Suggestions for a dual processor PC Motherboard?

[Swampy]

Ok, I'm stumped. I'm looking to build a new PC right now. I want to go dual P4 processors, but not Xeon's. I want hyperthreading, I'd like Serial ATA with Raid and 800mhz front side bus. I'm sure this motherboard will handle my memory requirements of 2gb to start with as well, so that shouldn't be an issue.

I've got a high end nVidia Ti4600 dual head video card with 128mb memory, but is there something else I should be looking at for a video card that will satisfy both, my photo editing and gaming needs?

[Sean]

Hi,

Good and bad news for you:

First, the bad news

P4’s don’t support multi processor and you want an Intel solution.
That leaves you with a Xeon (a P4 with multi proc support)
Xeons do not have 800Mhz fsb yet
Xeon MB’s can get spendy

With that out of the way, The good news

Xeons have Hyperthreading
Xeons have big caches
A 3 Ghz Xeon will cost you less than a P4 Extreme

I currently run a Supermicro server MB and have never had a hiccup on my system, I find their equipment to be extremely reliable. If you are going to load the system with a lot of RAM go straight for registered and don’t waste time trying to get large RAM loads of unbuffered memory to run stable. I have experience with the 2 boards below and they make great systems in an ATX form factor. My system is an extended ATX board with a rack of SCSI drives that takes up some serious real estate in the office and is noisy to boot…given it to do over, I would most likely use one of these boards for my graphics system. I have fast PCI cards and a lot of USB equipment that I use so the Supermicro MB suits me better, if you have a lot of cards then the Tyan might be a better choice

For a Video card I went to a Matrox Parhelia for the color accuracy and dual head support and have no regrets, my color accuracy is superb. I don’t game but the card does well considering frame rates are not it’s forte.


SuperMicro X5DAL-TG2

Memory
 Up to 8 GB ECC registered DDR-200/266 memory in 4 DIMM slots*
 Supports registered ECC memory and Non-ECC or unbuffered memories.
I/O Expansion
 1 8x/4x AGP Pro
 1 64-bit 133MHz PCI-X
 1 64-bit 66MHz PCI
 2 32-bit 33MHz PCI
Onboard Devices
 2 Silicon Image controllers support 4-port Serial ATA ( RAID 0, 1)
 Zero channel RAID support for ZCRINT SATA ( RAID 0, 1and 5)
 Dual EIDE ports support Ultra DMA 100
 Intel 82546EB dual port Gigabit Ethernet controller
 2 Fast UART 16550 serial ports
 1 ECP/EEP parallel port
 Up to 6 USB2.0 ports



Tyan Tiger i7505 (S2668)
Processor
• Supports up to two Intel® Xeon™ processors
in 603/604-pin package
• Front-Side Bus support for 533/400MHz

Memory
• Supports up to 4GB of unbuffered DDR266/200
• Supports ECC/non-ECC memory modules

Expansion Slots
• One 8X/4X AGP Pro50 slot (1.5V)
• Five 32-bit 33MHz (5V) PCI 2.2 slots
• Total of six usable slots

Integrated I/O
• One floppy connector supports up to two drives
• Two USB 2.0 ports
• CD-in/Aux-in connectors
• 2 x 5 pin header for front panel audio connector

• 2 x SATA and 1 x Ultra ATA/133 channels
• Support up to two SATA and two ATA-133/100
IDE drives
• Supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1

[Swampy]

Guess I should update my own thread, even though no one really posted in it for so long.

I did some research and found the same things out. No dual P4 until the P4 Extreme. I have been looking at the AMD Opteron's to go dual, but am not happy about that layout either. I'd really like the 800mhz fsb, and the Xeons I believe will come out with something soon, but not soon enough for me.

I hate upgrading hardware and I don't mind paying a lot more to have something that's going to last, like my water cooled P4 2.2ghz running at 3ghz with a gig of rambus memory. Cost me a lot 2 1/2 years ago, but it still knocks the socks off of most gaming machines - but I need more now.

Photoshop seems to be processor and memory bandwidth hungry. So, keeping that in mind, the 800mhz FSB is going to give me a big bang for the buck upgrade over just going from 400mhz to 533mhz. However, it would appear that I'm not going to get dual processors at 800mhz FSB for a while. Maybe I'll hold for a month and see what's coming up. I don't know.

I am glad that you're supporting the company I work for by using that SuperMicro motherboard. We designed a few of the main chips on that board. :) My server at home has been running Dual Xeon 1.5ghz processors and a gig of Rambus memory on a SuperMicro motherboard for about 2 years now with no hiccups, besides an occasional drive failure these days. Drive real estate? I know that one very well. Running at one time, some 47 drives in the corner of my office for some 2.8 terrabytes of space. I know that hummmmmmmm. Hehe. Now that drive space has increased per drive, I've cut that amount of space down quite a but though and now only run about 22 drives on the one server.

I've set aside 5 or 6kUS for this new PC, probably just for Motherboard/Processors/Memory/Drives/Video card. I've got everything else laying around here already.

Maybe the best question to ask, is what's the best combination that I can get today that will speed up my processing in Photoshop and still perform well in games without going larger than 2 gb ram and more than 2 processors?

I'm going to drop an email off to one of our labs (why didn't I think of that before?!) and see if they have any decent input on this too.

Thanks for the input Sean!

[jknights]

Bryan,

I am not a big fan of AMD processors but the new FX51 is the d... b......... (as they say in the UK), especially if you are power freak.
There is a dual/quad processor motherboard as well.

I would however say that if you want a dual CPU Intel board then SuperMicro motherboards are just about the only ones to get.
A browse here might give you some more leads.. http://www.2cpu.com/

[Rockyw]

I have one machine for video, and one for pictures. My video machine is a duel 1800MP athlons on a Tyan board. I run 1536 MB of RAM and six hard drives. The athlons run very well and if I was to build a duelly today I would again go with the athlons. AMD has kept up with the P4s head to head untill just recently. The Intels are I believe getting ahead of AMD right now but that might change agin real soon. For now, a duel AMD is the best for a duelly machine.

[JetEye]

I agree w/ Rockyw...
I have a Tyan 2466N Motherboard w/ two AMD Athlon 2100.
IGB memory w/ 3 harddisks.. I've had it for about a year and I like it alot... only thing I don't like about AMD cpu is that they run hotter than Intel..

[stevebri]

I'm in a similar boat, my dual (2x1gig PIII's) plus 2gb RAM died, and so I started looking.

Intel say that using P/shop and either a 2.8 or 3ghz chip with hyperthreading on, is like a dual board.

I'm sure MAC and AMD will say it isn't, but why don't you just add a bit of RAM and wait for the 64 bit machines you mentioned.

Thats what I'm doing, at the moment I'm using a 2400XP AMD with a gig of RAM, a 128mb 5600 Nvidia vid card and all is well. It's never fast enough, nothing is but I'm starting to read up on this 64 bit stuff with the 800mhz fsb.

In a word....wow

Steve

[Swampy]

yeah, I guess that's the route I'm going to take, a 3.2ghz 800mhz FSB HT processor with 2 gigs of memory. I just put 2 gigs of 533mhz memory in my office machine. It's nice working without a page file and everything is flyin.