Dual opteron upgrade advice

[Jared Richardson]

I'm currently running an early Tyan Thunder motherboard w/two of the 240
CPUs, along with two 1 gig sticks of RAM and a 5200 NVidia video card. Since
this motherboard only has PCI-X slots (which aren't PCI-Express), I've been
very limited on how decent a video card I can buy. The 5200 seems to be as
far as I can go.

I'm thinking of upgrading the motherboard to a "consumer" grade board, like
the NForce4 based ASUS K8N-DL. Here's a link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131059&ATT=13-131-059&CMP=OTC-d3alt1me

This board supports my single core CPUs but will also support dual cores,
accepts 24 gigs of RAM (sweet!), and has 8 channel sound, gigabit ethernet,
etc. And a PCI-Express slot.

I'm thinking about put an Nvidia 6600 in the box. Here's a link for one at
NewEgg for $140.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130214

I'm wondering if anyone has used either product and has any warnings for me?
If I buy both, I'll be dropping nearly $400 on what amounts to a video card
upgrade, so I may not do it anyway.

The driver? Over Christmas I was given FEAR, a shooter video game. My rig
could play it with everything turned ~way~ down, but still locked up tight
if smoke was rendered from the right angle. Very frustrating. I was able to
finish out the game by using the CoolBits tweak and ~underclock~ the GPU and
the memory... but I'd rather see how it really can run. And I want to
turn the game's eye candy back on too.

Any hints or tips?

Jared
http://jaredrichardson.net

 

[AXm77]

I'm currently running an early Tyan Thunder motherboard w/two of the 240
CPUs, along with two 1 gig sticks of RAM and a 5200 NVidia video card. Since
this motherboard only has PCI-X slots (which aren't PCI-Express), I've been
very limited on how decent a video card I can buy. The 5200 seems to be as
far as I can go.

I'm thinking of upgrading the motherboard to a "consumer" grade board, like
the NForce4 based ASUS K8N-DL. Here's a link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131059&ATT=13-131-059&CMP=OTC-d3alt1me

This board supports my single core CPUs but will also support dual cores,
accepts 24 gigs of RAM (sweet!), and has 8 channel sound, gigabit ethernet,
etc. And a PCI-Express slot.

I'm thinking about put an Nvidia 6600 in the box. Here's a link for one at
NewEgg for $140.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130214

I'm wondering if anyone has used either product and has any warnings for me?
If I buy both, I'll be dropping nearly $400 on what amounts to a video card
upgrade, so I may not do it anyway.

The driver? Over Christmas I was given FEAR, a shooter video game. My rig
could play it with everything turned ~way~ down, but still locked up tight
if smoke was rendered from the right angle. Very frustrating. I was able to
finish out the game by using the CoolBits tweak and ~underclock~ the GPU and
the memory... but I'd rather see how it really can run. And I want to
turn the game's eye candy back on too.

Any hints or tips?

Jared
http://jaredrichardson.net

A lot information about K8N-DL:
http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?t=63239

 

[Toshi1873]

I'm currently running an early Tyan Thunder motherboard w/two of the 240
CPUs, along with two 1 gig sticks of RAM and a 5200 NVidia video card. Since
this motherboard only has PCI-X slots (which aren't PCI-Express), I've been
very limited on how decent a video card I can buy. The 5200 seems to be as
far as I can go.

The biggest problem with most dual-chip motherboards is size. I have a
Tyan Tiger K8W (S2875) w/ dual-246 chips which is almost, but not quite,
ATX sized. It's about 0.5" deeper then standard ATX sized boards.
That's long enough to cause problems in any case with a motherboard tray
(Antec p160, for instance). Fortunately there are other cases where the
motherboard does fit (I use an Antec Sonata for my dual-CPU).

Standard ATX size is 12" x 9.6" (I think). The newer K8WE is 12" x
9.75", the older K8W is 12" x 9.8" (basically the same size). The K8N-
DL that you list is a 12" x 10.5" (almost an inch deeper then standard).
That's not a bad size.

You probably won't want to put more then 3GB in the system, things get
odd above that with how much RAM Windows will actually use. Or maybe
that's a per-process limitation. I stuck with just putting 3GB in mine
and ignored the issue. All that will change once the 64bit OSs get
here.

Limited expansion slots on the Asus motherboard. I wonder if the memory
banks are actually separate or if the one CPU accesses memory via the
2nd CPU? The Tyan K8W has that limitation (I think) which meant that
the Tyan K8W wasn't the speediest of the dual-CPU motherboards. I see
they're using a fan for the southbridge (northbridge?) chipset. I try
to avoid MBs with those fans.

Looks like the Tyan K8WE has separate memory banks (unlike the K8W).

ftp://ftp.tyan.com/datasheets/d_s2875_120.pdf
ftp://ftp.tyan.com/datasheets/d_s2877_100.pdf

Mmm... that K8WE looks nice... darn it, I was planning on not upgrading
this year... now I may actually go ahead and do a dual-CPU dual-core
upgrade... I use mine for video editing.

 

[Jared Richardson]

A lot information about K8N-DL:
http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?t=63239

Wow! Great thread... thanks!

 

[Jose_Rizal]

The biggest problem with most dual-chip motherboards is size. I have a
Tyan Tiger K8W (S2875) w/ dual-246 chips which is almost, but not quite,
ATX sized. It's about 0.5" deeper then standard ATX sized boards.
That's long enough to cause problems in any case with a motherboard tray
(Antec p160, for instance). Fortunately there are other cases where the
motherboard does fit (I use an Antec Sonata for my dual-CPU).

Standard ATX size is 12" x 9.6" (I think). The newer K8WE is 12" x
9.75", the older K8W is 12" x 9.8" (basically the same size). The K8N-
DL that you list is a 12" x 10.5" (almost an inch deeper then standard).
That's not a bad size.

You probably won't want to put more then 3GB in the system, things get
odd above that with how much RAM Windows will actually use. Or maybe
that's a per-process limitation. I stuck with just putting 3GB in mine
and ignored the issue. All that will change once the 64bit OSs get
here.

Limited expansion slots on the Asus motherboard. I wonder if the memory
banks are actually separate or if the one CPU accesses memory via the
2nd CPU? The Tyan K8W has that limitation (I think) which meant that
the Tyan K8W wasn't the speediest of the dual-CPU motherboards. I see
they're using a fan for the southbridge (northbridge?) chipset. I try
to avoid MBs with those fans.

Looks like the Tyan K8WE has separate memory banks (unlike the K8W).

ftp://ftp.tyan.com/datasheets/d_s2875_120.pdf
ftp://ftp.tyan.com/datasheets/d_s2877_100.pdf

Mmm... that K8WE looks nice... darn it, I was planning on not upgrading
this year... now I may actually go ahead and do a dual-CPU dual-core
upgrade... I use mine for video editing.

what os and video editing apps are you using?

longing to build one too!