seeking advice on Tyan m/b with Linux

[Peter]

Hello hardware people,

I have my eye on the Tyan Tiger K8W S2875 dual Opteron motherboard[1]
on which I intend to run Slackware.

I am unsure about which type of CPUs to get and also whether I can run
it with just one CPU and buy a second one later. And if I do that, do
they need to be identical?

In general, since I have never used a dual CPU board before, is there
anything I should be careful about? Or do I proceed using Slackware
per usual?

If anyone has any experience running this board with any Linux
distribution I would appreciate any comments you may have.

Thank you,

Peter

[1] http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigerk8w.html

 

[John-Paul Stewart]

Hello hardware people,

I have my eye on the Tyan Tiger K8W S2875 dual Opteron motherboard[1]
on which I intend to run Slackware.

I'd stay away from that board, personally. The PCI slots will be a
bottleneck if you plan to do anything serious with your two CPUs. A
good board with multiple PCI-X busses or PCI Express will push a *lot*
more I/O than that one which only has one 32-bit, 33MHz PCI bus.
Remember that the on-board devices are logically sharing PCI bandwidth,
too. The on-board SATA and gigabit LAN controllers are enough to
totally saturate that board's entire I/O bandwidth.

Also worth noting is that on that particular design, all of the RAM is
local to one processor rather than spread across the two. A good
motherboard will give each CPU some local RAM. (CPUs can access each
other's RAM but there's a performance penalty, that's all.)

Personally, I'd be looking at something in the Tyan "Thunder" series
instead of their "Tiger" line-up.

I am unsure about which type of CPUs to get and also whether I can run
it with just one CPU and buy a second one later. And if I do that, do
they need to be identical?

IMHO, that's a bad plan unless you know you're going to buy the second
CPU in the next six months or so. A couple of years down the road, it
will be hard to find CPUs that'll work with today's motherboards. If
you don't need dual CPUs now, why waste the money on a dual CPU board?
Down the road, it'll be easier to upgrade to a faster single CPU system
than to find a CPU to fit that board. The cost of a dual CPU board now
plus one CPU now plus one future CPU is probably about the same as a
single CPU motherboard and matching CPU now plus a new board and CPU in
the future.

Are you planning on using dual-core CPUs or single? If you want two
single core CPUs on the Tiger board, I'd strongly suggest you consider a
dual-core Athlon X2 on some single-socket motherboard. The single
socket motherboard will be about half the cost of the Tiger. OTOH, if
you're thinking about two dual-core Opterons on the Tiger board...well,
then, you really need to consider shelling out for a Thunder board instead.

 

[Peter]

John-Paul,
Thank you for your informative reply. I have started looking at the
Thunder series and I found TYAN S2468GN Thunder K7X [1]. I want to run
VMWare and that is why I need a fairly muscular system. I want to run
at least 4 operating systems simultaneously (not including the host
OS). The dual network adapters please me since it will be accessed
over the net (firewall on the net side). The integrated vga adapter is
fine since I do not require special graphics. I'm thinking 2 GB of
dual-channel quality RAM (Corsair or Kingston).

Please let me know what you think of this unit. Do you have Linux
experience to add? Linux compatibility is a whole other issue and a
quick google search does not yield much.

[1] http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk7x.html

 

[Dave (from the UK)]

John-Paul,
Thank you for your informative reply. I have started looking at the
Thunder series and I found TYAN S2468GN Thunder K7X [1]. I want to run
VMWare and that is why I need a fairly muscular system. I want to run
at least 4 operating systems simultaneously (not including the host
OS). The dual network adapters please me since it will be accessed
over the net (firewall on the net side). The integrated vga adapter is
fine since I do not require special graphics. I'm thinking 2 GB of
dual-channel quality RAM (Corsair or Kingston).

Please let me know what you think of this unit. Do you have Linux
experience to add? Linux compatibility is a whole other issue and a
quick google search does not yield much.

[1] http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk7x.html

Personally I would avoid that. I think that is a bit of a dated design

1) An AGP and no PCI Express slots
2) DDR 200/266 but no DDR 400
3) 10/100 ethernet, but no gigabit.
4) Support for only 4 GB RAM. With a dual processor board and ram much faster to
access on the local CPU, that really means you have access to only 2 GB of ram
at high speed from any one CPU or core.


I don't know the price of that one, it might be significantly cheaper than the
one I have just bought which is the Tyan Thunder K8WE (S2895)

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8we.html

I think that is a better choice for many reasons.

1) It has PCI express
2) Supports DDR 400 ram too.
3) 10/100/1000 ethernet.
4) Support for 16GB RAM.
5) Support for Ultra 320 SCSI rather than the Ultra 160 of the other board.
However, I note the model you want does not have the SCSI option, so that is
obviously not going to affect you.

As for buying multiprocessor machines and adding CPUs, I see nothing wrong with
that. The machine I am typing this on was bought with one, then I added a
second, then a third and finally a fourth CPU.

The prices of CPUs tends to fall over time, which makes them more affordable.
One of the CPUs in this machine cost me $1500, but the last was only $300. They
are about $30 now on eBay!! (In case you are wondering, it is a Sun Ultra 80
running Solaris 10 and fitted with 4 x 450 MHz UltraSPARC II CPUS with 4 MG
cache each and 4 GB RAM).

But as someone else said, unless you are going to upgrade reasonably soon, it is
not sensible to spend extra money on multiprocessor boards. They 200 series
Opterons need registered RAM which is more expensive than the RAM used on the
100 series Opterons. So it is all rather a waste of money unless you fill the
board a bit.


--
Dave K MCSE.

MCSE = Minefield Consultant and Solitaire Expert.

Please note my email address changes periodically to avoid spam.
It is always of the form: month-year@domain. Hitting reply will work
for a couple of months only. Later set it manually.

 

[John-Paul Stewart]

John-Paul,
Thank you for your informative reply. I have started looking at the
Thunder series and I found TYAN S2468GN Thunder K7X [1].

That's an outdated board for obsolete Athlon MP CPUs. It will not work
with current-production CPUs.

I want to run
VMWare and that is why I need a fairly muscular system. I want to run
at least 4 operating systems simultaneously (not including the host
OS).

What are you planning to do inside those VMWare guests? Unless you're
running computationally intense applications simultaneously in the VMs,
then you don't need a whole lot of CPU power beyond what VMWare requires
for a single VM. And if your VMs will be running computationally
intense stuff simultaneously, separate physical machines might make more
sense.

The dual network adapters please me since it will be accessed
over the net (firewall on the net side). The integrated vga adapter is
fine since I do not require special graphics. I'm thinking 2 GB of
dual-channel quality RAM (Corsair or Kingston).

How much RAM do you need for each of your VMs? Figure 1GB for the host
OS plus the sum of all the virtual machines you plan to run simultaneously.

Please let me know what you think of this unit. Do you have Linux
experience to add? Linux compatibility is a whole other issue and a
quick google search does not yield much.

Is Linux the host OS for VMWare? Or one of the guests? If its just a
guest, then you need to worry about Linux compatability with the virtual
machine provided by VMWare, not the physical hardware. But even as the
host OS, I don't know of any particular compatbility problems with Linux
and Tyan boards.

BTW, I'm reading this in comp.os.linux.hardware so I do have plenty of
Linux experience (and even running VMWare under Linux).

If you can describe in a little more detail what you're planning to do
with your four VMWare guests and what OS you intend to use as host OS,
there are lots of other people who can offer advice, too. The more
details you can provide us about what you're trying to achieve, the more
accurate our advice will be.

 

[Peter]

This VMWare system will be mostly for testing various non-intensive
open-source applications/utilities (usually requiring virtual
networking among the different guest OSs since that is my domain),
testing/learning Window Managers and Desktop Environments, and using
all this as an educative environment that will be accessed remotely
(across the internet). So, no, this is not for the purpose of running
intensive applications. In terms of power, though, I do not believe in
allowing the initial purpose to constrain me too much. As for
hardware, I am interested in using SATA, maybe gaining experience with
SCSI RAID. Having 2 onboard ethernet controllers is also a bonus due
to the internet connection (firewall). I do not need state of the art
graphics (I think onboard VGA would do fine). A main concern is Linux
friendliness since Slackware Linux will be the host OS. I want a
stable board. Thanks for your support in this.

Peter

p.s. Sorry for not quoting. Google Groups isn't capable it seems.

 

[John-Paul Stewart]

This VMWare system will be mostly for testing various non-intensive
open-source applications/utilities (usually requiring virtual
networking among the different guest OSs since that is my domain),
testing/learning Window Managers and Desktop Environments, and using
all this as an educative environment that will be accessed remotely
(across the internet). So, no, this is not for the purpose of running
intensive applications. In terms of power, though, I do not believe in
allowing the initial purpose to constrain me too much. As for

I'd suggest looking at the Tyan Tomcat K8E motherboard:

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tomcatk8e.html

along with one dual-core Opteron 165 (or higher) processor. That would
provide plenty of power for what you're describing, IMHO. You'll need
at least 2GB of RAM, but more wouldn't hurt if you can afford it.

hardware, I am interested in using SATA, maybe gaining experience with
SCSI RAID.

A good SCSI RAID card will cost as much as your motherboard and CPU.
SCSI drive are a lot more expensive than much smaller SATA drives, too.
So expect a good SCSI RAID setup to double the overall cost of the
system, if you decide to go that route. In this case, I'd say stick
with SATA unless you know you need SCSI for some reason.

Having 2 onboard ethernet controllers is also a bonus due
to the internet connection (firewall). I do not need state of the art
graphics (I think onboard VGA would do fine). A main concern is Linux
friendliness since Slackware Linux will be the host OS. I want a
stable board. Thanks for your support in this.

I don't see any reason why that (or any other current) Tyan board
wouldn't be stable running under Slackware. AFAICT, all of the
components should be supported out of the box by recent Linux
distributions. (I run Debian Linux on a variety of motherboards, but
none of them are Tyan. Tyan does have a good reputation and I wouldn't
hesitate to buy one of their boards myself.)

The on-board SATA RAID may not be supported as RAID. But it should work
as an ordinary SATA controller and you can use Linux software RAID on
top of that. (Note that the built-in RAID on most motherboards isn't
true hardware RAID anyway. Seach the comp.os.linux.* groups for the
term "fakeraid" to read more about that issue.)

Peter

p.s. Sorry for not quoting. Google Groups isn't capable it seems.

http://cfaj.freeshell.org/google/

 

[Chris Cox]

This VMWare system will be mostly for testing various non-intensive
open-source applications/utilities (usually requiring virtual
networking among the different guest OSs since that is my domain),
testing/learning Window Managers and Desktop Environments, and using
all this as an educative environment that will be accessed remotely
(across the internet). So, no, this is not for the purpose of running
intensive applications. In terms of power, though, I do not believe in
allowing the initial purpose to constrain me too much. As for
hardware, I am interested in using SATA, maybe gaining experience with
SCSI RAID. Having 2 onboard ethernet controllers is also a bonus due
to the internet connection (firewall). I do not need state of the art
graphics (I think onboard VGA would do fine). A main concern is Linux
friendliness since Slackware Linux will be the host OS. I want a
stable board. Thanks for your support in this.

Peter

p.s. Sorry for not quoting. Google Groups isn't capable it seems.

The K7x as others have said is for the old Athlon MP series... with that
said, I used to own one and I like it. You could have bought my old
machine for $500.. oh well

Some Tyan Opteron boards require both CPUs because of how the buses
are routed. If you see info saying that it runs with one CPU, then
you're probably ok.

Duallies can be expensive. A cheap alternative might be the
Supermicro H8DCE board. As others have said though, I really
like for them to have PCI-X (mainly because PCI-e just hasn't
caught on yet). PCI-e 16 is useful for video cards... my laptop
uses a mobile go1400 PCI-e for example.

Supermicro's AMD line can be seen at:
http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/

Strictly OEM, but easily had now from most dealers. I like the
H8DC8 myself, but I've never owned/seen one.

My primary workstation is a Sun w2100z currently with a 6600GTAGP
for a video card. It is small workstation (for a duallie) with
onboard SCSI, SATA and ATA. I run (sometimes very complex) VMware
scenarios for the sake of simulation and testing. My box is
a dual 246 with 2G... can very easily run 5+ virtual machines.

IMHO, if you're going to spend money on it.. you might as well
get the graphics too... I think too many people skimp on that.
It's amazing what a difference it can make performance wise.
And I like to have a clear picture (not as interesting if
using DVI though).

All of my duallies are running/have run SUSE (very stable).

w2100z dual 246's proprietary mb (same as the 1st gen Opty IBM's)
has an external 800G RAID5 (standalone) attached.
dual 3.2Ghz Xeon's on a Supermicro X5DAL-G (E7505 based motherboard)
uses an LSI U320-2 RAID to an icy dock 4 bay hotwap
dual MP2400+ on a Tyan S2468UGN (K7 Thunder)
used an LSI Megaraid 1600 Elite with 8 drives in a RAID10
dual MP2000+ on a Tyan S2469UGN (K7x Thunder)
dual 2.4Ghz Xeons on an HP/Compaq WX6000 (860 based motherboard)
using sw RAID1 under Linux.

I had some instability with the S2486UGN, but it turned out to be
a weird grounding issue. Once that was fixed, it was stable as
well.

 

[Joseph2k]

The K7x as others have said is for the old Athlon MP series... with that
said, I used to own one and I like it. You could have bought my old
machine for $500.. oh well

Some Tyan Opteron boards require both CPUs because of how the buses
are routed. If you see info saying that it runs with one CPU, then
you're probably ok.

Duallies can be expensive. A cheap alternative might be the
Supermicro H8DCE board. As others have said though, I really
like for them to have PCI-X (mainly because PCI-e just hasn't
caught on yet). PCI-e 16 is useful for video cards... my laptop
uses a mobile go1400 PCI-e for example.

Supermicro's AMD line can be seen at:
http://www.supermicro.com/Aplus/

Strictly OEM, but easily had now from most dealers. I like the
H8DC8 myself, but I've never owned/seen one.

My primary workstation is a Sun w2100z currently with a 6600GTAGP
for a video card. It is small workstation (for a duallie) with
onboard SCSI, SATA and ATA. I run (sometimes very complex) VMware
scenarios for the sake of simulation and testing. My box is
a dual 246 with 2G... can very easily run 5+ virtual machines.

IMHO, if you're going to spend money on it.. you might as well
get the graphics too... I think too many people skimp on that.
It's amazing what a difference it can make performance wise.
And I like to have a clear picture (not as interesting if
using DVI though).

All of my duallies are running/have run SUSE (very stable).

w2100z dual 246's proprietary mb (same as the 1st gen Opty IBM's)
has an external 800G RAID5 (standalone) attached.
dual 3.2Ghz Xeon's on a Supermicro X5DAL-G (E7505 based motherboard)
uses an LSI U320-2 RAID to an icy dock 4 bay hotwap
dual MP2400+ on a Tyan S2468UGN (K7 Thunder)
used an LSI Megaraid 1600 Elite with 8 drives in a RAID10
dual MP2000+ on a Tyan S2469UGN (K7x Thunder)
dual 2.4Ghz Xeons on an HP/Compaq WX6000 (860 based motherboard)
using sw RAID1 under Linux.

I had some instability with the S2486UGN, but it turned out to be
a weird grounding issue. Once that was fixed, it was stable as
well.

Just a nit to pick, the s2468ugn is a K7 Tiger; A BIOS upgrade was needed to
fix the problems i experienced.

 

[Peter]

I'd suggest looking at the Tyan Tomcat K8E motherboard:

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tomcatk8e.html

I am looking over a variation of that one:

http://tyan.com/products/html/tomcatK8Esli.html

model: S2866A2NRF