Insufficient RAM for Intel XEON E5-2699 v4

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alexp88

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Dec 28, 2016
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Greetings,

I just finished building my first workstation. Here is the configuration I have:

Motherboard: Supermico X10DAX (just 1 CPU installed)
CPU: Intel XEON E5-2699 v4
GPU: nVidia QUADRO K1200
RAM: Crucial 288 Pin 32 GB (16 GB x2) CL15 DDR4 DIMM Memory Module (ecc registered)
Storage: Crucial MX300 525 GB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive with 9.5 mm Adapter AND WD Red 4 TB NAS Desktop Hard Disk Drive - Intellipower SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch

Though the system is quite high-end, I am totally unhappy with the overall performance. Quite honestly, my other workstation, a Dell Precision M3800, is performing way better. And here's the configuration as well, so you can compare them:

CPU: Intel i7 -4702HQ @ 2.20GHz
RAM: 16GB
GPU: nVidia Quadro K1100M

The issues I'm experiencing with the homebuilt workstation include lag, sluggish performance, and occasional freezing. This happens especially with Adobe Photoshop CC 2017 (most recent version). The overall response is very slow after about 15 minutes. It becomes unusable.

I have come across this thread (https://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/hardware/144936-single-i7-much-faster-than-dual-xeon-e5-2650-v3.html). The OP seems to be experiencing something quite similar. Now, one of the users has raised an interesting point about having created a memory bottleneck. I have just one processor and 2 RAM modules (16 GB each, so 32GB total). After reading the thread I realized I hadn't installed the RAM modules properly. My motherboard has 8 modules/CPU and dual CPU capability. The 8 modules are distributed evenly on each side of the processor (4 on the left side and 4 on the right side). When I installed the RAM, I place one module on one side and the other module on the other side. I eventually moved one module to enable the dual-channel memory architecture. I placed them in slots 2 & 4, which I think is the correct way.

The performance is still quite poor for a machine this expensive. I also came across maximum memory bandwidth, and I'm confused if I should necessarily try to compute/achieve the CPU's maximum memory bandwidth of 76.8GB/s. Will this make a difference in how the system performs? As I have only 32GB of RAM installed, this essentially lowers the memory bandwidth to about half, so maybe the performance is also about a half. Should I add another 2 x 16GB RAM modules? I know each core needs to be allocated a minimum of 2000MB.

Reading the same thread, one of the users says it's important to populate "bank 1 of all 4 channels for each CPU". What exactly does this mean? What is bank 1? I know a channel is, for example, A1, A2, and the other is B1, B2 (so I'd need to place a RAM module in the first slot of each channel, i.e. A1, B1, which I did). How many more RAM modules would I need to achieve optimum performance?

I did a few tests to stress the CPU and GPU. I used Furmark for about 30 minutes and all was fine. No artifacts whatsoever. Furmark hasn't crashed at all. I used Prime95 to stress the CPU for about 3 hours. No problem here either. For RAM, I ran Memtest86 for 10 hours. The results were 2 passed and no error. So no problem here either.

As I said, this is the first workstation I've ever built, and I'm not experienced with hardware. So any input/advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!
 
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alexp88

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Dec 28, 2016
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@alexoiu, I removed one RAM module and the performance is the same.

@Ecky, as mentioned above, I ran memtest86+ for 10 hours and no errors were found.
 
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Ecky

Ecky

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Feb 3, 2013
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My apologies for overlooking that. But again, I've replaced several SSDs which caused this sort of behavior in clients' computers. Often they don't even fail tests, but they're undoubtedly the cause as replacing them fixes it. I've all but stopped buying anything but Samsung and Intel branded SSDs as I find the occurrence of these issues is far lower with those two brands.
 
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alexp88

Commendable
Dec 28, 2016
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@Tesetilaro, I ran AS SSD Benchmark and got the following results:

3145g9f.png


UPDATE: I looked at other SSD scores and it seems the one I have (Crucial MX300 525GB) should have the following results:

2nm26qe.png


Still, mine only got a total score of 448 points. So I should assume the SSD is faulty and I should return it for a replacement? Now, I haven't changed any of the settings when I ran AS SSD Benchmark, so I'm not sure if this may be causing the total score to be so low.
 
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alexp88

Commendable
Dec 28, 2016
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@Tesetilaro, it's not just a "sensation" that the workstation is performing worse than the Dell M3800. The system becomes unusable from time to time, though not very frequently, but when it happens, it's a total nightmare. This is not possible with a machine that cost me over 6,000 euros.

As I said, the overall performance is poor in general, not just when I'm utilizing Adobe Photoshop CC 2017. But it's even worse when I use it. All in all, right now I'm unable to work since the workstation is not usable.
 
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schaft

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Jan 24, 2012
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"Reading the same thread, one of the users says it's important to populate "bank 1 of all 4 channels for each CPU". What exactly does this mean? What is bank 1? I know a channel is, for example, A1, A2, and the other is B1, B2 (so I'd need to place a RAM module in the first slot of each channel, i.e. A1, B1, which I did). How many more RAM modules would I need to achieve optimum performance?"

He meant A1, B1, C1 and D1 has to be filled first for quad channel configuration. My knowledge with xeon is very limited at the moment (only have it over 1 week), but that bank 1 thing is one of the few I know. 2011v3 motherboards mostly uses quad channel so mostly you will need 4 piece of exact ram to optimized it.

Unfortunately, I cannot found CC2017 review. I only found 2015 review
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-625/
some one summarize is as " To summarize, Photoshop does have improvements in several functions , though it appears that the benefits taper off after 5 cores except in some functions such as blurs, hue, saturation /lightness, and bright / contrast intensity which do well up to 7 or 8 cores. Photoshop apparently definitely does not like multiple CPU's." Then again its a 2015 discussion.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3019835/cpu-type-photoshop.html

If you are not a gamer, please ignore my ranting below.

My cpu is a xeon E5-26xx v4 with only 12 core and 1,5GHz speed. I got it dirt cheap online (less than i3 price) so I build it with Asrock X99 taichi and cheapest 4x 4Gb DDR4 2400 i can find. Those 3 parts to upgrade my old i5-2320 and was meant for full gaming. So far i tried with 4 games, they are Battlefield1, The division and Far cry Primal (Fallout 4 but only for a brief). The xeon cpu require programs that can utilize multi threading in order for it to show its best performance. Luckily all those 3 games I tried were famous for cpu usage, especially Battlefield1 which was nick named i5 killer. With i5, it ran 92-100%. With xeon, it never exceed 25% and with 4 threads simultaneously sleep. My OCZ arc 100 480Gb can barely keep up with the cpu.

I think its just a matter of the cc 2017 unable to optimized your build.

"The overall response is very slow after about 15 minutes. It becomes unusable." Now this is worrisome. This is a stupid question, but I have to ask because you didn't mention above, you use window 10, right? because below window 10, they are unable to optimized so many core like your build.

That is all i can think of at the moment. Hope its help
 
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