stable machines in my dev system, windows is soooo much smoother with two processors in my opinion.

I hope if possible to have a new Opteron server if a new project gets okayed shortly so i'll let you know my findings as soon as i get clearance.

TiG

TiG: Cool, I'd be very interested in that, as I'm thinking about building an Opteron workstation next year :)

Quote:

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But there are the same problems with *all* dual chipsets with stuff like the creative drivers, it's nothing to do with the motherboard chipset quality, it's due to the fact creative can't code decent soundcard drivers for toffee..

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Quite so, Stoo. For what it's worth, my workstation here at work is a dual MP1800, running on a Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW and it's stable as hell. I wouldn't call it a multimedia system - it's for work, not play - but it runs like an absolute lamb. On the other hand, the amount of grief I had at home even in a uniprocessor system with a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 had to be experienced to be believed. Which was one reason I junked the damn card when I replaced the motherboard with an nForce2 jobbie. The drivers were AWFUL, and the damn thing choked anything else that was hanging off the PCI bus. Glad to be shot of it. I can't therefore agree with vcz's comments about duallie Athlon boards; mine works just fine. It would be nice if nVidia ever got around to producing a duallie (Opteron?) chipset, since on the basis of their single processor output it'd be a corker.

Well, they have the NForce 3 pro which is an opteron chipset, but it's uniprocessor only at the mo. I'd like to see what they could come up with for a dual solution though :D

Sorry, but I only have one comment on this one .....

"Poorly written programs cause more crashes than the hardware itself".

I wouldn't say the opteron is buggy, but the software thats written for it.

I've seen many dual boards and they always have suffered from the same poorly written programs for multithreading.

i'm being educated here :)

true the audio programs here crash every time on a dually for some configurations. possibly longhorn will incorporate multithreading interpretation of programs...

Quote:

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Originally posted by viet cong zombi
like the dual opteron worksation board, but it's got to be said dual amd board are dribbly motherboard efforts in any sense.

the processors went up form 0.5Ghz to 1.5Ghz in about one year, and now it's slowed down heckloads. maybe Nvidia would have the forsight of making a dual channel memory and cpu board...

all the dual boards i've ever heard of crash and burn. when ou try to run a mix of programs on them. essentially workstation boards just mean that they are too buggy to do much with.

with all the development going into Overclocking, where is all the motherboard research going to when it comes to high end real world dual boards? i guess the motherboard makers are too busy making peripherals like asus cd'r super gpu's.
R'n'D, only reliable old single chipsets. essentially motherboard shops just buy little cd factories and print transistors onto chipsets and that's all. meanwhile via is ailing because i little dual memory system is choking it up. oh well.

all the time the market for a 250 dollar base unit going at 3-4 ghz because all computers are actually "workstations". essentially games are fun "CAD" high power programs, and everyone is liable to run a defragmenter while opening and closing windows and copying files around. my computer is still overloaded at times and i press lots of buttons but it stays blocked...a chipset from AMD that is something that you can call "a good old chipset" that simulates some kind of real dual channel emulating software would sell twice as much opterons and athlons to the overclocker market.

evil intel will make tons of slower but faster ripoffs deals till the most distant point in the horizon as things go at the moment.

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What are you talking about? :confused: I've a couple of AMD duallies. I can report that I'm very happy with their performances and have had very few problems.

If you go to a forum like the one in 2CPU.com you're going to see all kinds of people with duallie problems. But that's expected - people go to forums to talk about problems and look for solutions. However, if you spend a little more time reading about it, most of these problems are very simple to fix and most of the time is because of inexperience rather than fundamental problems with the platform.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Stoo
Well, they have the NForce 3 pro which is an opteron chipset, but it's uniprocessor only at the mo. I'd like to see what they could come up with for a dual solution though :D

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Try this link... Or do a Find on the page (as it moves around...)

First review of the Asus PC-DL

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...=xeoncw&page=1

Building a dual 2.4 GHz Xeon system and overclocking it to 3 GHz + uber gaming/rendering/crunching/encoding system never looked to cheap/easy (relatively

I'm trying to convince myself at the moment that Xeons are the way to go rather than waiting to see what happens with Opteron and Prescott.

Either way a dual 2.6 GHz Xeon system overclocked to 3GHz + is gonna be a lotta "bang for your buck".

In the UK you can pickup a couple of 2.4 GHz Xeons for :-

2 x 2.6 Xeons (£200 each)
Asus PC-DL (£220)

compare this to Opteron :-

2 x 242 Xeons (£405.32 each)
MSI K8D Master-F (£361.31) not really a this some board as the PC-DL but its the only one I could find a price for !

The Xeon package is looking compelling !

HEADRAT

Heh, however compare the cost of the dual xeon platform to the cost of the p4c 3gig machine. Then think that you could just as easily by a 2.4gig p4c and get that to 3gig without even trying.

Xeons and opterons however much that report bigs them up are NOT made for gaming platforms. Games just simply don't make use of two processors.

Its a simple fact that its not designed to take advantage of the other processor, SQL server etc etc on the other hand certainly will and this is the real reason for dual processor machines.

Servers.!

TiG

I agree for gaming, there are a few exceptions but not enough to worry about.

As I mentioned in my post I did say gaming/rendering/crunching/encoding, I think gaming should have really come @ the end of that list ;)

The thing is buying a PC isn't all about gaming is it, I use VMWARE alot and being able to give it its own CPU appeals. Also for re-encoding video a dual system would kick ass !

HEADRAT

Quote:

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Originally posted by HEADRAT
First review of the Asus PC-DL

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_con...d=xeoncw&page=1

Building a dual 2.4 GHz Xeon system and overclocking it to 3 GHz + uber gaming/rendering/crunching/encoding system never looked to cheap/easy (relatively

I'm trying to convince myself at the moment that Xeons are the way to go rather than waiting to see what happens with Opteron and Prescott.

Either way a dual 2.6 GHz Xeon system overclocked to 3GHz + is gonna be a lotta "bang for your buck".

In the UK you can pickup a couple of 2.4 GHz Xeons for :-

2 x 2.6 Xeons (£200 each)
Asus PC-DL (£220)

compare this to Opteron :-

2 x 242 Xeons (£405.32 each)
MSI K8D Master-F (£361.31) not really a this some board as the PC-DL but its the only one I could find a price for !

The Xeon package is looking compelling !

HEADRAT

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Xeons share a single P4 533mhz bus so in effect they are slower accessing memory overall then a single P4. Opterons have a dedicated hypertransport dual DDR bus per processor = uber bandwidth.

Id still go opteron if i wanted a powerful dually rig.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Bindibadgi

Id still go opteron if i wanted a powerful dually rig.

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Have you actually read any of the reviews !

For an encoding/rendering workstation the Xeon whoops the Opterons butt.

HEADRAT

Quote:

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Originally posted by spikegifted
Try this link... Or do a Find on the page (as it moves around...)

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Ooooooooooooooooooooh :D

Quote:

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Originally posted by HEADRAT
Have you actually read any of the reviews !

For an encoding/rendering workstation the Xeon whoops the Opterons butt.

HEADRAT

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eh?? Ive read otherwise. In virtually everything the opteron wins.

I've checked there benchmarking figures against other Opteron reviews and they seem to be VERY poor. I dunno if i'm ready to believe those figures just yet, I know xeons can beat opterons in things like MPEG conversions and a few of the super high end light ray traces. To this i have no doubt, but i'm not convinced by these benchmarks.

Especially when comparing the opterons to the AMD MP processors. Everything i've seen with the MP vs the opteron the MP gets trounced.

I'd be interested to hear other peoples views on these benchmarks.

Thanks
TiG

Quote:

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Originally posted by Bindibadgi
eh?? Ive read otherwise. In virtually everything the opteron wins.

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Got any examples, I'd like to see a review where an Opteron beats and Xeon and encoding video for exampel ?

HEADRAT

Quote:

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Originally posted by TiG
I've checked there benchmarking figures against other Opteron reviews and they seem to be VERY poor. I dunno if i'm ready to believe those figures just yet, I know xeons can beat opterons in things like MPEG conversions and a few of the super high end light ray traces. To this i have no doubt, but i'm not convinced by these benchmarks.

Especially when comparing the opterons to the AMD MP processors. Everything i've seen with the MP vs the opteron the MP gets trounced.

I'd be interested to hear other peoples views on these benchmarks.

---

There are several issues regarding the benchmarks for the Opteron I'll like to raise you attention to...

1) The Opteron can handle both 32bit and 64bit computing, however all the reviews I've seen so far only benchmarked in 32bit, so the value equation is not complete. (It may be case that some Linux sites have carried out reviews that involved 64bit computing, but certain those that are based on Windows...)

2) Some of the benchmarking hardware were not well thought out or the hardware is taken to do something that is not it's original intention... For example, GamePC's review of the Tyan Thunder K8S only used 2 sticks of RAM, which means that either both CPUs are sharing the one single dual-channel memory or the CPUs are both accessing it's own single channel memory setup. The Opteron platform performs best with dual-channel memory supplying both CPUs. Also, the Opteron is a platform that is designed to opterate in SMP (just like the Xeon), so it is kind of insane to use a single CPU and bash it about and churn out an article (like Anand's review of the Opteron as a Desktop Platform, GamePC's review of the nForce3 Pro single Opteron solution and AMDZone's Opteron 246 1P Review ... :mad: ). I know that the fact that single CPU boards are around means that we should consider it has part of the platform, but IMHO, that is just taking things out of context. When was the last time you see the Xeon reviewed as a single CPU platform?? Given a well thought out setup, the Opteron can hold it's own in most cases - see TechChannel.de's review (in German, but the benchmarks numbers are just the same...)

3) The Opteron needs to scale!! By most measures, the Opteron is running too slow, even though it still holds it own when competing against CPUs that are running over 1GHz faster (Intel's P4Cs and Xeons). However, as I've made this assessment, I also recognize that there's lots of potential for the CPU as it is running in relatively slow speed. So soon as AMD manages to push out higher speed grades, the Opteron will become very competitive. This point was illustrated when AMDZone carried out some overclocked benchmarks on the Opteron. Here they overclocked an Opteron 246 (2GHz) to 2.25GHz and it did very well. Ok, the benchmarks are not exactly workstation class or server platform, but it is a good indication of things to come.

If you want to see more indepth discussions regarding all things SMP related, check out the excellent 2CPU.com forums... :D

Quote:

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Originally posted by HEADRAT
Got any examples, I'd like to see a review where an Opteron beats and Xeon and encoding video for exampel ?

HEADRAT

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I cant be bothered to find them again to be honest. I prefer the opterons, i dont give a flying monkeys if the xeons even make my dinner for me :rolleyes: and im not going into it anymore cause ur attitude is a leaves a lot to be desired tbh. :o

Quote:

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Originally posted by Bindibadgi
I cant be bothered to find them again to be honest. I prefer the opterons, i dont give a flying monkeys if the xeons even make my dinner for me :rolleyes: and im not going into it anymore cause ur attitude is a leaves a lot to be desired tbh. :o

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Well with a reasoned arguement like that what can I say :rolleyes:

If you are part of a discussion forum that usually means you want to "discuss" things.... .. .

All I asked was you to substantiate your claim that you'd seen review where the Opteron had beaten a high end Xeon in encoding/rendering !

Obvioulsy using the "flying monkey" approach kind of negates the need for any kind of debate on the subject ;)

As for the attitude thing, LOL !

HEADRAT

PS Please don't let my low post count make you think that I'm a "newb" !

Quote:

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Originally posted by HEADRAT
Got any examples, I'd like to see a review where an Opteron beats and Xeon and encoding video for exampel ?

---

To be completely honest, I don't think there are any. There's a very good reason for that - A lot of the applications that use streaming multimedia find the architecture of the P4 and Xeon highly agreeable. Also most of the Opteron vs. P4/Xeon reviews to date are not done well (see my prveious post).

To be completely honest, I don't think the Opteron, as it stands, can beat the P4/Xeon platform for certain types of applications. However, that does not mean the Opteron is one big turkey - it is not. Video encoding is only a very small part of the workstation market and those who do video editing and encoding all day long should look at the P4/Xeon solutions instead. However, given the Opteron's strong raw FPU performance, there still lots of areas it can be king of the hill - scientific applications, DCC, CAD/CAM, etc.

At the moment the opteron is hopelessly underclocked.
Mpeg sound/vid encoding and 3d rendering are all fsb, clock cycle and memory bandwidth intensive, so for the most part the opteron will struggle (THG tests), however, once the clock cycle and fsb are turned up to a more comparible level (AMDZone tests), the opteron can then start to compete.

On other things like Seti etc the opteron romps away with quite an impressive margin, escially seeing as the opteron is running at half the clock speed.

By the time of the new year/first couple of months next year I expect that the opteron/athlon64's will have levelled the field of play (if not leading it), especially with the improved chipsets etc coming along.

Off topic... I just find it very hard to agree with a lot of non-mainstream things that THG has to say. They usually manage to make the wrong call.

Yeah, but seeing as I haven't got multiple Xeon/Opteron rigs etc to do the benchies myself, I guess I'll have to take their word for it ;)

yeah thg slagged off all amd fans as sentimental try hards a year ago. wtf?

Bindi,

I hate to say it but you are the one coming off looking a bit childish this time, but you and headrat are both right about different things. But he's certainly got some valid points, just going off at his tone, which personally i can't see doesn't help matters.

At present the opteron just isn't up to beating dual xeons at encoding stuff, the software has been designed for intel to win, and of course they are going to bound on about it, But saying that check some of these benchmarks out. I think it should give you all some thinking to be done.

http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=55000251

Opterons to me appear to be very scalable servers from the fact that several very large purchases of 2k+ opterons mainly in China.

Opterons are in there infancy and there is much more to come from them and i agree if you are not doing video encoding, which as far as i'm concerned isn't really a job for a dual processor machine, its much more likely to be done on a Single home processor machine than a Server.

DB2 is be ported to 64bit software for opteron, and now that we've got a 64 bit app that can do some proper programs, we could see opteron dominate in all areas, especially if we see someone write an encoding program to take advantage of opterons strengths.

Just my 2p worth and certainly no need for anyone to get annoyed by this.

Its a good discussion and i think people are learnign a lot from it

TiG

Well. That's enough from me then.

Certainly if the Opteron can get beyond 2.4 GHz then things are gonna get a lot more exciting :)

I think we're goning to have to wait for some time for a 64 bit operating system (other than Linux) and even longer for applications to be written 64 bit operators.

But who cares about that, if we can get screaming 32 bit performace that looks possible from what I've seen from the Opteron scores then AMD will have themselves a winner.

I'd like to see more head to head benchmarks, obviously early adopters always pay through the nose and it appears Opteron is no excepetion. If AMD can ensure that they keep the price a the Opteron competitive with the Xeon then great.

BUT

If it appears at the moment you 242 Opterons retailing @ £405.32 and 246's not even released (well I can't find a UK supplier) unless AMD is gonna drop the price of the 242's and bring the 246 at the same level they could have some trouble..

I want the Opteron to do well, more competition means lower prices for all :)

HEADRAT

PS Bindibadgi, no hard feeling matey, if I came across abrupt it was not my intent I certainly didn't mean to ruffle your feathers.

Opteron/Athlon64 compatible XP 64bit should be out in beta form in September to co-incide with the initial release of the Althlon 64, with the full retail edition coming out earlyish next year I believe..

I wonder what the first 64 bit app will be ? probably MS Office 64 ;)

HEADRAT

notepad.exe ;)

Quote:

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Originally posted by Stoo
notepad.exe ;)

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Now your talking :cool:

Where's me wallet, I *NEED* 64 bit ;)

HEADRAT

sol.exe and winmine.exe

Theyre sureley the only progams that need the 64 bit powwaaaaaaahhhhh? :D

Butuz

Well, you never know... Hearing the guys over at Epic games saying that they're developing in 64bit, I won't be surprise that sometime in the near future, one of their games will come with a special 64bit version. ;)

the first 64bit app?

unreal2003.exe f00lZ0r :p

Quote:

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Originally posted by HEADRAT
But who cares about that, if we can get screaming 32 bit performace that looks possible from what I've seen from the Opteron scores then AMD will have themselves a winner.

I'd like to see more head to head benchmarks, obviously early adopters always pay through the nose and it appears Opteron is no excepetion. If AMD can ensure that they keep the price a the Opteron competitive with the Xeon then great.

---

I see what you're saying, but the point is - lots of people care. screaming 32bit performance has limitations, the biggest being the memory address space, even with M$ Windows' ability to virtually allocate additional address space to fool applications that they've access to additional resources. This is just like utilizing Windows virtual memory/pagefile. The performance hit is huge.

While 32bit performance may be impressive until larger memory space is required, the problem with firms is that they want their hardware to scale with their software. So what's the point of investing in super-fast 32bit hardware now when they know that some day soon, they'd be staring at an upgrade path up the 64bit road. It doesn't make sense to invest the money twice in the space of relatively short time.

Don't forget, it is very easy for you and I to take a rig off-line and put in a piece of hardware, but when the rig in question is mission critical, you can't afford to take it offline at all. So the solution has to be right for now and right for the foreseeable future. When we're looking at the foreseeable future, it's all about 64bit processing.

Welcome to the world of Itanium 2 and Opteron. ;)

Quote:

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Originally posted by Swafeman
the first 64bit app?

unreal2003.exe f00lZ0r :p

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I was trying not to drop names... ;)