Idle Questions about Xeon

[Pam Heinze]

I have seen Opteron guys talking about not filling all the sockets on their server boards and adding them as they could afford them.

So can you run a socket 771 board with just one socket filled and add another processor later?

[Simon]

Hi Pam,

sure you can! It's not required that you fill all sockets.

My dad's Xeon server came with one CPU installed but an empty socket for a second one - as do many 2 socket systems. Should work fine.

HTH,
Simon.

[Pam Heinze]

Thanks, Simon.

I made a shopping list for a dual 5310 with 4Gig memory and it came to under $2000.  Not including drives or case, but I have drives.  I guess I'd have to get a case that could take E-ATX.  A dual 5310 was at No. 22 at Seti last night. 

Then I thought, what if I could do  a single  5320 and half the ram and add another processor and the rest of the ram later?  And then I thought, what if I did a single 5355?(over $1200 for just the processor)!  And then I saw the QX6700 was down to $970, and I already have a board that can take that.  Maybe the price will drop a little more when the 45 nm processors come out in a few months.

I guess it might be safer to stick with equipment that doesn't need fb-dimms.  That stuff is pricey!  I thought, well, I must want to fill every slot, so I can get quad channel and I was picking the cheapest brand, and still coming up with $600 worth of ram.  And what if one or two sticks was bad?  That would be so frustrating. 

Thanks for helping me think this over.

Pam

[Simon]

Pam,

I recommend a different route.

It still involves Xeons, but I'd advise you not to invest in DP ones unless you're after top spot in the rankings

Why, you ask? There are single-socket quad-core S775 Xeons that fit in consumer motherboards and overclock better than the QX6700 - specifically, they can run higher FSB frequencies. AFAIK, they're also competitively priced, and the cost offset between a DP server class motherboard and a consumer/enthusiast single-socket one is pretty large. You can easily stuff 4 GB into those, as well. By the way, I'm thinking this will not be just a cruncher, since you stuffed it full of RAM it would not really need (for S@H, anyway ).

The RAM will also be much cheaper, or for the same price, you could get stuff that's a lot quicker (DDR2-800 or 1066/1200 vs. FB-DDR2-667 or even slower).
I'll dig up a CPU model number for you.

<edit>
And this would be it -
http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL9UP - Xeon 3220 UP. Priced below a QX6700, also runs at 2.4 GHz vs. 2.66 for the QX, but as I said, it's very overclockable. Get a robust after-market cooling solution and a quality OC-friendly motherboard for the price difference; you will be glad you did. People have reached 3.4 GHz with this processor pretty easily, and with sky-high FSBs, which make them fly.

This review may also be of interest to you.
</edit>

HTH,
Simon.

[Pam Heinze]

Simon:

Thanks, Simon, that is very sane advice.  That 3220 is going to be some cruncher! 

I've been laboring under the assumption that one needs 512 mb/core, so that's why I said 4 Gig for the dual quad.  Is that overkill?

Regards,

Pam

[Simon]

Depends on what you want to do with it; for S@H crunching, you don't really need a lot of memory (28-65 MB/running task), for other projects, more RAM may be very beneficient.

It really is a question of purpose and budget. For dedicated S@H crunching, I'd go with 2x512MB sticks of as-quick-as-possible RAM, it'll be enough by far. Quality over quantity, memory bandwidth is important.

OTOH, 512MB/core for a workstation (not a dedicated cruncher) will yield good results, unless you want to do video editing/compositing or 3D rendering with large scenes. Then I'd consider 1GB/core.

Regards,
Simon.

Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

- Murphy's Law