Xeon 8core build help needed-

[EvenOlder]

Hello all,
I need advice regarding which Xeon board to use-
1. Tyan tempest based on the 5100 chipset
or
2. Either the Asus or Supermicro 5400 chipset based boards

I'm going to be using 2 Xeon 5410 chips, and 4 gigs of memory
I'll either use the onboard graphics or a cheap nvidia 8600 based graphics card

The system is to be used for encoding video with the x264 encoder, while simultaneously surfing the net, running excel spreadsheets, encoding audio, etc. I'm usually running 3 things while encoding.

Would the 5400 chipset provide me any speed advantages in my scenario? I've read about a "Dual FSB" or something for memory access on the 5400, but nothing definitive.

Thanks for any input here,

steve

[OrbitzXT]

Just wanted to welcome you to the site, while I don't know about your specific question there are plenty of people who do and will be happy to help you out.

[DanTheBanjoman]

Intel 5100 is limited to 1333MHz FSB and uses reg/ecc DDR2.
5400 goes up to 1600MHz and uses FB DIMMs.

Most boards use either XGI Z5/7 series graphics chips or ATI variants. The XGI chips have no D3D support at all, I'm unsure about ATI but I doubt it. So if you wish to run anything utilizing this go with an addon card. The onboard chips are solely meant to display Windows, server chips they are.

I recommend not going for SuperMicro, their warranty is extremely crappy. Go With Tyan or Asus. Go for a 5400 and pinmod the chips to 1600MHz FSB.

[EvenOlder]

Thanks for the reply DanthebanjoMan
Of course, your past threads about the Asus board that's going to compete with skulltrail has me wondering if i should just wait a bit.

I'm going to look up this "pinmod" you're talking about, but would I really see a difference between the two? (1333 vs 1600 fsb) when encoding? Registered DDR2 6400/800mhz is much cheaper and easier to find than FB-DIMM 800mhz stuff. I'm aiming for a $1600 box.
thanks again
steve

[Mussels]

the pinmod is altering the CPU/socket, to increase the stock FSB. It allows you to overclock even on server boards.

1333FSB is 333MHz - 333x9 is 3GHz.
1600FSB (400MHz) x9 is 3.6GHz.

Dont know the stock MHz/multi of the chips you're looking at but 333 to 400 is a 20% gain in FSB/MHz - look at it that way.

[EvenOlder]

whoops, just looked up 800mhz DDR2 and FB-DIMMs, more than I'm going to spend, so it'll be 667(5300) stuff.
The Xeons are 2.33MHz chips

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by EvenOlder

whoops, just looked up 800mhz DDR2 and FB-DIMMs, more than I'm going to spend, so it'll be 667(5300) stuff.

bummer, no pin mod for you

[DanTheBanjoman]

Originally Posted by Mussels

bummer, no pin mod for you

Divider.

[Mussels]

i know 775 cant run a divider lower than 1:1 - can the servers do this?

[EvenOlder]

So, having settled on 5300/667mhz memory-
Any benefit to the 5400 chipset over the 5100 chipset if overclocking looks to be unlikely?

Also, any opinions on spending the same $1600 on a 45nm desktop quad core instead? Figuring on a speed of 3.6mhz from the chip, would it be faster than the 8 cores at 2.33 mhz when encoding with .x264?

thanks
steve

[DanTheBanjoman]

Originally Posted by Mussels

i know 775 cant run a divider lower than 1:1 - can the servers do this?

Yes. I didn't even know 775 can't do this, besides it's not socket related. I see no reason why the 775 chipsets can't do 5:4 or 3:2. Either way, I 've done it with 5000x. (both 5:4 and 4:5)


@evenolder
Overclocking support doesn't come from the bios on either 5100 and 5400 boards (exception being Skulltrail and Z7S). However pinmods and software can be done.

[Mussels]

psst, GHz not MHz.


With encoding, your hard drives would be the limit. I would suggest the desktop quad core (45nm arent really out yet) and 4x500GB samsungs for the best price/performance ratio.

You can also get faster ram (1066 or above) which would also boost performance above the server equivalent.

Originally Posted by DanTheBanjoman

Yes. I didn't even know 775 can't do this, besides it's not socket related. I see no reason why the 775 chipsets can't do 5:4 or 3:2. Either way, I 've done it with 5000x. (both 5:4 and 4:5)

half typo on my part - INTEL 775 chipsets cant do it. i've tried 975x, P965 and P35, and all were stuck with 1:1. Nvidia chipsets with unlinked mode, can run lower.

[DanTheBanjoman]

Originally Posted by Mussels

With encoding, your hard drives would be the limit.

Blu ray for example offers a datarate of 54Mbps. That's 54/8=6,75MB/s. Modern hard drives do 60MB/s quite easily. I doubt the harddrive will be a serious bottleneck, specially with plenty of cache.

Linky

[EvenOlder]

yes of course ghz, sorry.
I agree with dan, when encoding we measure how many FPS the encoder can crunch, which macbook pros encoding with x264 at similar settings to mine only hit 140 FPS, and the data for 140 frames is a lot less than 60 MB. (Ie, only 140 frames worth of data would need to be pulled from the HD per second for the processor to crunch)

This is the quad core QX9650 3.0ghz chip for $1099.99:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115034

but I'm still thinking eight slower cores would still be faster.
plus it's cool to have a server based computer

Dan, if I'm considering not overclocking, would you recommend the 5100 or 5400 (with a future asus Z7S upgrade if I'd like to overclock)

Thanks you guys, I've spent days looking into this and found more out in this one morning-
steve

[DanTheBanjoman]

I have no clue how 5100 performance compared to 5000 and 5400. Look up some reviews yourself. With a future upgrade to Z7S in mind I'd go 5400 since you won't require new RAM then.

[EvenOlder]

Yeah, trust me when I say google lists NO reviews for real world performance of the 5100 chipset, let alone the 5400. Your advice regarding the RAM is something I should have (smacks head) thought of.
And also thanks for eliminating SuperMicro from my consideration list, although you list a SM board in your stuff?
I took a summer course in Utrecht at the university of said city. That is an awesome city.
thanks
steve

[Mussels]

he was talking about encoding, i was pretty sure that takes up more HD bandwidth to encode than to play back. You have read and write to worry about, and the drive slows down considerably if you use one drive for both.

if i'm wrong, good to know - i just figured it would be a potential bottleneck.

[DanTheBanjoman]

Originally Posted by EvenOlder

Yeah, trust me when I say google lists NO reviews for real world performance of the 5100 chipset, let alone the 5400. Your advice regarding the RAM is something I should have (smacks head) thought of.
And also thanks for eliminating SuperMicro from my consideration list, although you list a SM board in your stuff?
I took a summer course in Utrecht at the university of said city. That is an awesome city.
thanks
steve

It's how I know their wararnty sucks.

You pay $500-600 for a board, you expect some decent warranty. Turns out there is only 1 (one!) year full warranty, the other 2 are limited. This means you're paying for repairs.
Not only is this crap, but they also complained that I'm an end user and it took some convincing to accept my RMA request. Besides that they failed to communicate anything to me, I had to call them every time to get an update. They didn't reply to all my mail.

Perhaps service is handled better in the rest of the world, but us European end users aren't taken seriously. The products themselves aren't bad.
My experience with Asus for example is that they can be quite slow, even managed to lose my board once but they do service me. Tyans warranty is 3 years full, no personal experience with them yet. I'll tell you when my Tyan board breaks down


And yes, Utrecht is nice