A good dual 64 AMD (Socket-754 ) motherboard - does it exist ?

[PolishRuben]

I am about to build a new box for myself. I am not looking for a
comparison, which one is better - xenon or amd64, because the answer
is, I think, pretty obvious. What I really need a help with is to
choose the right MB. Right now I use Gigabyte 7N400 Pro, with nForce2
chipset, raid0 and nVidia Sound Storm audio processing unit. I love
this board! However I realized that it is a time to move on, and get
some new advanced technology solutions under my roof. What hoped to
have would be dual AMD 64, with nVidia 3 chipset, it wouldn't' have to
have ide RAID, because I really don't see that much of a performance
boost with my 500gb of HDD, configured as Raid0. I mean it would be a
plus to have but not a MUST. Also I would love to have on there PCI
express slot(s), for some new graphic cards ( like coming up nVidia
6800 PCI EX. - [yeah you can tell , I am big nVidia fan ]), at least 3
PCI, and one AGP 8x. If you know that this kind of MB exist, or at
least something close to that, please let me know. The bottom line I
guess would be dual amd 64 with nVidia chipset. Thanks so much for
help.

 

[at]

I am about to build a new box for myself. I am not looking for a
comparison, which one is better - xenon or amd64, because the answer
is, I think, pretty obvious. What I really need a help with is to
choose the right MB. Right now I use Gigabyte 7N400 Pro, with nForce2
chipset, raid0 and nVidia Sound Storm audio processing unit. I love
this board! However I realized that it is a time to move on, and get
some new advanced technology solutions under my roof. What hoped to
have would be dual AMD 64, with nVidia 3 chipset, it wouldn't' have to
have ide RAID, because I really don't see that much of a performance
boost with my 500gb of HDD, configured as Raid0. I mean it would be a
plus to have but not a MUST. Also I would love to have on there PCI
express slot(s), for some new graphic cards ( like coming up nVidia
6800 PCI EX. - [yeah you can tell , I am big nVidia fan ]), at least 3
PCI, and one AGP 8x. If you know that this kind of MB exist, or at
least something close to that, please let me know. The bottom line I
guess would be dual amd 64 with nVidia chipset. Thanks so much for
help.

Only one that I know of that matched your bottom line is the Iwill
DK8N, see
http://www.iwillusa.com/products/ProductDetail.asp?vID=194&CID=92 for
details.

Scott

 

[Rob Stow]

I am about to build a new box for myself. I am not looking for a
comparison, which one is better - xenon or amd64, because the answer
is, I think, pretty obvious. What I really need a help with is to
choose the right MB. Right now I use Gigabyte 7N400 Pro, with nForce2
chipset, raid0 and nVidia Sound Storm audio processing unit. I love
this board! However I realized that it is a time to move on, and get
some new advanced technology solutions under my roof. What hoped to
have would be dual AMD 64, with nVidia 3 chipset, it wouldn't' have to
have ide RAID, because I really don't see that much of a performance
boost with my 500gb of HDD, configured as Raid0. I mean it would be a
plus to have but not a MUST. Also I would love to have on there PCI
express slot(s), for some new graphic cards ( like coming up nVidia
6800 PCI EX. - [yeah you can tell , I am big nVidia fan ]), at least 3
PCI, and one AGP 8x. If you know that this kind of MB exist, or at
least something close to that, please let me know. The bottom line I
guess would be dual amd 64 with nVidia chipset. Thanks so much for
help.

1.) Its Xeon, not Xenon.
2.) No socket 754 dualies exist and none ever will.
If you want an AMD64 dualie, it will have to be a
socket 940 motherboard with a pair of Opty 2xx chips.
Personally, I love the Tyan S2885.
3.) PCI-E for AMD64 is not here yet.
- VIA has a chipset that should do the job, but
I have yet to hear about a motherboard built
around that chipset. KT890 I think it is called.
- nVidia is working on their next gen of nForce3,
which will have PCI-E, but the nForce3 150 and
250 series of chipsets do not support PCI-E.
- Last time I looked at AMD's chipset pages, they
had justed expanded the PCI-X capabilities for
their 8xxx chipset and didn't say anything about
future PCI-E intentions.

 

[Evgenij Barsukov]

I am about to build a new box for myself. I am not looking for a
comparison, which one is better - xenon or amd64, because the answer
is, I think, pretty obvious. What I really need a help with is to
choose the right MB. Right now I use Gigabyte 7N400 Pro, with nForce2
chipset, raid0 and nVidia Sound Storm audio processing unit. I love
this board! However I realized that it is a time to move on, and get
some new advanced technology solutions under my roof. What hoped to
have would be dual AMD 64, with nVidia 3 chipset, it wouldn't' have to
have ide RAID, because I really don't see that much of a performance
boost with my 500gb of HDD, configured as Raid0.

Raid0 (and any RAID, for that matter) has any effect if you have 2 or
more hard-drives, as with raid0 you will effectively parallelize reads/writes
to your 2 or more HDs and so your read/write rate is the single drive rate
multiplied by number of drives (as long as it is on SATA
and therefore port throughput is > number of drives times
single drive read/write throughput).
But how can you configure ONE hard-drive as RAID and what does it mean?

Regards,
Evgenij

--

__________________________________________________
*science&fiction*free programs*fine art*phylosophy:
http://sudy_zhenja.tripod.com
----------remove hate_spam to answer--------------

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I am about to build a new box for myself. I am not looking for a
comparison, which one is better - xenon or amd64, because the answer
is, I think, pretty obvious. What I really need a help with is to
choose the right MB. Right now I use Gigabyte 7N400 Pro, with nForce2
chipset, raid0 and nVidia Sound Storm audio processing unit. I love
this board! However I realized that it is a time to move on, and get
some new advanced technology solutions under my roof. What hoped to
have would be dual AMD 64, with nVidia 3 chipset, it wouldn't' have to
have ide RAID, because I really don't see that much of a performance
boost with my 500gb of HDD, configured as Raid0. I mean it would be a
plus to have but not a MUST. Also I would love to have on there PCI
express slot(s), for some new graphic cards ( like coming up nVidia
6800 PCI EX. - [yeah you can tell , I am big nVidia fan ]), at least 3
PCI, and one AGP 8x. If you know that this kind of MB exist, or at
least something close to that, please let me know. The bottom line I
guess would be dual amd 64 with nVidia chipset. Thanks so much for
help.

Although you can get dual-AMD64 systems, they won't be Socket 754 Athlon
64s, they'd have to be Socket 940 Opterons. Specifically the Opteron
200-series. Socket 754 for Athlon 64 are single-CPU alone, and presumably
Socket 939 will also be only single-CPU, since that's where the Athlon 64
market is heading towards. The reason for this is because Athlon 64s only
have one Hypertransport link per CPU, and those are used to connect to the
PCI bus and all those PCI peripherals. Opterons have three Hypertransport
links, one of which is used to link to the PCI bus like the Athlon 64s, and
the remaining two are used to connect between other CPUs.

Another solution you might have towards dual-processing is to get an Athlon
64 right now, and then upgrade towards a dual-core Athlon 64 in a year's
time when they become available. You will likely have to get the Socket 939
rather than Socket 754 for that at that point.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Rob Stow]

have would be dual AMD 64, with nVidia 3 chipset, it wouldn't' have to
have ide RAID, because I really don't see that much of a performance
boost with my 500gb of HDD, configured as Raid0.

[SNIP]
But how can you configure ONE hard-drive as RAID and what does it mean?

He says he has "500 gb of HDD". I assume he meant 500 GB.
Sounds likes a pair of 250 GB drives to me.

 

[Evgenij Barsukov]

have would be dual AMD 64, with nVidia 3 chipset, it wouldn't' have to
have ide RAID, because I really don't see that much of a performance
boost with my 500gb of HDD, configured as Raid0.

[SNIP]

But how can you configure ONE hard-drive as RAID and what does it mean?

He says he has "500 gb of HDD". I assume he meant 500 GB.
Sounds likes a pair of 250 GB drives to me.

Then I don't get it how he does not see improvement in speed,
as wiht raid0 the transfer rate should be close to twice of the single
drive (SATA can handle 150MB/sec that would be more then
twice of single 7600 rpm drive, so he would not max it out).

Regards,
Evgenij

--

__________________________________________________
*science&fiction*free programs*fine art*phylosophy:
http://sudy_zhenja.tripod.com
----------remove hate_spam to answer--------------

 

[The little lost angel]

Rob Stow wrote:

Then I don't get it how he does not see improvement in speed,
as wiht raid0 the transfer rate should be close to twice of the single
drive (SATA can handle 150MB/sec that would be more then
twice of single 7600 rpm drive, so he would not max it out).

He didn't say no improvement, just not much. Which is quite
understandable, after all that I/O speed only helps when doing
something with the drives. If none of his apps hit the drives much
(like most games apart from the loading data stage), he wouldn't see
much improvements to his game frame rates or internet surfing speed...
you need Netburst for that

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

 

[Tony Hill]

Then I don't get it how he does not see improvement in speed,
as wiht raid0 the transfer rate should be close to twice of the single
drive (SATA can handle 150MB/sec that would be more then
twice of single 7600 rpm drive, so he would not max it out).

Transfer rates actually have relatively little to do with performance
for most home users, that's how.

Most performance seems to be limited by seek time, ie it's the old
latency vs. bandwidth situation. RAID0 does nothing to improve seek
performance, and while the transfer rates are nice and high, these are
only used when tossing LARGE quantities of data around. For some
applications this is VERY useful, for general purpose computing
though, it's barely noticeable at all.

 

[willbill]

I am about to build a new box for myself. I am not looking for a
comparison, which one is better - xenon or amd64, because the answer
is, I think, pretty obvious.

amd64 is what's obvious to me.

i'll assume that that's what you mean.

What I really need a help with is to
choose the right MB.

ok

take a look at the ~$220 MSI socket 940 dualie
(K8T Master2-FAR), and start with getting it
with a "single" Opteron 142 (13u), which uses
very little power (compared to Intel P4 or AMD XP}

and no, i don't own one.
{i do own a Tyan s2875 single}

for one thing, it (the MSI 940 dualie) comes with
2 decent heatsinks, so set it up with an **oem**
Opteron 142 single to start with

fwiw, AMD is going to move Opteron to 9u
in the next 6 months, at which point go to
2 of the Opteron dual cpu's (say 2 248's?)
and run it as a true dualie.

only possible negative to the MSI dualie is
that it uses a Via chipset, but given what
i know so far, i'd still go with the MSI
dualie (vs. the Tyan s2875s that i did get)

Right now I use Gigabyte 7N400 Pro, with nForce2
chipset, raid0 and nVidia Sound Storm audio processing unit. I love
this board! However I realized that it is a time to move on, and get
some new advanced technology solutions under my roof. What hoped to
have would be dual AMD 64, with nVidia 3 chipset, it wouldn't' have to
have ide RAID,

backup is a whole other issue

especially with current HUGE PC hard drives!
(160GB or more)

stay with IDE and get Ghost '03 (pesently $20 with
oem Norton Sysworks '03 from newegg. *imo* do *NOT*
load/use the Norton Systemworks, only use the DOS Ghost)

get 2 (or more} extra 160GB ide hard drives,
and use DOS Ghost every week or two to give you
real backup.

bill

because I really don't see that much of a performance
boost with my 500gb of HDD, configured as Raid0. I mean it would be a
plus to have but not a MUST. Also I would love to have on there PCI
express slot(s), for some new graphic cards ( like coming up nVidia
6800 PCI EX. - [yeah you can tell , I am big nVidia fan ]), at least 3
PCI, and one AGP 8x. If you know that this kind of MB exist, or at
least something close to that, please let me know. The bottom line I
guess would be dual amd 64 with nVidia chipset. Thanks so much for help.

 

[PolishRuben]

Sorry guys, I wasn't here for a long time to check out your answers.
Thank you so much for the info about the MBs! They look great. The
DK8N looks really good. Welp, I also misspelled Xeon processor, and
Rob pointed it out. I think you are guys right and I will wait for the
9xx socket mb. I might slightly upgrade my current box just to keep it
running. Thanks for the info about pci-e. I wasn't sure about that
either. I guess I will have to wait for the technology to develop and
be affordable, which prop. will take a while. Oh, and I am not a
gamer, nor a surfer ( however I do both from time to time ). I am in
graphic design and video editing business. Just wanted to clarify
that.
About the questions about my raid0. It is a mystery for me. I know
that raids on ide, aren't really anything as scsi, but in theory they
should be faster because of raid. I remember that before I install my
drives in the boxes ( I have a nice set of 2x120GB and additional ones
) i tested it. I set up 2 drives and timed it to see how fast it would
go from one to another - a file of 1.5gb. I don't remember now exactly
how fast it was - but I think around 20 or 30 sec. Somewhere there,
not sure. Then I set-up raid0 with my dual 120gb and one 80gb, all
running 7200 rpm ( IBM deskstars ), and actually copying in raid0
configuration was like 10-15 seconds .. longer. IT didn't make any
sense, because in theory should cut the time in about 30-40%. Welp.. I
guess I questioned my abilities to time correctly ( with a stop watch
) and trusted the technology - so I left the 2 drives in the raid0
config. I am working with large files of video and large images, and
usually don't have any problems. Everything runs smooth.. however the
question is still there - would it run smooth ( or smoother ) in just
single drive config? So Tony, when you were talking about LARGE
quantities of data.. how large did you mean ? Bigger than 1.5gb? I
know most of the servers are configure to have stripped raid, but they
do'nt really have large files to move - rather small and really
fast... so, I guess thats another question - and maybe should be in
another post ?
Well, thanks though for all the info about 64s, and yes amd64 over
Xeon - that's what I think.

 

[willbill]

... I think you are guys right and I will wait for the
9xx socket mb.

i don't think you have to wait

... Oh, and I am not a
gamer, nor a surfer ( however I do both from time to time ).
ok


I am in
graphic design and video editing business. Just wanted to clarify
that.
About the questions about my raid0.

<big snip>

the things i've seen suggest that running
raid0 has little if any merit

i can add that the layout of the Tyan s2875
(ide and floppy connectors) is totally piss poor

the pics i've seen of the MSI 940 dualie
suggest to me a small improvement

i wish i'd bought the MSI dualie

bill