Cheaper SMP AMD Motherboards? 61
[RNP]Venom asks: "With AMD prices as low as ever, it leaves several of my co-workers and I asking some common questions. With some 50+ Dual, Quad, etc.. Intel-based Motherboards/Chipsets, why is it we've not seen an influx of Dual-AMD equipment? I know we have at least 4 AMD Athlon cpu's sitting around the shop here that would be great to have in an SMP setup, however short of spending $200-$500 on a Tyan Product, or around the same mark for one of the few other products with dual-Athlon Support, what can one do? Where are the $50-$100 Dual-AMD CPU boards that Intel users enjoy? A Google search reveals little but Tyan and more Tyan. I thought their 'exclusive' was only 6 months? I figure the Slashdot readers would be the best to query on current or upcoming 'affordable' products in this area."
Dual AMD's? (Score:2, Funny)
Wouldn't you need like a 600 watt power supply, and a cooling system rivaling the "Wild Artic" at Sea World?
Re:Dual AMD's? (Score:2, Funny)
I got 200 heads of chicken in that pen over yonder, go to it boy!
Market interest? (Score:4, Interesting)
Most SMP machines are bought by large companies. They still view AMD chips as 'merely compatible' with Intel. They feel there may be incomplete compatibility. They are a lesser product. So, no interest, so nobody builds boards.
Also, there are no games that take advantage of SMP (that I know of) so the gamer rags won't be interested. That pretty much leaves small companies and Linux/*BSD tinkerers. Heck, I'd like one someday, but I'm only one person.
Re:Market interest? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Market interest? (Score:2)
Re:Market interest? (Score:1)
Re:Market interest? (Score:2)
Re:Market interest? (Score:1)
I personaly want to get a dual sledgehammer.... but then i wouldn't need Windows 2k
Re:Market interest? (Score:1)
Re:Market interest? (Score:1)
Re:Market interest? (Score:1)
What could be done is to set up a system where each registered member can sign each petition once. And send the petition to the proper company/organization/public official/etc. after a certain date/number of signatures is reached.
Of course there are problems with this. With a relatively anonymous registration system, people can sign the petition with multiple accounts. And there's not really any way of auditing who's in what market/district/whatever without tightening the system. But still, it could give whomever the petition is directed to an idea about what people want.
Of course sending thousands of names and email addresses to a company could just be an invitation for spam... all kinds of potential problems.
Re:Market interest? (Score:1)
Re:Market interest? (Score:1)
Re:Market interest? (Score:1)
MP CPUs (Score:3, Informative)
My view on why this hasn't taken off is that a single Athlon 2200 with DDR333 ram and other slick hardware will be nearly as fast as a dual Athlon MP2100 with DDR266 ram and cost fantastically less. The board isn't even the biggest problem. The chips themselves cost way more than their single cpu bretheren.
We have dual systems at work because we're developing server software and need dual machines to test on, but for most users they're very hard to cost/justify. I miss the old PGA celeron 366 days, when you building a dual system actually saved money.
One thing AMD could do to fight the battle with Intel would be to make all their CPUs dual capable. It's not so much a matter of cost, they just don't want to massacre their server market margins.
Re:MP CPUs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MP CPUs (Score:1)
Re:MP CPUs (Score:1)
Re:MP CPUs (Score:1)
Re:MP CPUs (Score:2)
The only modification I needed to do was to drill (yes, drill) the mounting holes around the 2 sockets because I wanted to put heavier heatsinks. The holes are just not drilled on the Asus board; I think it ws something to do with EMI being too strong with the holes drilled, but I could be mistaken. Oh, and it's been as stable as it could get (80% of the reboots were because of grid power failures). But it does get hot. Quite hot.
As to the speed, it (as always) depends on what you're doing. I use my box primarily for development (compiling), desktop, games. If I really wanted to have the fastest for games, I'd replace my GeForce2. For the rest, compiling 2 or more files at the same time is faster than 2 or 3 speed grades and faster clocked memory (especially if it's CAS 3 instead of 2.5 or 2).
Several other SMP Athlon Boards (Score:4, Informative)
I'm guessing that a lot of the dual P3 processor motherboards are only 4-layer whereas the dual Athlon boards are more likely to be 6 (or even 8) layers due to the enormous number of traces and the power comsumption required for all of the components.
BTW - You can run a dual Athlon setup with a ~430W power supply, just make sure that it is one of the AMD (or motherboard manufacturer) recommended ones and can reliably provide enough current across the necessary voltage rails.
Re:Several other SMP Athlon Boards (Score:1)
My ASUS was GBP 200.
I'm using a 340W.
My notes about life with the A7M266-D [rikkus.info]
I'm very happy with my dual athlon box. I need the CPU grunt to compile lots of C++ code all day (g++ is horribly slow, as is the Linux linker.)
Why didn't I buy Intel ? Simple. To get an equivalent level of performance, I'd have had to pay twice as much.
Rik
Re:Several other SMP Athlon Boards (Score:1)
I'm looking into a dual Athlon system myself (right now, I have a dual P2-400 system... only reason is that dual AMD K6-2/K6-3's were not possible and there were no other decent alternatives) but I may wait a little bit longer until either the T-Breds get settled down or when the Bartons (supposedly with 512K L2 cache) is released and settled down.
Re:Several other SMP Athlon Boards (Score:1)
I have heard that this is actually a motherboard bug, not fixable with BIOS upgrade. Don't quote me on that though, it's second hand information and I haven't been able to verify it yet.
Rik
Re:Several other SMP Athlon Boards (Score:1)
In the case of the 430W power supply, the voltage captured by the monitoring software got outside of the slightly modified safe voltage range when the server was under a lot of load (all of the hard drives were cranking and both CPUs were pegged at around 90%). All of the fans that were monitored were running at full speed... The 5V rails were kind of fine and was able to provide the power needed to keep the processors crunching, but the 12V rails (which power the hard drives, fans and other items) wasn't fairing so well. Instead of spending a lot of time researching, we replaced it with an Enermax 550W power supply and it seemed to help keep the voltage within a comfortable range. The 430W power supply was not wasted but used to replace an older 330W power supply that we know couldn't handle multiple 10K RPM hard drives and dual P3's
Re:Several other SMP Athlon Boards (Score:2)
Re:Several other SMP Athlon Boards (Score:2)
Einux [einux.com] is a proper company that sells dual athlon machines in 1-2u cases for companies.
Re:Several other SMP Athlon Boards (Score:2)
For the PSU, I use an Enermax 465. I know a couple people had problems with some Enermax PSU and dual Athlons (no specifics, sorry, it's been a while), but I didn't. And it's been running almost 24/24 for 3 months.
Intel Rules( currently) (Score:2, Insightful)
to re-ingite the debate between Intel and AMD, I dont subscribe to the age-old and well beaten viewpoint that AMD's architecture is better. There are only two known ways to improve performance : parallelism and clock speed. AMD has chosen the former while Intel chose the latter. Who's to say which is better ?
next AMD's current Athlon MP and XP processor dont rule. They are beaten hollow by Intel, considering that Intel Xeons have 128KB more on chip cache and not to mention atleast a 700MHz clock speed advantage. Along with the PC1066 RDRAM, they rock. AMD is nowhere nearby, still stuck with DDR266.
Throughbred will have the same core as Athlon XP , but will be manufactured as 0.13nm , thereby providing slightly higher clock speeds and cooler operation. But I dont see that beating Intel, since Intel will easily be out with 3G+ procs by them. Rumours abound that Intel has a 10G+ procs in its labs...is that true ???
The only hope is for AMD is the hammer series due next year. Then we will have some interesting comparisions to make. That leaves the current Athlon Mp's at the end of the cycle. Not worth it, since u wont be able to upgrade the procs any day. and resale value sucks.
If you are buying a dual-proc box, stick to Intel Xeons with PC1066...u shud easily be able to upgrade later on. though of course, u shud have the moolah to do it.
10GHz processors (Score:1)
Truth is that for example IBM has some semiconductors in lab with higher clock speeds then 10GHz, but they are fiber recivers, transmitters and stuff like that, but for sure - not x86 compatible processors. And things what are new in labs, aren't expected in public yet...
Re:Intel Rules( currently) (Score:1)
>>AMD is nowhere nearby, still stuck with DDR266.
Then you'd better hurry up and buy your Intel boards with RDRAM b/c Intel is doing away with it [anandtech.com] and going with dual channel DDRAM. Guess it can't be that bad, huh?
The problem with the market right now is that it seems AMD is having all their engineers work on Hammer and so the Athlon line is slowing. In the meantime, the P4 is starting to hit its stride after its initital poor showing (remember the initial benchmarks that showed the P4 1.4GHz getting beat by a 1GHz PIII?).
Intel drools (currently; for SMP, anyway) (Score:2)
To quote Robert Bruce Thompson [hardwareguys.com] (Google cache [216.239.51.100]) from the end of May:
All trademarks are held by their owners.
P.S.: It's very strange to type "0.9 GHz"!
Re:Intel Rules( currently) (Score:1)
I think when it comes to Dual processors that they DO rule. Currently dual-proc P4 boards are running in the mid 300s, and that's for the low-ball dealers on pricewatch - so we're talking OEM box, crappy warranty, etc... By the time you go retail you're talking around >390. If you want to get a better than "the cheapest P4 motherboard" you're going to be paying even more.
For $400 you can get an Asus A7M266-D & 1 Athlon MP - which is a much better deal.
Basically AMD is back to playing to the low-cost market, but that should be familiar territory to them. Now they can offer good performance though
Re:Intel Rules( currently) (Score:2)
Thoroughbred is here now [pricewatch.com]. Where's that 3GHz+ proc? Oh, and here's [anandtech.com] a link to the report of the 10GHz ALU. Remember, it's not a complete processor, just a small part (Arithmetic and Logic Unit).
For the Hammer, I agree: it's where AMD's future is. But the Tualatin PIII was also doomed from it's conception. As was the PIV 423 platform.
And what's wrong with just keeping the computer together for a couple of years? My dual PII-400 has 3 years this month: never changed the procs (in part because to go higher than 600MHz, I'd have to change the MB because mine doesn't play well with CuMine CPUs). So far for "upgradeability" in the future...
dual Athlon systems (Score:1)
A few non-Tyan boards (Score:4, Informative)
Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW [gigabyte.com.tw] and GA-7DPXDW-C [gigabyte.com.tw]
MSI K7D Master [msicomputer.com]
The problem with these boards is that they aren't really any cheaper than the Tyan boards (last I checked.) I think the reasons for the high cost are the AMD 760MP/760MPX chipset and the fact that AMD processors suck a lot more juice than the P3s and Celerons that worked on the cheapie Intel dual boards.
Ian
Not ready (Score:1)
Where to buy? (Score:2)
-Sean
Re:Where to buy? (Score:3, Informative)
Dual CPU systems are a pretty ordinary item these days - any reputable vendor that sells them should be fine. There, you have a choice of AMD or Intel. As the submitter of this topic points out, though, if you're specifying parts yourself (even if someone else is building them for you), at the lower end you'll find the Intel solution can be quite a bit cheaper overall, because of the low cost and wide selection of dual CPU Intel motherboards.
So if you're looking for a low cost, high performance dual CPU setup, Intel is the answer. But if you must have AMD for whatever reason, find a vendor who'll sell you something similar to the Ars Technica God Box [arstechnica.com]. The Tyan Tiger MPX motherboard is excellent.
A listing of AMD-Duals (Score:2, Informative)
Asus A7M266-D AMD762 DDR (AMD Dual MP) [monarchcomputer.com] -- $199
Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW AMD760 RAID DDR (AMD Dual MP) [monarchcomputer.com] -- $250
MSI K7D Master MPX AMD762 DDR (AMD Dual MP) [monarchcomputer.com] -- $205
Tyan K7 (S2462UNG) AMD760 SCSI DDR (AMD Dual MP) [monarchcomputer.com] -- $409
Tyan (S2462NG) AMD760 REG DDR (AMD Dual MP) [monarchcomputer.com] -- $305.00
...More Tyan Thunders, all over $300...
Tyan Tiger (S2466-4M) AMD760-MPX DDR (AMD Dual MP) [monarchcomputer.com] -- $209.00
Tyan Tiger (S2460) AMD760 DDR (AMD Dual MP) [monarchcomputer.com] -- $168.00
Prices and links to Monarch Computers. I was quite surprised with the prices, I thought they'd be in the $125-$150 range. I my dual AMD shopping at Monarch (built a dual MP 1600+ on a tyan tiger mobo in december for a friend), you can hit pricewatch for price comparison, but I've found Monarch to be fairly representative.
As you can see, there are quite a few motherboards on the market, you can get reviews of most of them off http://www.amdmb.com . Of all of them, I recommend the cheapest Tiger with the older 760 chipset. I know that reviewers have gotten both non-MP athlons and durons to run on the system. I'm not sure if current XP processors will work, there was talk three months ago about AMD thinking about locking out the SMP capabilities out of the XPs, but they did not do this with older versions. The main difference between the XPs and the MPs is that the MPs are certified for SMP operation, if you want a cheap and powerful server (which appears to be your goal) then you probably don't care that your chips are uncertified. The newer 760-MPX chipset (last I heard) still has isses with the southbridge's USB 2.0 and most motherboards ship with an add-in card. I can't recommend it because I'm not sure if the chipset checks for MPs or not.
Of course, YMMV.
Re:A listing of AMD-Duals (Score:1)
Re:A listing of AMD-Duals (Score:1)
NewEgg vs Monarch (Score:1)
Watch out for Monarch (Score:1)
My two cents..
Re:A listing of AMD-Duals (Score:1)
Re:A listing of AMD-Duals (Score:1)
Wrong Component (Score:5, Informative)
Or spend 100 bucks on a Dual Pentium III motherboard and 150 each for a pair of tulatin Pentium IIIs that are not performance comparative. (2*1133mhz)
The first Dual Pentium 4 motherboard starts at $400 and $200 each for the processors... at the same performance level that AMD provides for $500
$400 for the crappy intel.
$500 for the AMD
$800 for the good intel, that performs no better than the AMD, so you just want to pay $300 for the name.
Their absolute top end systems perform comparatively MP 2100+ vs. Intel Xeon 2.4GHz [anandtech.com]
$1400 for the Xeon, $700 for the AMD MP.
Don't forget the Rambus Tax that doubles the price of any memory you purchase for the Intel system. No, there are no DDR solutions for the Xeon yet.
Re:Wrong Component (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, yes, yes there are. Of course, they are registered ECC DDR solutions, but - they are DDR.
Behold, The SuperMicro P4DP6 [supermicro.com]
There are a number of Intel E7500 based boards from Tyan and Supermicro. However, IMHO, the Rambus is a better option for the P4, which, after all, was designed for Rambus and takes a hit with SDRAM.
Re:Wrong Component (Score:2)
How much more cooling do you need? My dual AMD system has a fan on each CPU and two in the case (one is for the hard drives.)
The PIII is for low power & heat configs
We had problems with our Pentium iii 1u machines overheating at my last job. That made it 'crappy'.
- A.P.
Dual Athlon XP is better... (Score:1)