Dual Opteron advice needed

[Beno]

I'm assembling a workstation to be used with MAX and finalRender.

 

I already have NVidia FX4000 and two Opteron 248 CPUs.

 

I can't decide on the motherboard, I need a very good one with integrated Gigabit LAN.

Does anyone have experience with MSI K8T Master2-FAR m/b? What about RAM - 4GB is what I need - dual DDR?

Another issue is the case - it needs to be QUIET, same about CPU cooling fans...any suggestions?

 

 

cheers

 

Beno

[Chris Johnson]

Check out the Tyan 2885 motherboard. It is the most powerful dual operton I've seen.

 

I'm currently thinking I want to buy one for my workstation.

 

Chris J.

[derijones]

I have a Tyan Thunder K8W with dual 248 opterons and 2Gb of RAM. It's been running pretty solid since March with no problems - definitely reccomended, but a bit expensive. Onboard Gigabit LAN, plenty of room for 4Gb of memory (if you are using Windows XP, you won't gain a huge amount going above 2Gb of RAM, I think?) - I have Corsair XMS DDR 400 - the board supports that and the 400FSB of the chips. One fast (10K rpm) 36Gb SATA hard drive for system etc and a 120Gb SATA for data, Quadro 980XGL AGP graphics (sounds a bit low powered compared with the rest of the machine, but no problems so far). Not sure about PCI video coard support - you'd have to check. The only thing I'd change is the fans - with five fans running in the box, they phase in and out and it's a bit noisy, so definitely spend a bit of money on that side.

The MSI one sounds similar, but much less in price, if I was building again, I'd definitely try it out as I reckon you could put together a decent dual processor system for less than a £1000 with it.

Let us know how you get on!

Cheers

Deri

[Elliot]

Beno,

 

I hope my comments get to you before you purchase the MSI. I have assembled many computers over the last 5 or 6 years. I do it as a hobby for my family members and me. I always have had a tendency to use MSI.

 

Four months ago I assembled a dual Opteron 250 on an MSI motherboard, the same one you are asking about.... It was a nightmare. The board has a lot of problems and MSI is aware of them. They should have discontinued the board and they didn't. They lost a friend of over 5 years. One of their tech support finally admitted to me that board was launched to the market way too early.

 

The board has one basic incredible problem. They tried to do a full feature board on a small footprint. As a result the board suffers of temperature problems. Just to start, Opterons suffer from temperature problems, they operate a little bit hotter than XEONS.

 

Some engineer at MSI decided they should put XEON fans on the board. Due to space limitations, they can not place two similar XEON fans on the board. The same engineer decided to use two different fans. One fan is larger than the other one. To make things worst the socket is AMD but the fan retainer clips are those of a XEON. This means you can not use any of the AMD fans on the market. For this reason MSI decided to supply the fans with the motherboard.

 

They supply two weird fans. One smaller than the other one. They operate these fans at full RPM. That's where the whole problem is. The board is very noisy. I don't know how many decibels but I am sure it is on the top 80's or perhaps on the 90 db range. I covered the darn thing, I did everything you could imagine and nothing worked. At one point I was ussing ear plugs when in close proximity to the machine. The response I got from MSI tech support was that the board was supposed to be a server board or a blade server board. These servers, according to him, are remotely operated so noise is not a problem. I wish they put that on their literature.... I would have never purchased it.

 

If you go on the web you will find some very creative people have come up with special cooling devices for the board. Be aware that none of the special high flow - CFM fans available in the market work on the board due to the space limitations. One of the CPU is at about 1/4 inch away from the video card. I hate to see you placing that expensive video card next to that CPU.

 

I ended up taking it appart and assembling the computer on a Tyan 2885. That is a better board but it has some limitations. A month later I put a double XEON 3.6ghz. I am not sure, it is not a scientific observation. All my benchmarking says that the XEON is a little bit faster. My feeling is that the AMD is faster no matter what the benchmarking software says. I suspect, all these benchmark softwares are fine tuned for gamer systems. The parameters thay measure are different than ours for visualization.

 

If I was you, I would strap myself on a chair, bit your fingernails and wait about 2 or 3 weeks. Tyan supposedely is about to release S2895 as a replacement for the the S2885. If I was to give an objective evaluation based on a business decision.... Stay away from AMD..... the reason is that there is very few boards available for the OPTERONS and to make things worst, these boards are all using the old chipsets that do not support the PCI Express video. However, these new boards about to be launched they are supposed to support PCI Express 16X and 4X.

 

My NIKON Capture software is not compatible with Opterons. It is a docummented problem. Nikon blames it on AMD. I suspect that there could be some other programs with similar issues. I do mechanical engineering and for that I used a program called SolidWORKS. The Opterons are very fast with SW.

 

If you stay with the Tyan.... you have to activate the PAE software switch that in turn will swith on the NUMA set of instructions so your machine will go fast. You also have to get very good (fast) registered memory. That is critical. The first memory I used was Corsair but not the fast one. I used the one Tyan recommends... later I found through some German computer guys that there is a better memory. I purchased that fast one and there was a visible difference.

 

My machine has an FX1100 and some fancy raid system with very fast SSCI 15,000 rpm drives and 4 gb of ram. It is fast. On the XEON, I have the FX3300 and same amount of memory and similar raid. I prefer the AMD because I perceived it as a little bit faster. As matter of fact, my daughter is going to take the XEON away....

 

There is a site that is very informative. I encourage you to go there. The moderator is a German young guy. He is at school and works as benchmarking specialist for all the computers at his workplace. He is very good and have posted a lot of very informative articles. You have to make sure you are using the latest beta bio's not published by Tyan. As a matter of fact I don't think Tyan is doing any effort to support this board anymore. I think they have started focusing on the new board. If you do a web search as Tyan 2895 you will find underground photos of the darn board. The testing agencies in Taiwan have posted several photos.

 

I would stick to Tyan, just for one fact...... their US customer support has been extraordinary to me. Never in a rush and always willing to say things however they are, even if the comments are not correct for Tyan's image. There is several people that have had problems with Tyan board and all of them have been properly resolved by Tyan US. I understand Tyan Europe is not as good in responding.

 

The German kid could be found on the following site:

 

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79190&page=1&pp=15

 

His forum name is "Ghostrider"..... you should read this forum.... the AMD forum is also good. But the one with Ghostrider is better.

 

Good Luck

Elliot

[Beno]

I have a Tyan Thunder K8W with dual 248 opterons and 2Gb of RAM. It's been running pretty solid since March with no problems - definitely reccomended, but a bit expensive. Onboard Gigabit LAN, plenty of room for 4Gb of memory (if you are using Windows XP, you won't gain a huge amount going above 2Gb of RAM, I think?) - I have Corsair XMS DDR 400 - the board supports that and the 400FSB of the chips. One fast (10K rpm) 36Gb SATA hard drive for system etc and a 120Gb SATA for data, Quadro 980XGL AGP graphics (sounds a bit low powered compared with the rest of the machine, but no problems so far). Not sure about PCI video coard support - you'd have to check. The only thing I'd change is the fans - with five fans running in the box, they phase in and out and it's a bit noisy, so definitely spend a bit of money on that side.

The MSI one sounds similar, but much less in price, if I was building again, I'd definitely try it out as I reckon you could put together a decent dual processor system for less than a £1000 with it.

Let us know how you get on!

Cheers

Deri

 

almost everyone here and elsewhere recommends Tyan s2885 mobo and my mind is set on it. About RAM - I'm going with 4GB DDR PC3200 ECC - is it better to have 8X512 or 4X1024MB? I know which one is cheaper - but what's more reliable?