Opterons

[Greenbank]

I'm thinking of consolidating my machines (4 separate boxes) and was wondering if anyone has been playing with Opterons, and specifically the dual-core Opterons.

The new machine would be for sieving, not for PRP, and I'm looking at the Opteron 275 Dual-Core (2 x 2.0GHz, 2 x 1MB cache). Is the memory bandwidth enough to support two instances of proth_sieve running at full speed?

What about a dual CPU dual-core (i.e. quad) based on the above processor?

Something along these lines:-

https://secure.dnuk.com/systems/w420-he.php

[Shish]

Very nice machine is what I`d say.
The board for that will necessarily be a server type and as such will have the facilties of multi memory banks with, normally, each cpu having a bank of it`s own. Couple that with the HT links on the cpus and onboard memory controllers and I doubt if you`ll have any problems with bandwidth, unlike the Xeon machines which can be bus bound.

[IronBits]

I have an Opteron 170 dual core that does 2.7 GHz, on air with the stock heatpipe Heatsink that comes with boxed CPUs ;)

Using an inexpensive Biostar mobo, and only eats 110 watts of power.

http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/opteron/details.aspx?opn=OSA170CDBOX
It can run two instances of anything without a performance hit.

[Greenbank]

The main reason is that the company I work for has been bought out by a rather large 'blue' company.

Now we've gone from ~600 employees to ~330,000 employees there are rather more rules and regulations, including rules about non-company owned machines on the premises (boo!).

I've got to take the few machines that I had in the office home which is where I run into the strict rules and regulations of she who must be obeyed (the gf). She says I can have two machines at home (other than the Mac Mini in the cupboard and a laptop) so I want to make sure the machine is as powerful as possible (hence the Quad Opteron I'm thinking of, to go with the Quad PowerMac G5 I already have).

On a related note, I'd be interested if anyone gets one of the new Intel Mac Minis (that were announced recently), especially the Dual core version...

[vjs]

I think your first decision should be money is it an option? Sky's the limit?
Are you going to be doing any gaming? Do you ever think you'll need dual graphic cards (Personally I think SLI is over rated)? I think ATI Nvidia will be going more towards dual GPU cards when two cards become the norm anyways.

Problem with dual and quad socket opterons is they start to get expensive compare 165 with 265 with 865's and you'll see what I mean.

Second the serverboards don't generally overclock ( I could be mistaken )...
Third you'll have to run ECC ram for dual socket motherboards.

They have a quad opteron board on e-bay now for 1300

http://cgi.ebay.com/Supermicro-H8QC8-B-Quad-Opteron-800-PCI-X-Dual-GbE-Ser_W0QQitemZ6854793084QQcategoryZ1244QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

It has PCI-X and PCI-E

Tyan makes a very nice dual board will all the bells, I've seen it go in the 450 range.

I also like the IWill boards.

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Personally I'd probably go with the dual socket board since I already have 2G of decent ECC memory in my dual socket-A. In addition 2 dual core processors is alot of Horsepower for a home computer.

[Greenbank]

The sky is certainly not the limit. Without mentioning figures (that'd be rude), lets say that I have about 1/4 of my yearly salary lurking around in cash (through savings and the money I got from the few company shares I had when we were acquired). Obviously I'm not going to spend all of this on a computer (or computers!) so what I don't spend will be split between some long-term savings and paying off a bit of the mortgage.

No gaming, just console/ssh access to the machine. I don't even use X, just the standard virtual consoles (it'll run Linux). So I don't care about graphics adapters.

I don't care about disk speed, I only care about CPU grunt, so SATA it is (rather than paying more for SCSI). Yes I know that SCSI is nicer and faster, but I simply wouldn't use it.

Server vs Workstation Mobo, it's classed as a 'workstation' although there are no details about the make/model of the mobo. I don't bother overclocking much, especially as cooling can be a problem. Most homes in the UK don't have air-con and, anyway, I live in a first-floor flat/apartment so I don't have a nice cool garage to put it in.

It's dual socket not quad because i'm going for the dual-core Opteron 270.

Don't care about PCI-E/X because I don't plan to plug any extra cards in. This machine is going to be used purely for CPU intensive programs. It may be SoB sieving, SoB+PSP sieving, or some other random mathematical programs.

The configuration I want comes to 2588.48 UKP (VAT included). This is roughly what I paid for the Quad PowerMac G5.

Part of this will also be funded by selling my Athlon 2.0GHz/512MB/120GB, an Athlon 1.8GHz/256MB/120GB, a P4 1.7GHz/512MB/80GB and a P4 3.0GHz/1GB/120GB.

So 4 machines out and one machine in. It just so happens that I'm in a lucky position where I can make the machine coming in quite beefy.

Engracio, MikeH, IronBits, hcgrove etc will still have much more CPU power than me, but I'm slowly catching them up :-)

[vjs]

Well check around on e-bay for some deals. Why spend money where you don't have to, agreed quad boards are over kill especially now that we have dual core.

Some of my personal favorites:
Thunder K8SE (S2892)

Tyan makes nice boards IMHO, not the best but nice.

- dual channel per core (Requires 4 sticks of memory to get the benifit)
- you can get the add-on scsi raid.
- all the slots you need
- intergrated video


The MSI board, a little cheaper has advantages and disadvantages. I personally like MSI, never had one fail unlike ASUS, EPOX, ABIT etc. (But I just don't consider MSI's serverboard..)

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8T_Master2-FAR7&class=mb

Memory:
Still ECC and both sockets share the same memory bank unfortunately a big disadvantage.
But it could be looked at as an advantage when you think about, the board is designed to work off of two stick (Less money for memory)
AGP: You could reuse one of your old cards.

My personal favorites would have to be Iwill, pick any of them you won't go wrong there.

http://www.iwill.net/product_adns.asp

As far as overclocking goes, it's like Nike JUST DO IT. (But make sure it's stable)

IB really knows his stuff when it comes to O/c the oppies I'm sure he would help you out. Just think about the 265 as an easy 2.4GHz (you could get more).

Also make sure the board supports dual core not all do, even the new ones.

Third....

I really wish you'd reconsider SCSI, you can pickup a 36G 15K scsi drive and 64-bit card really cheap. Keep the IDE or sata for storage I'll never go back to <15K drives again. A decent 15K drive will last you at least 5 years and it isn't that expensive when you consider the rest of the system.

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BTW I did the same as you sold off all of my <1G computers ... that basically funded my dual Barton socket A setup. about the same HP maybe a little more but all in one box is nice.

[Shish]

That board/chipset is more a workstation board but will certainly overclock, unlike most of the Tyans.
The other chipset to consider is boards with AMDs own chipset which, unusually, runs like stink on memory bandwidth etc. Check Anand tests and 2CPU forums for some good reports.
Mainly limited by the ECC REG memory you have to use with socket 940.
Reckon any of the current boards (might also take a look at the IWILLS) will serve you well whether you want to overclock or just run standard. The cpus certainly go like stink and lick their counterparts in the Xeon group.
The MSI I bought has one thing I don`t like which is a built in ATI Expert video chip which is crap but may suit you. It`s the older MSI based on the NV3 chipset, the newer one has the 2200 Pro chipset and is excellent for your purpose. Maybe look around for one of the older versions as I know several dealers with reduced stock in UK and EU.
I wish I could afford to get mine up and running with 275s or similar but funds don`t allow and I`m in the same boat as to her indoors limiting my rigs :bang:

It was this one I was thinking of as to dual memory, the Master 2 stil has excellent bandwidth etc. but this has MSIs AMD chipset
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8D_Master3-133-FA4R&class=spd

[Greenbank]

Thanks for all of the hints and tips. I'm not going to be rushing into this, must read more...

A couple of points though.

1. SCSI.

2 of the 4 machines I'm using don't even have HDDs. They boot from a specially crafted CD that has a rudimentary sshd and a 16MB ram disk. I ssh on and then scp in proth_sieve, SoB.dat and setup SoBStatus.dat. I also copy in my watcher program which uploads any factors to a mysql db on my website. You can see the current status here:

http://www.greenbank.org/cgi-bin/proth.cgi

The top 4 are the 4 CPUs in my Quad PowerMac G5 sieving four 2T ranges for combined SoB + PSP (speed for SoB alone is around 800kp/sec per CPU for a range around 1000T, SoB+PSP runs about 340kp/sec).

The bottom 2 are the diskless Athlon XPs (2.0GHz and 1.8GHz) sieving SoB only.

If there aren't 6 entries there then one of them has died or there has been a powercut!

I'm really not worried about disks, almost everything I run will be CPU bound, not IO bound.

2. Memory (ECC)

I was planning to get 8 * 1GB ECC sticks in the machine, so that each of the 4 cores would have access to two individual 1GB sticks of ECC memory. Expensive but worth it.

Ta.

[Shish]

Certainly sounds OK for crunching.
Research on boards is definitely worth it if you`re not in a hurry (not a good idea when spending hard earned cash) as there are quite a few to choose from and just looking through the various forums and sites will give you a good idea of what`s hot and what`s not.
Certainly sounds like a plan though and should give you some bang for your bucks.

[vjs]

8 x1G stick so each core gets their own???

Not sure if it works that way... I know each socket can have a dedicated memory bank and 2 stick in that bank will make it a dual channel bank.

Something sound fishy are you sure about hte 8 stick personally I think you only need 4 to take max advantage with two sockets.

[Shish]

In the case of memory, 4 sticks is right but 8 sticks is better especially for diskless and just sheer capacity.
Windoze certainly loves the more the merrier cos you can get rid of swap files etc.
May make any oc`ing more difficult though as the bigger ECC sticks (and more of them) can limit latencies and timings In the case of dual channel, can force you down to 2T from 1T on Command rate which can be a big hit.

[vjs]

Yup that was my major point... trying to run 4 sticks in dual channel is a little tough when overclocking. Sometimes you have to relax the timings to a point where the overclock on the memory wasn't worth it.

I'd personally stick with 2 sticks per cpu, if you need the Memory buy the 2G sticks but that's $$$ in ECC.

Greenbank,
Have you made a decision regarding a board and processors?

SCSI, yeah if your really really not using disks nor is it your work machine the SCSI is a waste. If you actually sit infront of that box doing stuff, not just sending it commands crunching etc, 15K SCSI is worth it.

Also more than 4G wow, I realize it's only 1G per processor but unless your planning on doing Large ECM or large P-1 factoring. But then again your diskless.

You may also consider waiting for socket AM2 but then again there is always something better. Also from what I've heard is it won't be a major improvement at launch, and the "raided" memory is only helping by about 15% on a per stick basis.