Test Setup
| System Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Processor | AMD Opteron 875 (Egypt 90 nm, 2.2 GHz, 2x2 MB L2 Cache) |
| Motherboard | Iwill DK88 Dual Opteron BoardChipset: Nvidia nForce Professional 2200, BIOS: 1.4 |
| Common Hardware | |
| RAM | 2x 1024 MB DDR-400 (CL 3.0-3-3-8)Micron 18VDDF12872G-40BD3 |
| Graphics Card | ATI RagelXL |
| System Hard Drive | 120 GB, 7,200 RPM, 8 MB Cache, SATA/300Samsung HD120IJ |
| Benchmark Hard Drives | 8x 320 GB, 7,200 RPM, 8 MB Cache, SATA/300Samsung HD321KJ |
| RAID Controller | Areca ARC-1220 8-Port PCIe RAID6-Controller Firmware V1.43 2007-4-17 |
| DVD-ROM | Teac DV-W50D |
| Software | |
| ATI Graphic | Windows integrated |
| Nvidia nForce Professional | Version: 6.70 |
| OS | Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Build 3790 SP2 |
Hardware PCIe RAID Controller: Areca ARC-1220
IWill DK88 Opteron Motherboard
Click to enlarge Iwill-DK88-boardbig.jpg
Although IWill has gone out of business, we decided to use one of its server motherboards for this project. The DK88 is based on Nvidia’s nForce Professional chipset and offers both PCI Express and PCI-X slots.
AMD Opteron 875
We still had a dual core Opteron 875 on our shelves, and decided to use this one for this project. Since we used a RAID controller with an on-board XOR unit, such a powerful processor would not have been necessary, but we decided to avoid any chance of creating a bottleneck.