New machine

[glorybound]

Super Machine

I posted this link someplace here. I was told that is pretty old technology.

[SonOfNimrod]

jujubee: i read somewhere too about the barcelonas being delayed and something about generally not good news.........hope they're worth it.

but you got yourself a nice machine there

[askhamdesign]

jujubee what made you choose that MB in teh end if you dont mind me asking? Just looking at them myself not sure what to go for? Are you happy with the Tempest?

[jujubee]

I got the motherboard mainly cause I wanted to play it safe and I researched/read somewhere that was what Boxx was using in their Dual Quad setups. I figured they make better beta testers than I do. Also, it has 8 RAM slots versus some of their other offerings of only 4 slots.

I've always liked Tyan server motherboards going back to my dual PIII 450s. I would say ASUS followed by Tyan are my top motherboards.

So far it's great. The motherboard is well - the motherboard. The only time I'll have a problem with it I suppose is when something seriously goes wrong (knock on wood.) Until then it's been completely stable. Power consumption with duals is going to be high and also noise level is noticeable (same goes with the Boxx offering from what I hear.) But that's going to happen regardless of the motherboard manufacturer.

I really haven't messed around with the BIOS. I'm not about to tweak things on this system only to ruin pricey components or lose overall stability for a negligible gain. My days of overclocking are done.

@SonOfNimrod - New AMD Barcelonas were released today. According to some reports (anandtech.com comes to mind), the new chips have some good things to offer and are cheaper, but overall dont match the higher end Xeon 5345s+ still. There will be higher mhz flavored releases later this year as well as consumer models. But also, I've read Intel will answer with a salvo of 45nm die processors around that time.

It's one of those things - you wait and wait and wait... something newer always around the corner.

[SonOfNimrod]

i like tyan mb's as well. the first board i had for my current dual opteron sys was an asus, but that steadly disintegrated as time went on.....a real thorn in my side so i replaced it with a tyan.

juju. thanks for the info. looks like xeon's are the way to go for now.

[werticus]

man i've had some serious dud's with tyan

[SonOfNimrod]

man i've had some serious dud's with tyan

what went wrong with them?

[askhamdesign]

Yeah I like the look of the Tyan but never used them its a shame Asus dont make a similiar board as my past Asus xeon boards have been spot on and not had any problems with them for 3/4 years.

The tyan tempest comes in various forms if you click the cpu tyep at the dropdoen on the below link you will see the options:

http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=472

5000P
5000V
5000X

Rather than the noisy Intel fan heatsinks do you think you could sqeeze two of these in as they are deadly silent I have one on my Q6600
http://www.arctic-cooling.com/cpu2.php?idx=79

[askhamdesign]

I know you can get stuff cheaper than the rrp but this is a good link to check for any future price drops on Intels cpus

http://www.intel.com/intel/finance/p...price_list.pdf

[werticus]

unless you can really afford the high end xeons price tag, id say the Barcelona is a better buy, because of lower power use, running a computer is a cost that is more significant than you think.

as for problems with tyan: two without functioning onboard NICS.
and one that just 'died' after 2yrs of working fine.

[DaForce]

If you have the space to spare. 2 Q6600 machines would work out cheaper I reckon and they overclock really well due to consumer level boards.

2 Q6600's running at 3.2GHZ or higher would kick ass

[askhamdesign]

Yeah I think the Q6600 are really worth the cost at the moment.

[DaForce]

totally agree.. they dropped their price by half only a month or 2 ago.

For those looking at getting one get the G0 stepping ones if you plan on overclocking

[askhamdesign]

Yep for more info: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=643237

[werticus]

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3092&p=5

Looks like 3dsmax on the quad Barcelona is 18% faster clock for clock than a dual Opteron (+ dual core) machine.

hopefully with higher clock rates this should get amd back into the game.

I myself have two intel q6600 machines here and they are great, but i dont wan to see amd go away, or the good times will end