Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

I have a Quadro FX 3700 that has been sitting in my room for months if you are interested

No, if I get another card it will be GeForce, not quadro (I'm not doing CAD). And two of them, as I'd be doing SLI.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

The issue is how these pci express ports are implemented.
On consumer hardware, the lanes to the video card pci express come from the cpu and the less important lanes are from the chipset...
on these workstation boards each pci express goes to a chip which then talks to the cpu: https://cdn.badcaps-static.com/pdfs/...2b07aca8a6.pdf

Modern video card drivers don't take this in consideration and they're "tuned" to assume direct connection to processors, so you can get into instability issues.

Otherwise, there's bottlenecks everywhere. Back then, this type of board was top of the line and so on but nowadays... it's just not that great anymore.

For example, you can put two processors on the board but basically almost any processor you can buy now online is faster than those Opteron 2xx processors.

Look in the datasheet above... The bus between processors is a measly 1600 MT/s one ... my current board works at 5200 MT/s. Same with the chipset-cpu bus, all are constrained to 1600 MT/s... that's slow...
You also have the issue of some hardware on a part of the board and other hardware on another part, for example you have a gigabit card linked to CPU 2 and sata linked to CPU 1 ... transferring stuff to the network involves moving data through several hypertransport links ... it's certainly not user friendly but was a necessity back then.

Also, you can put lots of ram and have dual channel, but at the end of the day it's still ddr1, 400 Mhz. Do the math on the bandwidth, 400 mhz ddr1 with huge latencies and with the problem of having the ram data moved between the two processors for synchronizing stuff versus 1600-1866 mhz ddr3 directly connected to one six-eight core processor that's 4-8 times more powerful than those two opterons combined.

For example, Opteron 256 has 963 points in cpubenchmark and each of them has a 92.6w tdp ... my fx-8320 has 8181 performance points and does this within a 125w tdp. The whole system on idle uses 90w (with 16 GB ddr3 and 4 hdds), 230w while doing video encoding. Yours probably uses 50w only in the ram modules...

Sigh.. now I've done exactly what I didn't want to do. Like I said, the server boards look awesome, they're very nice, a system like that certainly gives you a feeling of reliability and all that, and if you feel that way do it, i don't have any problems with it.

Yeah, and I'd have to spend $800+ to do that the right way (it cost a classmate that much to do it the cheapass way, IMHO the rig was shit). And guess what? Give it 3 years and it's probably dead (modern stuff isn't made to last).

I know the speed that everything talks to eachother is a bottleneck... However, I don't run super-high end games on it either (just FOSS stuff like supertuxkart, neverputt, and maybe the occassional bit of minecraft).

As for instability, I'd like to see hard proof of that. If that's the case, then I dunno what to do other than shitcan it, and start sucking snake like the rest of the muggles of the world (sarcasm). But really, wouldn't it just run a bit slower?

I also know it's a power hog... Whatever. The amount we're talking isn't that signifigant. If we were talking a quad GPU 1500W PSU'd gamer beast, then you'd have a point.

[Pentium4]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

I have a Quadro FX 3700 that has been sitting in my room for months if you are interested

[Uranium-235]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

what are you going to do with a workstation desktop? 3d modeling or just facebooking?

edit: if that is a K8SR you're screwed, not even an AGP slot

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

No its more like telling him stop buying `78 Mack Truck parts and trying to make them run llike a 2010 camaro.

Your not trying to build a workstation your trying to build a desktop (based on all your posts of what you want it to do) and you will never be happy using workstation/server hardware EVER.

You don't get it.

In my mind, truck parts woudl be like server parts... and this isn't a server! It's a workstation (PC version of a Mac Pro), which if anything would be like a caddy... lots of power, lots of luxery. Likewise, a gaming rig would be the camero... lots of speed, but not much else. And a consumer rig? Kia grocery getter.

I'm not buying old server HW and expecting it to run just like a new system. Perhaps running a newer OS and USB 2.0 (which is far from new), but otherwise, it's a different story.

What I'm trying to do is get a cross between the CPU power and disk access speed of a workstation with the the GPU power of a gaming GPU. Not a replacement for either. Or in the car analogy, dropping a higher performance motor in a caddy. Not the best racecar or luxery wagon, but for somebody who needed a bit of both, a unique and fitting ride. If course, in either case, it's not what the designer intended and of course the may be some hiccups and/or custom workarounds needed... but that's expected and if anything is half the fun.

---

If I do get a K8WE, I will need to get different GPU's to use twin monitors, as my Quadro FX's I have sitting are Gefoce 6800 based, and in order to do twin displays on SLI, I need Geforce 8 or newer (and I'd get geforce, not quadro).

[mariushm]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

The issue is how these pci express ports are implemented.
On consumer hardware, the lanes to the video card pci express come from the cpu and the less important lanes are from the chipset...
on these workstation boards each pci express goes to a chip which then talks to the cpu: https://cdn.badcaps-static.com/pdfs/...2b07aca8a6.pdf

Modern video card drivers don't take this in consideration and they're "tuned" to assume direct connection to processors, so you can get into instability issues.

Otherwise, there's bottlenecks everywhere. Back then, this type of board was top of the line and so on but nowadays... it's just not that great anymore.

For example, you can put two processors on the board but basically almost any processor you can buy now online is faster than those Opteron 2xx processors.

Look in the datasheet above... The bus between processors is a measly 1600 MT/s one ... my current board works at 5200 MT/s. Same with the chipset-cpu bus, all are constrained to 1600 MT/s... that's slow...
You also have the issue of some hardware on a part of the board and other hardware on another part, for example you have a gigabit card linked to CPU 2 and sata linked to CPU 1 ... transferring stuff to the network involves moving data through several hypertransport links ... it's certainly not user friendly but was a necessity back then.

Also, you can put lots of ram and have dual channel, but at the end of the day it's still ddr1, 400 Mhz. Do the math on the bandwidth, 400 mhz ddr1 with huge latencies and with the problem of having the ram data moved between the two processors for synchronizing stuff versus 1600-1866 mhz ddr3 directly connected to one six-eight core processor that's 4-8 times more powerful than those two opterons combined.

For example, Opteron 256 has 963 points in cpubenchmark and each of them has a 92.6w tdp ... my fx-8320 has 8181 performance points and does this within a 125w tdp. The whole system on idle uses 90w (with 16 GB ddr3 and 4 hdds), 230w while doing video encoding. Yours probably uses 50w only in the ram modules...

Sigh.. now I've done exactly what I didn't want to do. Like I said, the server boards look awesome, they're very nice, a system like that certainly gives you a feeling of reliability and all that, and if you feel that way do it, i don't have any problems with it.

[brethin]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

DX is all on the GPU... Once I go to PCI-E, for the most part I can run any Nvidia GPU I dare... Even with AGP, the ATI 4670 did/does very well (I only built V3 because I was gifted some parts with more potential). Heck, the only thing that doesn't work now is the TV tuner, which a K8WE would fix. Heck, the K8WE would allow me to do everything I'd want HW wise, even with double height cards (as the only two PCI's I'd need is the RAID controller and the TV tuner). Add on 7 X64 (my favorite windows OS ever) and 16GB of DDR (more than I'll ever need) and I'm rocking for a long, long time.

It's like telling a classic car guy to toss his '78 camaro and instead buy a more efficent and safer (and cheaper to maintain perhaps) Kia... There's more to life than economics (only one of many factors).]

No its more like telling him stop buying `78 Mack Truck parts and trying to make them run llike a 2010 camaro.

Your not trying to build a workstation your trying to build a desktop (based on all your posts of what you want it to do) and you will never be happy using workstation/server hardware EVER.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Workstation boards are even worse for what you are trying to make it do. Its like trying to make a WYSE terminal play a DX11 graphic game you need to refocus on what you want your system to do and buy from that not buy from what you want to build and make it do what it cant do.

DX is all on the GPU... Once I go to PCI-E, for the most part I can run any Nvidia GPU I dare... Even with AGP, the ATI 4670 did/does very well (I only built V3 because I was gifted some parts with more potential). Heck, the only thing that doesn't work now is the TV tuner, which a K8WE would fix. Heck, the K8WE would allow me to do everything I'd want HW wise, even with double height cards (as the only two PCI's I'd need is the RAID controller and the TV tuner). Add on 7 X64 (my favorite windows OS ever) and 16GB of DDR (more than I'll ever need) and I'm rocking for a long, long time.

It's like telling a classic car guy to toss his '78 camaro and instead buy a more efficent and safer (and cheaper to maintain perhaps) Kia... There's more to life than economics (only one of many factors).

[brethin]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Workstation boards are even worse for what you are trying to make it do. Its like trying to make a WYSE terminal play a DX11 graphic game you need to refocus on what you want your system to do and buy from that not buy from what you want to build and make it do what it cant do.

[mariushm]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

No man, keep posting. It's interesting to see what issues you have with these systems.

They just have the same questions I had... technically, the hardware is just obsolete, from a performance point of view it's not worth it. But I can understand you want something different so I'm not pushing you to give up.

[brethin]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Im fine with that but I guess where I get confused about is how he wants to use it and no Server board is ever really going to give you what a desktop board will when you want to use it as a desktop. If he were trying to build a data server or IP host server or some type of server then yes I would say hes on the right path but he isnt for what he wants it to do.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Never go by pictures over what the listing says without asking first that the seller confirm as sellers often use pictures that are not of the exact item or make mistakes and post the wrong pictures. My guess is if its not what you want the seller will most likelly let you return it.

I am still at a loss as to why you are tossing all the $ you are at a dual cpu server system that you seem to want to use as a home / media pc. Server boards are for servers not TV watching, gaming, HiFi music playback, etc. For what you have spent at this point (including your time if you even value that where you could have been working a job) you could have a really nice desktop that would do everything you want and be much faster than what you are going to have.

It's a workstation board, not a server board. Server boards don't allow for any GPU expansion, being designed to be headless (or semi-headless). Workstation boards do allow for it, and if anything support it more.

With my computer usage, I figured that A system with plenty of CPU power, fast HDDs, and a decent GPU woudl suit me best. Which IMHO is a workstation.

I'm not the only person around here that builds rigs like this... Look at Topcat. His last rig was based off a K8WE!

I build rigs like this for the same reason he does... power and reliability. He's like me, not wanting to suck the snake with some run of the mill celeron based piece of trash.

I'm sorry (or not), but I can't see a knowledgeable geek/tech like me calling some consumer grade POS a main rig.

Look, if the community wants me to quit posting these builds, then say so. Bye. All you'll see of me is moving crap out of the FAQ and banning spammers. If the community wants me inactive, then I'm out. See a new thread in Off topic.

[Pentium4]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

He's mentioned why before, he wants something that is unique, not a run of the mill system you could find in any store

[mariushm]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Yeah, go with ask a question, that's what I meant. But there's no rush, it's still listed for 27 days. Clarify first with the previous guy.

brethin: everybody needs a hobby or something that brings him/her joy... some people collect stamps, others coins, others have various fetishes... i guess rat likes server hardware... no need to judge him that much.

[brethin]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Never go by pictures over what the listing says without asking first that the seller confirm as sellers often use pictures that are not of the exact item or make mistakes and post the wrong pictures. My guess is if its not what you want the seller will most likelly let you return it.

I am still at a loss as to why you are tossing all the $ you are at a dual cpu server system that you seem to want to use as a home / media pc. Server boards are for servers not TV watching, gaming, HiFi music playback, etc. For what you have spent at this point (including your time if you even value that where you could have been working a job) you could have a really nice desktop that would do everything you want and be much faster than what you are going to have.

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Yeah, i really hope it is 2895 like I said.

If that fails, I see another one but it's bundled with a cpu+heatsink at $99.95:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TYAN-THUNDER...item4172a3cb04

Guy looks like he sells a lot of stuff so maybe he's flexible about pricing, throw him a $70 for the board without cpu and heatsink and see what happens.

edit: was writing this as you posted previous message...

I can't... it's buy it now, no best offer. Maybe ask the seller directly?

(I'd also need an SLI bridge... the board is half junk without it).

[mariushm]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Yeah, i really hope it is 2895 like I said.

If that fails, I see another one but it's bundled with a cpu+heatsink at $99.95:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TYAN-THUNDER...item4172a3cb04

Guy looks like he sells a lot of stuff so maybe he's flexible about pricing, throw him a $70 for the board without cpu and heatsink and see what happens.

edit: was writing this as you posted previous message...

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Yeah, it looks like a K8SR baord with the box and accessories of a K8WE. I hope I can get this straightened... If not, back to the current piece of tyan trash I have...

[ratdude747]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Uhm ... what exactly did you buy?

ebay listing says TYAN THUNDER K8WE S2881 but that's not right.

K8WE is S2895 as it says on the CD in the picture: http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=151

S2881 is K8SR: http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=115

If you got K8WE, you scored big time, that's really a nicely featured board (for an old server board).

Look at the first pic in the listing CAREFULLY. The cover of the manual clearly states it is a S2895. I also see what appears to be an SLI bridge in the pile of goodies. At first I was doubtful too for the same reason, but I checked the pic, and yup, a true thunder K8WE.

edit- the board kinda looks like the k8SR.. FML. Sending the seller a prompt question...

[Pentium4]

Re: Ratdude's main rig V3, maybe

Wow, that is a nice board. Quite a good deal if that's what it is, if not you can probably return it, the seller has good feedback