Dual boards are all flimsy and buggy

[prehensile]

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.

[Stoo]

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..)

[prehensile]

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.

[Wolf Man]

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.

[prehensile]

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.

[Stoo]

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..

[Wolf Man]

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

[prehensile]

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.

[Butuz]

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

[Stoo]

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.

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.

[Austin]

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.

[Bindibadgi]

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

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.

[TiG]

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

[Stoo]

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

[nichomach]

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..

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.

[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