why not mb support for 2-8 cpu`s?

[arnold873]

i mean it would be pretty wickid if i could pop like 4
pentium 4 2.4 ghz chips in one board
they are cheap and my system would be super fast right?

hear me now, believe me later, trust me in between
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[tweebel]

Thats why Intel and AMD invented Xeon and Opteron.

 

[P4Man]

these boards exist, but they are anything but cheap

Furthermore, what (desktop) apps exactly do you think would benefit from 4 or 8 slow cpu's ?

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[Crashman]

they are cheap

That's exactly the reason you can't do it. Intel makes the big bucks off server products, they don't want people building servers with cheap P4's. So they made 2 versions of every P4 core, the desktop version and the Xeon. The desktop version is intentionally handicaped to prevent it from being used in dual configurations.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[P4Man]

Xeons @2.4 GHz aren't that much more expensive. They list on pricewatch for $159. However, what really *is* expensive is designing and building motherboards that accomodate 4 or more cpu's, and the same for chipsets that can handle them. Maybe not so much for K8 chips (HTT), but definately for traditional chips with high speed FSBs. These boards are often 12+ layers.

Just want to show that the price difference between 2/4/8 way systems and single cpu systems isnt purely marketing.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[Crashman]

Doesn't Intel have different versions of the Xeon that are limited to 2 CPU's max and 4 CPU's max? With the version that supports quad config also supporting dual config but not vice-versa?

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[arnold873]

In reply to:they are cheapThat's exactly the reason you can't do it. Intel makes the big bucks off server products, they don't want people building servers with cheap P4's. So they made 2 versions of every P4 core, the desktop version and the Xeon. The desktop version is intentionally handicaped to prevent it from being used in dual configurations.

someone should come out with a software/hardware fix to cheat intel

hear me now, believe me later, trust me in between
i`m a cop you idiot
i`ll be back

 

[slvr_phoenix]

arnold873, your idea is just nuts.

Even if you <i>could</i> make a P4 run like a Xeon, mobo manus would be awfully hard pressed to design a mobo to support <b>eight</b> P4s that didn't cost a fortune.

<i>Even then</i> however, one must still ask the question of how they access memory? Would there be 8 memory banks? Would there be 4 shared memory banks? Would all eight share one memory bank and fight each other for bandwidth like little old ladies caning each other with their walkers for the last can of Metamucil?

<i>And even <b>then</b></i> how do you think that you would power this beast of a machine? You'd need either multiple PSUs or one hell of a big single PSU.

<i>And even <b>then</b></i> how would you <i>cool</i> this monstrosity of a box with <i>eight</i> CPUs?

Sorry, but your idea is just nuts. To <i>safely</i> and <i>effectively</i> do this you might as well cough up the money for an actual server like any educated person would do. Otherwise, even if you could get it to run (which I doubt) it would probably run like crap and still cost a fortune anyway.

Basically, you're better off buying a dualie AMD workstation than you are trying to build an eight P4 monstrosity.

<pre>Antec Sonata 2x120mm
P4C 2.6
Asus P4P800Dlx
2x512MB CorsairXMS3200C2
Leadtek A6600GT TDH
RAID1 2xHitachi 60GB
BENQ 16X DVD+/-RW
Altec Lansing 251
NEC FE990 19"CRT</pre><p>

 

[apesoccer]

Chk out Tyan's site for AMD. They do 2, 4, and 8 way systems. Well, there were rumors of 8 way systems anyway. Windows XP supports up to 2 processors btw. Same with Windows 2000 (edit: someone correct me if i'm wrong here). So you'd have to get a copy of Windows 200x Server, with a version specific to the amount of cpu's you wanted to use. Or go unix/linux, and they have versions specific to the amt of cpu's you'd like to use as well. We have a server where i work running 2003 server with 4 cpus in it. 2 physical 2 ht. It was about an $8000 server. Whats funny, is that it doesn't do anything. But we needed to stay in standard with the other sites, so we got it. What a joke.

edit: for clairifitcation...it doesn't do any work because there aren't any server/management programs running on it...and it isn't currently being used for file storage (for which it was mostly intended)

Current machines running F@H:
Athlons: [64 3500+][64 3000+][2500+][2000+][1.3x1][366]
Pentiums: [X 3.0][P4 2.4x5][P4 1.4]

It's not worth saying unless it takes a really long time to say!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by apesoccer on 02/28/05 09:39 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[P4Man]

Yes, as does AMD and anyone else. Truth be said, Xeon MP's (>2 way) generally also have a lot more cache than uniprocessor or 2 way capable Pentiums/Xeons, which explains a bit of the pricing difference.

My point was just, that it isn"t because of such opportunistic pricing strategy by intel (AMD,..) that 4/8 way systems are so expensive. In fact, the price of the cpu's is pretty small compared to the system as a whole, especially if you ignore the highest speedgrades.

Its simply expensive to produce such motherboards, and its difficult (hence expensive) to design the chipsets. Of course, low volume doesn't help either; so even with ~$150 Xeons, it makes no sense for a desktop user to get a 4 way machine, especially since the performance boost (for desktop apps) just won't be there.

Lastly: if "sockets" wheren't so expensive, there would be not much point in making multicore cpu's, would there ?

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[arnold873]

[Chk out Tyan's site for AMD. They do 2, 4, and 8 way systems. Well, there were rumors of 8 way systems anyway. Windows XP supports up to 2 processors btw. Same with Windows 2000 (edit: someone correct me if i'm wrong here). So you'd have to get a copy of Windows 200x Server, with a version specific to the amount of cpu's you wanted to use. Or go unix/linux, and they have versions specific to the amt of cpu's you'd like to use as well. We have a server where i work running 2003 server with 4 cpus in it. 2 physical 2 ht. It was about an $8000 server. Whats funny, is that it doesn't do anything. But we needed to stay in standard with the other sites, so we got it. What a joke.]

so i guess the extra cpu`s did nothing for performance?
i was just looking for a good gaming pc that i didn`t have to upgrade for like 2-3 years


hear me now, believe me later, trust me in between
i`m a cop you idiot
i`ll be back

 

[Crashman]

Have you seen some of the new nForce4 boards? 2, 3, or 4 northbridges supporting extra PCIe lanes and so forth, it would seem like nearly any company could make a 4 single CPU, 4 chipset northbridge, 4 sets of RAM board, so long as the chipset supported it.

The boards could become insanely expensive of course!

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[P4Man]

You are correct on the OS issue. For 2 processors, you can't use XP Home, you need XP Pro (or Windows 2000 PRo). For 4 CPU4s you'd need Windows server 2003, and for 8 if I'm not mistaken even the enterprise version. However, I'm unsure how windows will cope with multicore cpu's

>so i guess the extra cpu`s did nothing for performance?
>i was just looking for a good gaming pc that i didn`t have
>to upgrade for like 2-3 years

For gaming, better spend money on the fastest CPU (only one) and a better videocard (or two in SLI). There is not a single game out there today that benefits from more than one cpu, and I do not expect this to change significantly during the life time of your machine.


= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[arnold873]

the only reason i brought this up is i figured there could be a software or hardware solution that would make really fast and cheap computers for people that wanted them.
but i guess in order for all of it to work several hurdles would have to be overcome, this seems to have not been to big a problem for video ( sli technology ) so why would it be for the cpu? someone just needs to compile some software and the hardware needs to be developed. I would think that the data could be compartmentalized the same way that you have a gpu and sound processor, anotherwords have the inexpensive cpu`s work on data between the gpu or from the hd`s to take a load off the rest of the system, even though only a part of the cpu will be utilized the sum of all these cpu`s will be great. as far as expense or complexity of the MB i think plenty of people will buy it just to screw around with it to see what they could do. a pentium 3 266 goes for like what 20$ and would take what 5% of the load the audigy puts on your cpu for sound processing. the same with your gpu, a 533 could be used to control the hdd, floppy, buses and ports ect, again taking some of the load off the main cpu.

hear me now, believe me later, trust me in between
i`m a cop you idiot
i`ll be back

 

[RichPLS]

Quake 3 and Doom 3 support dual cpu's, I believe some others are also.
The 2000/XP os is multithreaded, also is DirectX, which dual cpu's help performance along with dual cpu's help background apps running.
Also, dual cpu systems can have the os running on one cpu, while the game is running on a seperate cpu giving you the full power of that processor. Usually doesn't add up to much, less than 5%.


<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
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[arnold873]

what i`m saying is it should be forced in a hardware solution somehow. how can hundreds of computers at the same time work on a problem over the internet and the information makes sense?

hear me now, believe me later, trust me in between
i`m a cop you idiot
i`ll be back

 

[P4Man]

>but i guess in order for all of it to work several hurdles
>would have to be overcome, this seems to have not been to big
> a problem for video ( sli technology ) so why would it be
>for the cpu?

For 3D graphics, its easy. Rendering is highly parallel by its very nature, its not a problem to let one videocard render half the screen, and the other the other half. (In fact, this has been done by 3DFX (Voodoo2) ages ago. in fact bis, if you look at a modern GPU, its extremely parallel itselve). Same goes for data storage (RAID is a similar concept).

Now, for game engines (and many other apps), its either hard, or sometimes impossible to spread the workload over different CPU's in an effective manner.

Consider this: say your workload is to mail 2000 letters. If that takes you one day (put them in enveloppes, add stamp,write address..), 2 people will do it in half a day, and 12 people in an hour. This is 3D graphics.

Now consider you have to <i>write</i> the letter, and it takes you a day. How long will it take 12 people do you think ? Are you going to let everyone write a single paragraph ? Thats gonna be one weird letter...

In theory there should be some tasks in a game engine that can be threaded, AI, physics and 3D modelling come to mind. In practice, apparently there is so much need for communication between those threads, that the benefit just ain't there. At least not yet.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[P4Man]

>what i`m saying is it should be forced in a hardware solution
> somehow. how can hundreds of computers at the same time work
> on a problem over the internet and the information makes
>sense?

Again, because the workload is highly parallel by its nature. Take SETI, of course every computer can calculate its own WU, there is no need to communicate between one computer and the other (besides aggregating the data again). Similary, you could spread rendering a movie over several computers (each does specific frames), video editing, etc, all linear workloads. Now try running an AI algorithm where one computer doesn't know what the other is doing.. I promise you some odd behaviour

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[P4Man]

>Quake 3 and Doom 3 support dual cpu's, I believe some others
>are also.

Yet AFAIR, Q3 actually ran *slower* in dual CPU mode than in single CPU mode (on a SMP machine).

>Also, dual cpu systems can have the os running on one cpu,
>while the game is running on a seperate cpu giving you the
>full power of that processor. Usually doesn't add up to
>much, less than 5%.

Well that is the point, isn't it ? If you are playing a game, it will require 95+% of your CPU time, the OS (or even DirectX) isn't doing anything significantly by comparison.

Now if you are running multiple threads (or apps), like a CPU intensive background app, of course more CPU's (cores) help. Even HT helps there. But within a single game, it has yet to be shown there is any benefit from having multiple cpus/cores.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[arnold873]

so the AI could be done by one cpu,
the physics by another
and 3d modeling by yet another
so why would this not have a cumulitave effect?

hear me now, believe me later, trust me in between
i`m a cop you idiot
i`ll be back

 

[arnold873]

again if cpu`s were set in parallel as opposed to a task oriented way as i propose. the cpu`s could build on previos cpu`s work? anotherwords one cpu would ready the work area with pen paper etc. the second would brainstorm, the third would do a rough draft, the forth would do a draft and the fifth would proofread and finalize.

hear me now, believe me later, trust me in between
i`m a cop you idiot
i`ll be back

 

[P4Man]

>one cpu would ready the work area with pen paper etc. the
>second would brainstorm, the third would do a rough draft,
>the forth would do a draft and the fifth would proofread and
>finalize.

Well, you have to do the brainstorming before the draft, and you can't proofread unless something is written. IOW, you're not winning any time ! Also consider intercpu communication is order of magnitudes slower as intra cpu communication. So unless you can ask another cpu to do a sizeable, independant chunk of work, it would be faster to do it all on one cpu. To translate that to our example, those 12 employees would be spread aroud the globe with only ground mail as means of communication.

So, sure, one cpu could do AI, the other physics, but the AI decides for instance where to shoot, and you can't calculate the physics/ballistics until the AI has finished. And calculating the ballistics of that bullet is quite possibly done much faster than sending that data to another cpu and wait for the result. Highly simplified example again, but you might get the point.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[apesoccer]

One more thing...

In SLI, i read somewhere that they said they were maxing out the CPU even with amd 4000s, instead of maxing out the gpus first. In every system there are bottle necks...and for the first time, the bottleneck is supposedly the cpu. What this could mean (i'm just throwing this out there...i don't know how true it is), is that in a SLI formation, where 2 different gpu's are taking care of data, a dual (core?) cpu might be more useful. If cpu0 is taking care of gpu0 and cpu1 is taking care of gpu1, we have the possiblity of increasing our ultimate fps. Now this idea is reliant on several things...one, that the drivers for the gpus are designed to be able to send information to multiple cpus; (which isn't likely to happen in the near future, if at all)...two, that we aren't maxing out our memory; ie, there isn't a bottleneck at the memory; Furthering that idea...if memory is a bn, then could we instead of using 2 cpus on the same chip, could we go by way of the multi xeon's and opterons, with memory allocated to each cpu and see a difference that way... ok this has gotten long enough...

These of course are all questions that we can't answer since most of us are limited by the amt of cash and or time on our hands. But it would be interesting, for me anyway, to see these kinds of questions answered [go go gadget Tom write an artical].

Current machines running F@H:
Athlons: [64 3500+][64 3000+][2500+][2000+][1.3x1][366]
Pentiums: [X 3.0][P4 2.4x5][P4 1.4]

It's not worth saying unless it takes a really long time to say!<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by apesoccer on 02/28/05 10:20 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

That would make SLI more attractive, lets hope SOMEBODY does an article on it

<font color=green> Woohoo!! I am officially an <b> Enthusiast </b>!! </font color=green>

 

[P4Man]

>s that in a SLI formation, where 2 different gpu's are taking
> care of data, a dual (core?) cpu might be more useful.

Nop. A faster CPU would be usefull, but 2 cpu's won't change a thing as long as the game engine can not benefit from it. Furthermore, I'm not too intimate with todays SLI, but I assume the rendering is divided over the two cards (each doing a set of lines for instance). Having each GPU being "served" by a cpu is not going to work/help.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =