Dual Opteron build finished. (Several images.)

Tony Boone · Mar 25, 2004

peter said:
Build one from scratch, what would the list of componets be? used
for Photography only no video. I am looking into getting the
componets to build one. I would wnat it to be able to handle at
least 2gig ram.
any help would be great, threading uncharted waters
Peter

I'm near Biloxi, Mississippi.

Most if not all motherboards made today will accomadate 2 gig of ram. Not all processors are capable of taking advantage of ram over 2 gigs. The Opterons and my motherboard can utilize up to 8 gigs.

)

What type of budget do you propose?

Thanks,

Tony B.
[email protected]

peter · Mar 25, 2004

Tony Boone said:
peter said:

Build one from scratch, what would the list of componets be? used
for Photography only no video. I am looking into getting the
componets to build one. I would wnat it to be able to handle at
least 2gig ram.
any help would be great, threading uncharted waters
Peter

Click to expand...

I'm near Biloxi, Mississippi.

Most if not all motherboards made today will accomadate 2 gig of
ram. Not all processors are capable of taking advantage of ram over
2 gigs. The Opterons and my motherboard can utilize up to 8 gigs.
)

What type of budget do you propose?

Thanks,

Tony B.
[email protected]

--
Peter Cartier

robertfel · Mar 25, 2004

hi tony,

great post.

i'm looking at an amd 64 notebook right now. are you running 64 bit windows? if i get an emachines or voodoo notebook, do you think i could dual boot?

in the long run, i'd eventually like to build a desktop, is it worth the money to get a dual processor board with 8 memory slots (4 per processor)? i figured the cost in the board and tower would be made up for with savings in memory.

also, what do you think of the parts listing for the god box and hot rod?

http://www.arstechnica.com/guide/system/godbox.html
http://www.arstechnica.com/guide/system/hotrod.html

thanks,

robert

Tony Boone said:
Finally have my new workstation built, all software installed and
running very well.

Here's the Tyan 2875anrf motherboard mounted on the case pan and
Opterons still in their boxes:

There is an obvious improvement when using various graphics apps
including Photoshop, Nikon View and Nikon Capture. Images open
much, much faster and all processing time is greatly reduced as
would be expected.

Takes less than 2 seconds to open a 10mb .nef (raw) file in Capture
and be ready to edit. The same goes for Photoshop where applying a
filter takes but a second or two depending on the filter used.

I only have my old setup which was a dual Intel P3 500 system with
1.5 gigs of ram with which to compare the new one.

I can assure you all that I am one happy camper and am glad I chose
the dual Opteron configuration over Intel for the new workstation.

If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to answer them if I can.

Best regards,

Tony B.

JoeD · Mar 25, 2004

Nice system - but I agree with the comment above that you don't have enough disk space. Your disk drives are the weak link in the system.

Hopefully Microsoft will release a version of Windows, that will allow you to take advantage of all that processing power (and I guess your expected expansion of memory beyond 2GB). It would be interesting to see a benchmark of this system against a similar Xeon configuration for Photoshop. Most desktop/workstation head-to-head comparisons I have seen show the Intel based systems having both a performance and price edge.

Tony Boone said:
Finally have my new workstation built, all software installed and
running very well.

Here's the Tyan 2875anrf motherboard mounted on the case pan and
Opterons still in their boxes:

1 GB (2 pcs 512) DDR 400 PC-3200 REG ECC Corsair
(TwinX1024RE-3200LLPT) memory mounted to board:

Opterons mounted on motherboard:

CPUs, memory and all cards mounted to motherboard and ready for the
case:

Workstation built and ready for the operating system:

(Yes it could be prettier with newer round scsi and ide cables but
I can't see spending the money on those since the old ones still
work just fine.)

I used the 3 18.4gig Seagate Barracuda U2W scsi drives that were in
my previous workstation. Also have an IBM Deskstar 120gig drive
that I use for storage and video capture.

Front of workstation with Audigy2 Platinum breakout box and Ye-Data
7in1 floppy drive-card reader:

Used the same DVD drive and burner I had in my old system.

Rear of workstation with various ports:

Operating system on (WinXP) showing Windows Explorer and system
drive configuration (Note the ramdisk which I use for all temp
files):

Windows XP taskmanager. CPUs hardly notice the 36 processes running
at the time this image was taken:

There is an obvious improvement when using various graphics apps
including Photoshop, Nikon View and Nikon Capture. Images open
much, much faster and all processing time is greatly reduced as
would be expected.

Takes less than 2 seconds to open a 10mb .nef (raw) file in Capture
and be ready to edit. The same goes for Photoshop where applying a
filter takes but a second or two depending on the filter used.

I only have my old setup which was a dual Intel P3 500 system with
1.5 gigs of ram with which to compare the new one.

I can assure you all that I am one happy camper and am glad I chose
the dual Opteron configuration over Intel for the new workstation.

If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to answer them if I can.

Best regards,

Tony B.

kleks · Mar 25, 2004

robertfel said:
also, what do you think of the parts listing for the god box and
hot rod?

http://www.arstechnica.com/guide/system/godbox.html
http://www.arstechnica.com/guide/system/hotrod.html

Whoever put it together forgot that Thunder K8W already has a GigE on the Mobo, with a v.good chip.

Video - that is top ...consumer card. Look at Matrox parhelia or Quadra 3000 class cards, not to mention some more botique workstation cards. Expect to pay betwee $500-$3000 for a graphic card itself....

Monitor - the only one LCD which is usefull for image work is Apple HD Cinema 22" at $2k a piece. You can get v.good CRT in 20-22" range for less money, but at expense of disk space. I am using Sun 22", based on Sony trinitor tube.

Speakers - yuck. M-audio is good enough to feed your regular Hi-Fi rig, so why limit yourself ? Just use it to drive the main audio system at home.

In my case, I went with Lian-LI 70, Thunder K8W, 2 G OCZ, 2x248, Matrok Parhelia, M-Audio Audiophile (had it for last 3 years), 2x 36 GB raptors, Yama3200 CDRW and Plextor 8xDVD+-RW, and my current sun CRT.

The expensive parts are mobo+CPU, almost 2.5k.

Kleks

Shad · Mar 25, 2004

You put the memory in the wrong slots. If you want them to operate in DDR mode, they need to be in slots 1 & 3 or 2 & 4.

Tony Boone said:
Finally have my new workstation built, all software installed and
running very well.

Here's the Tyan 2875anrf motherboard mounted on the case pan and
Opterons still in their boxes:

1 GB (2 pcs 512) DDR 400 PC-3200 REG ECC Corsair
(TwinX1024RE-3200LLPT) memory mounted to board:

Opterons mounted on motherboard:

CPUs, memory and all cards mounted to motherboard and ready for the
case:

Workstation built and ready for the operating system:

(Yes it could be prettier with newer round scsi and ide cables but
I can't see spending the money on those since the old ones still
work just fine.)

I used the 3 18.4gig Seagate Barracuda U2W scsi drives that were in
my previous workstation. Also have an IBM Deskstar 120gig drive
that I use for storage and video capture.

Front of workstation with Audigy2 Platinum breakout box and Ye-Data
7in1 floppy drive-card reader:

Used the same DVD drive and burner I had in my old system.

Rear of workstation with various ports:

Operating system on (WinXP) showing Windows Explorer and system
drive configuration (Note the ramdisk which I use for all temp
files):

Windows XP taskmanager. CPUs hardly notice the 36 processes running
at the time this image was taken:

There is an obvious improvement when using various graphics apps
including Photoshop, Nikon View and Nikon Capture. Images open
much, much faster and all processing time is greatly reduced as
would be expected.

Takes less than 2 seconds to open a 10mb .nef (raw) file in Capture
and be ready to edit. The same goes for Photoshop where applying a
filter takes but a second or two depending on the filter used.

I only have my old setup which was a dual Intel P3 500 system with
1.5 gigs of ram with which to compare the new one.

I can assure you all that I am one happy camper and am glad I chose
the dual Opteron configuration over Intel for the new workstation.

If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to answer them if I can.

Best regards,

Tony B.

exe · Mar 25, 2004

Computers are so easy to put together these days. For example, just by looking, I know the memory chips are installed correctly since they are color coded (2 blue 2 black). Simple isn't it. Plus the plugs are all in special shapes, you can't install it incorrectly. I would agree, the BIOS settings, and XP install is harder to do, but the only way I learned is by doing this myself (I had 2 hard drives, and installed XP on a new hard drive, and if something went wrong, I could just reinstall the old drive and be where I left off).

Shad said:
Tony Boone said:

Finally have my new workstation built, all software installed and
running very well.

Here's the Tyan 2875anrf motherboard mounted on the case pan and
Opterons still in their boxes:

1 GB (2 pcs 512) DDR 400 PC-3200 REG ECC Corsair
(TwinX1024RE-3200LLPT) memory mounted to board:

Opterons mounted on motherboard:

CPUs, memory and all cards mounted to motherboard and ready for the
case:

Workstation built and ready for the operating system:

(Yes it could be prettier with newer round scsi and ide cables but
I can't see spending the money on those since the old ones still
work just fine.)

I used the 3 18.4gig Seagate Barracuda U2W scsi drives that were in
my previous workstation. Also have an IBM Deskstar 120gig drive
that I use for storage and video capture.

Front of workstation with Audigy2 Platinum breakout box and Ye-Data
7in1 floppy drive-card reader:

Used the same DVD drive and burner I had in my old system.

Rear of workstation with various ports:

Operating system on (WinXP) showing Windows Explorer and system
drive configuration (Note the ramdisk which I use for all temp
files):

Windows XP taskmanager. CPUs hardly notice the 36 processes running
at the time this image was taken:

There is an obvious improvement when using various graphics apps
including Photoshop, Nikon View and Nikon Capture. Images open
much, much faster and all processing time is greatly reduced as
would be expected.

Takes less than 2 seconds to open a 10mb .nef (raw) file in Capture
and be ready to edit. The same goes for Photoshop where applying a
filter takes but a second or two depending on the filter used.

I only have my old setup which was a dual Intel P3 500 system with
1.5 gigs of ram with which to compare the new one.

I can assure you all that I am one happy camper and am glad I chose
the dual Opteron configuration over Intel for the new workstation.

If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to answer them if I can.

Best regards,

Tony B.

Click to expand...

GX-Alan · Mar 25, 2004

(since I wrote them)

Part I: (Building a Dual Opteron workstation)
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/building_gaming_opteron_2003_Part1/

Part II: Benchmarks (Capture One, Photoshop 7.0, and Fred Miranda tests)

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/building_gaming_opteron_2003_Part2/default.asp

ApostolicFire · Mar 25, 2004

I recently built 2 Opteron servers (and I used Tyan S2882 motherboards) for work and they are pretty nice.

I noticed something on your setup that is not configured properly. The Opteron is capable of running with dual channel memory for each processor, so you'd really need 4 sticks of memory (maybe use 4x256 if you can return that memory). Right now you have it configured in single-channel. (Each processor has one blue slot and one black slot) If you just wanted to add two more sticks of RAM (using the same type of memory of course), put the RAM on the inner blue slot to the inner black slot since those two sticks are matched RAM. Then the other two sticks of RAM that you get (if you wanted to do this option) is put one stick on the inner blue slot and the other stick on the outer blue slot. Did that make sense?

If not, let me do this:

=====================

=====================

=====================

=====================

(your motherboard might have CPU1 as slot 1 and 2 and CPU2 as slot 3 and 4, but either way, having all four slots filled will give you best performance)

Tony Boone said:
Finally have my new workstation built, all software installed and
running very well.

Here's the Tyan 2875anrf motherboard mounted on the case pan and
Opterons still in their boxes:

1 GB (2 pcs 512) DDR 400 PC-3200 REG ECC Corsair
(TwinX1024RE-3200LLPT) memory mounted to board:

Opterons mounted on motherboard:

CPUs, memory and all cards mounted to motherboard and ready for the
case:

Workstation built and ready for the operating system:

(Yes it could be prettier with newer round scsi and ide cables but
I can't see spending the money on those since the old ones still
work just fine.)

I used the 3 18.4gig Seagate Barracuda U2W scsi drives that were in
my previous workstation. Also have an IBM Deskstar 120gig drive
that I use for storage and video capture.

Front of workstation with Audigy2 Platinum breakout box and Ye-Data
7in1 floppy drive-card reader:

Used the same DVD drive and burner I had in my old system.

Rear of workstation with various ports:

Operating system on (WinXP) showing Windows Explorer and system
drive configuration (Note the ramdisk which I use for all temp
files):

Windows XP taskmanager. CPUs hardly notice the 36 processes running
at the time this image was taken:

There is an obvious improvement when using various graphics apps
including Photoshop, Nikon View and Nikon Capture. Images open
much, much faster and all processing time is greatly reduced as
would be expected.

Takes less than 2 seconds to open a 10mb .nef (raw) file in Capture
and be ready to edit. The same goes for Photoshop where applying a
filter takes but a second or two depending on the filter used.

I only have my old setup which was a dual Intel P3 500 system with
1.5 gigs of ram with which to compare the new one.

I can assure you all that I am one happy camper and am glad I chose
the dual Opteron configuration over Intel for the new workstation.

If anyone has any questions I'll be happy to answer them if I can.

Best regards,

Tony B.

Tony Boone · Mar 25, 2004

ApostolicFire said:
I recently built 2 Opteron servers (and I used Tyan S2882
motherboards) for work and they are pretty nice. I noticed
something on your setup that is not configured properly. The
Opteron is capable of running with dual channel memory for each
processor, so you'd really need 4 sticks of memory (maybe use 4x256
if you can return that memory). Right now you have it configured in
single-channel. (Each processor has one blue slot and one black
slot) If you just wanted to add two more sticks of RAM (using the
same type of memory of course), put the RAM on the inner blue slot
to the inner black slot since those two sticks are matched RAM.
Then the other two sticks of RAM that you get (if you wanted to do
this option) is put one stick on the inner blue slot and the other
stick on the outer blue slot. Did that make sense?

If not, let me do this:

=====================

=====================

=====================

=====================

(your motherboard might have CPU1 as slot 1 and 2 and CPU2 as slot
3 and 4, but either way, having all four slots filled will give you
best performance)

Shad had pointed out the same thing in an above post also. Thanks for your explanation.

I repositioned the memory and put them in slots 1 and 3. I've noticed an incredible difference in making that change.

Yes I'll purchase another 1gig of memory in a month or two but right now what I have is more than adequate for my needs.

Thanks to the both of your for pointing this configuration error out to me.

Best regards,

Tony B.
[email protected]

ApostolicFire · Mar 25, 2004

I wasn't able to look at the other posts at the time of my initial writing because I was at my parent's house using dial-up/aol9/pentium1 (nasty!). I'm glad it is running faster for you

I am hoping to upgrade either later this year or next year. (i have an AMD Athlon 1700+ right now, 512MB RAM, etc)

Tony Boone said:
ApostolicFire said:

I recently built 2 Opteron servers (and I used Tyan S2882
motherboards) for work and they are pretty nice. I noticed
something on your setup that is not configured properly. The
Opteron is capable of running with dual channel memory for each
processor, so you'd really need 4 sticks of memory (maybe use 4x256
if you can return that memory). Right now you have it configured in
single-channel. (Each processor has one blue slot and one black
slot) If you just wanted to add two more sticks of RAM (using the
same type of memory of course), put the RAM on the inner blue slot
to the inner black slot since those two sticks are matched RAM.
Then the other two sticks of RAM that you get (if you wanted to do
this option) is put one stick on the inner blue slot and the other
stick on the outer blue slot. Did that make sense?

If not, let me do this:

=====================

=====================

=====================

=====================

(your motherboard might have CPU1 as slot 1 and 2 and CPU2 as slot
3 and 4, but either way, having all four slots filled will give you
best performance)

Click to expand...

Shad had pointed out the same thing in an above post also. Thanks
for your explanation.

I repositioned the memory and put them in slots 1 and 3. I've
noticed an incredible difference in making that change.

Yes I'll purchase another 1gig of memory in a month or two but
right now what I have is more than adequate for my needs.

Thanks to the both of your for pointing this configuration error
out to me.

Best regards,

Tony B.
[email protected]

tom kern155840 · Apr 25, 2004

hey,

i am just wondering if the opteron is really faster than the xeon i mentioned above?

i couldnt find a review comparing a dual opteron to the fastest intel or amd single-cpu. maybe someone points me?

thanks

tom kern155840 · Apr 25, 2004

alright i found one, but from this review, it seems there is no reason to go dual, the price doesnt justify the performance.
a single opteron is just 10% slower than a dual, cant be or?

Concert Shooter · Apr 25, 2004

bosie said:
alright i found one, but from this review, it seems there is no
reason to go dual, the price doesnt justify the performance.
a single opteron is just 10% slower than a dual, cant be or?

Here are a couple of articles for you. When Windows 64 releases later this year running Win64 on an Opteron based system will smoke any current Xeon processor on the market.

I run dual Opterons as you know and am certain that I will experience a performance increase with Windows 64 that will have to be experienced to be believed.

There is currently a pretty stable pre-release of Windows 64 available for download with both 64 bit nVidia video drivers and 64 bit Audigy sound card drivers available. Those running this version have commented on the incredible performance gained from the 64 bit operating system over the current WinXP 32bit os they are accustomed to.

My money went on the Opterons and I would do the same thing today without a second thought.

Opteron delivers workstation performance leadership: Xeon counterparts left in Opteron's wake,
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12428

Special Report: AMD Opteron
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1036405,00.asp

Enjoy the reading,

Tony B.
[email protected]

tom kern155840 · Apr 25, 2004

Concert Shooter said:
I run dual Opterons as you know and am certain that I will
experience a performance increase with Windows 64 that will have to
be experienced to be believed.

why buying hardware you arent able to fully use ? however, isnt win03 using 64bit ?

Concert Shooter said:
My money went on the Opterons and I would do the same thing today
without a second thought.

my problem is that i hardly doubt it is really that much faster than a single CPU (especially since Photoshop has to take advantage of dual cpu too)

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12428

not working here. howeveri found a couple of dual-xeon/single xp+ dual-opts and these say that 3000 XP+ is almost as fast as dual-opts. if you consider the big price difference... i would haev to gain at least 250% cpu-speed to justify the system.

Concert Shooter said:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1036405,00.asp

thanks

thomas

Concert Shooter · Apr 25, 2004

bosie said:
why buying hardware you arent able to fully use ?

The Opterons are fully compatible with WinXP and all 32bit software. In addition the Opterons are 64bit processors and will really show their stuff when Windows 64 and other 64 bit apps are released later this year.

tom kern155840 said:
tom kern155840 said:

My money went on the Opterons and I would do the same thing today
without a second thought.

Click to expand...

my problem is that i hardly doubt it is really that much faster
than a single CPU (especially since Photoshop has to take advantage
of dual cpu too)

Sounds like you don't fully understand smp computing. Do some further research and you'll find that multi-processing systems are faster than single processor systems.

tom kern155840 said:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12428

not working here. howeveri found a couple of dual-xeon/single
xp+ dual-opts and these say that 3000 XP+ is almost as fast as
dual-opts. if you consider the big price difference... i would haev
to gain at least 250% cpu-speed to justify the system.

I paid $215 for each of my Opteron 240 retail cpus which came with fan and heatsink. Two for the price of one Xeon cpu and the motherboard was $235. Hardly going to break the bank and is actually less expensive than most single Xeon systems.

Furthermore, when Windows 64 is released your Xeon will still have to run a 32bit os. The Opterons will move twice the data under a 64bit operating system.

Buy a Xeon if that's what will make you happy.

Tony B.
[email protected]

B0b · Apr 25, 2004

Dual 242-246 Opterons smoke a Dual 3.06GHz Xeon sytem..

as far as Dual vs Single 2 are always better than 1

all the dual cpu systems smoke the single cpu systems in the 50MB Photoshop Benchmark

here are a list of Filters that are SMP capable..

Blur
Blur more
Gaussian blur
Motion blur
Radial blur
Pinch
Polar coordinates
Ripple
Shear (a)
Spherize
Twirl
Wave
Zig-zag
Despeckle
Dust & scratches
Median
Crystallize
Facet
Fragment
Mosaic (a)
Pointillize
Lens flare
Lighting effects
Sharpen edges
Unsharp mask
Emboss
Find edges
Solarize (a)
Wind
High pass
Maximum
Minimum

if you use any of these filters on a regular basis then you'll see a vast improvement in the speed of your tasks

tom kern155840 · Apr 25, 2004

Concert Shooter said:
The Opterons are fully compatible with WinXP and all 32bit
software. In addition the Opterons are 64bit processors and will
really show their stuff when Windows 64 and other 64 bit apps are
released later this year.

i never said that, i just meant that i seriously doubt that XP can take advantage of 64bit processors.

Concert Shooter said:
Sounds like you don't fully understand smp computing. Do some
further research and you'll find that multi-processing systems are
faster than single processor systems.

of course they are faster, thats not the point. i pay 200$ for a single cpu+motherboard, almost 700$ for a dualcpu+motherboard. that would mean i have to gain at least 2,5x faster environemnt, which i highly doubt (and reviews prove my view of things too)

Concert Shooter said:
I paid $215 for each of my Opteron 240 retail cpus which came with
fan and heatsink. Two for the price of one Xeon cpu

lol? not sure how much you know about xeon cpus, at least you dont know their prices.

Concert Shooter said:
to run a 32bit os. The Opterons will move twice the data under a
64bit operating system.

yea i know but why should i buy that now? isnt that insane? when windows releases a 64bit operating system, cpu prices are lower (same goes for motherboards)

regards
thomas

tom kern155840 · Apr 25, 2004

B0b said:
B0b said:

if you use any of these filters on a regular basis then you'll see

Click to expand...

a vast improvement in the speed of your tasks

actually not really, i do of course use these filters but thats not my main task.

how about all those plugins, which are in fact more important than most of the things you just mentioned (grain surgery 2, digital gem,..)

however, i know its faster, my problem is: how much faster? if it isnt really more than 150% i think its kinda waste of money for a non-pro.

anyways, thanks for your reply always good to know what things are supported

Andy Wai · Apr 25, 2004

Tony Boone said:
[...]
Most if not all motherboards made today will accomadate 2 gig of
ram. Not all processors are capable of taking advantage of ram over
2 gigs. The Opterons and my motherboard can utilize up to 8 gigs.
)

I thought XP can recognize 4GB of RAM max. To go beyond that, you have to go to Win2K Advanced or Datacenter Server. And even there, each applications can occupy 4GB at the most. And I think Photoshop itself further limits things to 2GB...

Andy

Dual Opteron build finished. (Several images.)

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