Dual Processor Mainboard Recommendations

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 20:04:39 GMT, "Digital Eyes" <nomail@nospam.com>
wrote:

>I need a fast hard disk subsystem, so I am assuming that I will be picking
>up monster U320 SCSI drives and will need a motherboard with the U320
>built-in...this is on recommendation from a Central Computer Salesperson who
>said that having the U320 on the board, as opposed to plugged into the PCI
>bus, that my speed would truly match the 320 as opposed to the 33/66/100MHz
>PCI bus...sounds fishy and possibly a bit confused because the 320 stands
>for MB/sec transfer rate and the PCI bus speed has to do with
>transactions/second - can someone clear this up?
>
The truth is the U320 built in chip is the exact same chip as the
external controller cards. They perform identically. I have the K7X
board with built in dual U320. The key reason to getting it built in
is the price. A tyan board with on board U320 costs a lot but price
out a dual channel Adaptec U320 controller - it's not cheap. For much
of my work the dual AMD is better than the Intel so I like the K7X.
You may want Opteron if you can spend that much. My K7 died so this
was the easier choice. I just moved all the parts over and booted.

You'll want Seagate Cheetah 15K rpm drives or similar. Don't be
fooled. The speed of the bus is almost pointless compared the the
speed of the disk. If you need fast I/O it's the disk that matters not
the bus. That said you'll find nothing SCSI that is not upward
comnpatible to U320. SCSI really is both upward and backward
compatible. It's nice to also have built in IDE or SATA as you may
also want some cheap storage too. A 300 GB SATA drive is just too
cheap to pass up for lots cheap of raw storage. A DVD or CDR on an IDE
master is still plenty fast enough too.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

"Digital Eyes" <nomail@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:rpl_d.11474$C47.1965@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...

> I need a fast hard disk subsystem, so I am assuming that I will be picking
> up monster U320 SCSI drives and will need a motherboard with the U320
> built-in...this is on recommendation from a Central Computer Salesperson
> who
> said that having the U320 on the board, as opposed to plugged into the PCI
> bus, that my speed would truly match the 320 as opposed to the
> 33/66/100MHz
> PCI bus...sounds fishy and possibly a bit confused because the 320 stands
> for MB/sec transfer rate and the PCI bus speed has to do with
> transactions/second - can someone clear this up?

Total nonsense.

DS

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

"Digital Eyes" <nomail@nospam.com> wrote:
>... this is on recommendation from a Central Computer Salesperson who
>said that having the U320 on the board, as opposed to plugged into the PCI
>bus, that my speed would truly match the 320 as opposed to the 33/66/100MHz
>PCI bus...

On board or on a card, it's *exactly* the same simply because
either way it connects to exactly the same PCI bus, and has
exactly the same limitations.

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson&gt;
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) floyd@barrow.com

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

Digital Eyes wrote:
> Since Adobe's latest version of Photoshop came out, my dual PIII
> motherboards are about as good as a PC XT. I need to upgrade to the fastest
> configuration possible - without regards to price. I have been trying to
> get presales information from Tyan/Fremont, CA - but since I'm not "Michael
> Dell", I'm not getting any response from that department. (I have called
> numerous times over the past 3 months and have left my number numerous
> times.)
>
> I need a fast hard disk subsystem, so I am assuming that I will be picking
> up monster U320 SCSI drives and will need a motherboard with the U320
> built-in...this is on recommendation from a Central Computer Salesperson who
> said that having the U320 on the board, as opposed to plugged into the PCI
> bus, that my speed would truly match the 320 as opposed to the 33/66/100MHz
> PCI bus...sounds fishy and possibly a bit confused because the 320 stands
> for MB/sec transfer rate and the PCI bus speed has to do with
> transactions/second - can someone clear this up?

I've built a few workstations around the Tyan S2885 and wouldn't
hesitate to recommend it. The ones I used did not have on-board
SCSI, but a SCSI option is available if you want it. It is a
pre-PCI-E system, however, and the on-board USB is only ver 1.1.

As well, someone I'm going to build a few more systems for (to
replace the last of his Xeon boxes with) has ordered six of the
S2895 motherboards and Opty 252s to put on them. There is no
SCSI on those boards and for the S2895 I'm not sure if there is a
SCSI option.

I have had a chance to check out a couple of S2895 based systems
- but not to play with the hardware in them - and it seems like
it will be hard for anyone to beat that motherboard.

>
> Also, I will be going with the latest PCIx graphics card since we currently
> do tons of Photoshop work, but will also be going into video production
> soon.
>
> There is also a question about CPU and memory combinations that keeps
> popping up. I need to know if it is advantageous to go with the fastest
> memory a board can take, but plop in a "lower-end" Xeon or Opteron/Athlon64
> chip that may not use the speed of that memory...I can see a problem if I
> put in slower memory and a faster CPU - are there any charts that can help
> in making the right choices?

In the S2885 systems I have made, I used 1 and 2 GB PC3200 DIMMs
from Crucial and Corsair. At an earlier stage, some of them one
had 512 MB DIMMs from Mushkin. I have also successfully tried 4
GB PC2100 DIMMs borrowed from a HP server.

Note also that HP makes a workstation built around the S2895.
The model number is xw9300 or something like that. They are
selling it with Opty 252s, and apparently taking pre-orders for
that system with dual-core Opterons. (They apparently demoed
that system with 2.4 GHz dual-core chips recently.)

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

"Digital Eyes" <nomail@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:rpl_d.11474$C47.1965@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...
> Since Adobe's latest version of Photoshop came out, my dual PIII
> motherboards are about as good as a PC XT. I need to upgrade to the
fastest
> configuration possible - without regards to price. I have been trying to
> get presales information from Tyan/Fremont, CA - but since I'm not
"Michael
> Dell", I'm not getting any response from that department. (I have called
> numerous times over the past 3 months and have left my number numerous
> times.)
>
> I need a fast hard disk subsystem, so I am assuming that I will be picking
> up monster U320 SCSI drives and will need a motherboard with the U320
> built-in...this is on recommendation from a Central Computer Salesperson
who
> said that having the U320 on the board, as opposed to plugged into the PCI
> bus, that my speed would truly match the 320 as opposed to the
33/66/100MHz
> PCI bus...sounds fishy and possibly a bit confused because the 320 stands
> for MB/sec transfer rate and the PCI bus speed has to do with
> transactions/second - can someone clear this up?
>
> Also, I will be going with the latest PCIx graphics card since we
currently
> do tons of Photoshop work, but will also be going into video production
> soon.
>
> There is also a question about CPU and memory combinations that keeps
> popping up. I need to know if it is advantageous to go with the fastest
> memory a board can take, but plop in a "lower-end" Xeon or
Opteron/Athlon64
> chip that may not use the speed of that memory...I can see a problem if I
> put in slower memory and a faster CPU - are there any charts that can help
> in making the right choices?
>
> I appreciate any help! Please post response to the board.
>
>

OK, so far I am looking at acquiring Tyan's S2895UA2NRF (Thunder K8WE)
motherboard, two AMD 2xx series Opterons, 2GB of memory, a PCIx video card,
and at least 3 U320 SCSI hard drives for the brunt of the work that needs to
be done. Any further comments?

Now, I just have to wait for the motherboard to be put on the shelves...

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

Digital Eyes wrote:

> OK, so far I am looking at acquiring Tyan's S2895UA2NRF (Thunder K8WE)
> motherboard, two AMD 2xx series Opterons, 2GB of memory, a PCIx video
> card, and at least 3 U320 SCSI hard drives for the brunt of the work that
> needs to be done. Any further comments?
>
> Now, I just have to wait for the motherboard to be put on the shelves...

There is one thing to consider when choosing between on board scsi and using
a pci controller, e.g., scsi controller compatibility. By that I mean that
there is often an issue when moving a drive from one scsi controller to
another such that the hard drive will need to be repartitioned and
reformatted in order to be used on the new scsi controller. I faced this
decision when I built my machine a few years back and decided to go with a
pci controller card since that would allow me to more easily upgrade the
motherboard without having to worry about reformatting my hard drive.

http://h000625f788f5.ne.client2.attbi.com/scsi_faq/scsi...
> QUESTION: I changed the host adapter in my system and now my disk doesn't
> work. Why?
>
> ANSWER From: Gary Field (scsifaq@bigfoot.com)
>
> Each manufacturer chooses their own algorithm for converting cylinder,
> head and sector to a SCSI logical block number. If you run into this, you
> need to back up your system to tape or CD-R using the old host adapter,
> switch host adapters, Low Level Format (LLF)the disk (using the host
> adapter's BIOS), re-partition (using FDISK), and re-initialize the
> filesystem (using FORMAT), then restore all the data from the backup
> media

Eric

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

What about PCI-X SCSI Controller cards?



"David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> wrote in message
news 1csre$9sk$1@nntp.webmaster.com...
>
> "Digital Eyes" <nomail@nospam.com> wrote in message
> news:rpl_d.11474$C47.1965@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...
>
>> I need a fast hard disk subsystem, so I am assuming that I will be
>> picking
>> up monster U320 SCSI drives and will need a motherboard with the U320
>> built-in...this is on recommendation from a Central Computer Salesperson
>> who
>> said that having the U320 on the board, as opposed to plugged into the
>> PCI
>> bus, that my speed would truly match the 320 as opposed to the
>> 33/66/100MHz
>> PCI bus...sounds fishy and possibly a bit confused because the 320 stands
>> for MB/sec transfer rate and the PCI bus speed has to do with
>> transactions/second - can someone clear this up?
>
> Total nonsense.
>
> DS
>
>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

"Polson Kee" <Polson.Keeratibumrungpong@rwth-aachen.de> wrote in message
news:39vt8bF63f6ghU1@news.dfncis.de...

> What about PCI-X SCSI Controller cards?

What about them?

DS

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

With PCI-X SCSI Controller you are not limited by 133 MB/s PCI bandwidth.


"David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> wrote in message
news 1f3k6$c5c$1@nntp.webmaster.com...
>
> "Polson Kee" <Polson.Keeratibumrungpong@rwth-aachen.de> wrote in message
> news:39vt8bF63f6ghU1@news.dfncis.de...
>
>> What about PCI-X SCSI Controller cards?
>
> What about them?
>
> DS
>
>

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

When getting memory and power supplies stick with the Tyan approved
list.You can'tt go wrong with Cosair memory and a PC Power and Cooling
power supply. A good power supply is just one of those things people
don't take very serious. It's one of those parts that only matter when
you don't have a good one.

You should like this system a lot!

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 22:54:04 GMT, "Digital Eyes" <patrick@nospam.com>
wrote:

>Now, I just have to wait for the motherboard to be put on the shelves...

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 23:18:51 -0800, Eric <say.no@spam.now> wrote:

>Digital Eyes wrote:
>
>> OK, so far I am looking at acquiring Tyan's S2895UA2NRF (Thunder K8WE)
>> motherboard, two AMD 2xx series Opterons, 2GB of memory, a PCIx video
>> card, and at least 3 U320 SCSI hard drives for the brunt of the work that
>> needs to be done. Any further comments?
>>
>> Now, I just have to wait for the motherboard to be put on the shelves...
>
>There is one thing to consider when choosing between on board scsi and using
>a pci controller, e.g., scsi controller compatibility. By that I mean that
>there is often an issue when moving a drive from one scsi controller to
>another such that the hard drive will need to be repartitioned and
>reformatted in order to be used on the new scsi controller. I faced this
>decision when I built my machine a few years back and decided to go with a
>pci controller card since that would allow me to more easily upgrade the
>motherboard without having to worry about reformatting my hard drive.
>
>http://h000625f788f5.ne.client2.attbi.com/scsi_faq/scsi...
>> QUESTION: I changed the host adapter in my system and now my disk doesn't
>> work. Why?
>>
>> ANSWER From: Gary Field (scsifaq@bigfoot.com)
>>
>> Each manufacturer chooses their own algorithm for converting cylinder,
>> head and sector to a SCSI logical block number. If you run into this, you
>> need to back up your system to tape or CD-R using the old host adapter,
>> switch host adapters, Low Level Format (LLF)the disk (using the host
>> adapter's BIOS), re-partition (using FDISK), and re-initialize the
>> filesystem (using FORMAT), then restore all the data from the backup
>> media
>
>Eric

Why do they do this????? I have this problem. I want to remove an old SCSI
controller and just use one, but the SCSI drive on this old controller will have
to be reformatted because of this problem. Why the hell can't these people make
some decent standards that EVERYONE HAS to follow???

DB

Keyboard disconnected: Press F1 to continue.

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (More info?)

Because there are none. You'll find if you stay with the same vendor
you may not have to reformat. I used ot have a list of who worked with
who, but it's been too many years since i maintained it.

Translation schemes have changed to account for modern hard drive
capcities that were back then unthinkable. It's not just for SCSI
drives either.

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 06:54:12 -0700, DB Cooper
<db_cooper_do_not_use_this_part@gawab.com> wrote:

>Why do they do this????? I have this problem. I want to remove an old SCSI
>controller and just use one, but the SCSI drive on this old controller will have
>to be reformatted because of this problem. Why the hell can't these people make
>some decent standards that EVERYONE HAS to follow???