Dual Opteron Motherboard

[MichaelBBonner]

Hi,

I'm thinking about consolidating several older servers into one using a Dual Processor Opteron motherboard with a couple of Dual-Core processors.

I'll be building this system over several months so I'm interested in flexibility and scalability so I can get a start and then expand the server as time and budget permits.

My experience with dual-processor MB's is from several years ago with Socket 370 and Intel server boards. Those MB's were particularly sensitive to having to have "matched pair" processors of the same model and stepping in order to have a stable system.

I know the operton/AMD multi-processor architecture is implemented differently than the Intel architecture. It seems like I had read somewhere that you could have different stepping and even different model Opterons together on a dual processor board.

Do I need to worry about making my Opteron's a matched pair or can I buy one processor to get started and later add another to expand my system without having to worry about if it's the same stepping or even the same speed?

Does anyone have any experience running different model opterons on a multi-processor motherboard?

Thanks for any input....Michael

 

[mdd1963]

They are required to be the same model/speed, revision, and stepping...

 

[toughschell]

i have a dual opteron motherboard from tyan and it's packed to the brim with features. its the K8WE model, they have great support and it also has 2 full x16 pci express lanes, wayyyy before the consumer boards came out. the board set me back about $430 U.S dollars. ALSO, it can use up to 16 gigs of ECC ram, ONLY ECC RAM

 

[toughschell]

of course you cant mix and match processor models, but you can have one or two processors installed